Sligo Maid was a popular Newcastle, New South Wales, band which regularly performed at the Lass O' Gowrie Hotel. Its members were: –
Susan Carson – vocals, violin, mandolin, guitar.
Cathy Cox – vocals, piano accordion, keyboards, tin whistle.
Peter Tarren – vocals, guitar.
Dave Marshall – drums and vocals.
John (Babalooboo) Gottery – vocals and bass.
Grant Fraser – Lead guitar and vocals.
I understand that this band was fairly versatile but the content of this album is very definitely in the folk rock style. Steeleye Span is a group that readily comes to mind when listening to this album. Do not let this put you off because they are very good at what they are doing.
Tracklist
1. Hard times of old England
2. Rocky road medley (Rocky Road to Dublin and the Galway races)
3. Sligo Maid
4. Let her go down.
5. All around my hat
6. Mooncoin Jig
7. Woman of Ireland (not to be confused with O'Riada's Women of Ireland)
8. The Whale.
Click here to begin downloading the (flac) version. 148 MB
Click here to begin downloading the MP3 version. 39 MB
In either case, you will be downloading a compressed (Zip) file you will probably need to decompress to play the music and to see the included graphics.
If you have any problems or any information to add please contact me on my email: – mr.stockman.au@gmail.com
Great music and, somehow, different from the likes of Steeleye Span whom you mentioned in your notes. I'm very happy to listen to this album and - in general - to discover and get acquainted to the Australian folk music offered by this blog. Thanks!
ReplyDeletethanks mate. love folk rock.
ReplyDeleteSligo Maid was the sound track to my youth - I reckon that I caught more of their gigs than just about everyone else except for the band members themselves! I had a copy of the cassette for years but it suffered from living in my car in the hot Newcastle summers and eventually it gave up the ghost, so I am overjoyed to finally have located a digital copy.
ReplyDeleteI have to say that it's a shame that there aren't more bootlegs from their pub gigs, especially at the Lass o' Gowrie, the Nag's Head, and in the basement of The Grand. Some of those performances were superlatively astonishing, with the heat and sweat and enthusiasm of the crowd (and jugs of beer!) pumping the band. 'Lass' gives just an inkling of the band's talent, but it didn't capture their best renditions. Peter Tarren's Youtube channel has a few videos of the band but they're still not the best - probably because most of their gigs were drowned out by the raucousness of the audience! I suspect that Peter's used the videos where we were better behaved, or where the performances were done with no audience present. That said, the clip of 'Hard Times of Old England' jogs great memories for me, because not only was I there, I'm in the video!
https://www.youtube.com/@petetarren7283/videos
Sligo Maid also released an interactive 10 track CD-ROM in 1996, called 'The Road to Sligo.' I'm wondering if anyone has any inkling as to whether this unicorn has a presence on the web...?
ReplyDelete