Hello! Sara Hillis here, and I'm beyond excited about this week's episode of Come by the Hills, Mushroom FM's Folk and Celtic music show! Against the odds of Covid-related delays and any number of other shipping problems, my copy of Loreena McKennitt's thirtieth-anniversary commemorative boxed set of The Visit, the Definitive Edition arrived at my door on the day of its release! So, as a result, the show I had planned to mark this occasion for the first or second week of October is now less than twenty-four hours away!
I've got some very cool binaural mixes of the original album tracks, so be sure to listen to at least the first hour of the show with headphones to get the full effect. IN the second hour, I've got a concert recorded almost thirty years ago for the CBC which not only includes the musical performances but even some banter and harp tuning! So I'll be playing it with minimal interruption. And in the third hour, there's a really interesting round table discussion recorded this year with Loreena and some key members of her team reminiscing about the experience of making the album.
The Visit was a ground-breaking album in Canadian music, because it refused to fit into any particular genre. It also took Loreena international, as she had teamed up with Warner Music just before recording it. She basically got them to handle the distribution and such, so she could work on the recording and still keep all the rights to her music as an independent artist and businesswoman. It's also a very personal album to me, because it was my doorway into the Celtic and Folk music that I love both to perform and to experience as a listener! Without that album, there would be no Come by the Hills on Mushroom FM! So, I hope you'll join me as we walk through this amazing material together and see where the journey will take us.
Catch Come by the Hills live on Saturday at 2:00 PM Eastern, or check out the replay on Tuesday at 5:00 AM Eastern. There's also an archive of shows from the current calendar year at http://www.mushroomfm.com/sarahillis. However and whenever you listen, I hope you'll enjoy it!