Symphony From The Ghost Ship LINER NOTES WE DIDN’T HAVE ROOM TO PUT IN THE CD BOOKLET

There is never enough room to say everything that we would like to say in a CD booklet. Therefore we are adding comments as we please for the website and other printed material.

We began this project with a producer we had worked with before but found our roads had diverged. We took a leap of faith and decided to trust our own judgment. The result is a very personal statement of what we feel about life and its consequences. We are, as is apparent in this and our previous albums, concerned with the issues of dignity; honor; and courage. If this is taken as a reaction to a world in which these virtues are sometimes conspicuously absent, then so be it.

A theme of mortality and its implications runs through these tracks as well. It wasn’t overtly intentional, but it’s there, so it must have been important at the time.

About the tracks:

Luna, written by Matthew, is a theme which winds its way through the album, and which (we hope) is perceived as the sounds you hear from a ship passing invisibly in the night.

Paddy’s Leather Breeches is a traditional song with additional music by Angus Mohr. We have wanted to use it for some time due to the energy and power it provides, and we did.

The Hangman’s Song has allegedly been around for centuries under various names. We decided to use it because we had requests to do so. When we can, we try to accommodate the people who care about us. Also, we like the concept that sometimes blood isn’t thicker than love.

The Fields of Athenry was another song by request. We really like the song and its sentiment, so here it is.

The Devil in Miss Jones came about because we liked it, dark as it is, and it was a viable alternative to an iconic Country and Western song we have considered Angus-izing for years. Thank you to Mike Ness for writing it and saving us from what we were about to do.

We want to thank Jonathan Sabar, a good friend, and Steel Eye Span, who we’ve never met, for Isabel and the Elf Knight. We thought it was a great story and the more we researched it, the more we thought it a story worth re-telling. It also gave Matthew the opportunity to play Saxophone. Altogether, it is a win/win scenario from our point of view.

A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall reconfirms our belief that Bob Dylan’s music is always apropos in the modern world. Bob gives credit to Celtic music for influencing his early writing because it “is so full of revolution”. It also gives me the chance to sing a meaningful song with my son.

Debt to the Devil—I think we all have one (at least) and need to acknowledge and expunge it. If redemption can be found through actions, I tried to express it in this song.

Killicrankie was too tempting to not do. Robert Burns and an un-named predecessor who is alleged to have an older version of it and said what they said too well to try to modernize, and try we did, but to no avail, so it as true to the original verbiage as the translation we used allows. We hope Robert and his predecessor would be happy with our version of it.

I got an email from a friend of mine named Marty Richardson with lines of prose he had written based on his emotional take of “Paladin” and “Broadsword” from our second album. He had a very strong visual image he felt compelled to share with me and wanted to know if I thought a song could be made from his words and images. Putting “Waltzing Alone” together turned out to be much more difficult than I had imagined. Marty should have been credited as a co-writer, as his images and words created the catharsis for its content. The fact he is not credited on the CD is my fault for hurried proof reading. This is my apology to him and acknowledgement of his importance in the creation of this song. When we sell enough of this CD to reprint it, all will be made right. The copyright shows his name and gives him his just due.

Matthew and I both had friends who were nick-named “The Captain”. Both of them met untimely ends. Matthew wrote this song, with a small contribution I asked to add, and which he was gracious enough to accept, probably because my friend “The Captain” was also a friend of his. The Captains lived life with gusto, and we wanted our acknowledgement of them to reflect that, so here’s to ye, Captains.

It’s a Long Way to the Top is another one we were sort of asked/expected to do, but is also a truth within itself and a reminder to us that nothing worth doing is easy.

Going Home—We all will someday, and this tune seemed the most fitting way to say farewell to ships that sail away into the night.

Paul McDaniel,

for ANGUS MOHR

© 2008 Mohr Fire Productions