Sings the Songs of Robert Burns

Infobox Album | Name = Sings the songs of Robert Burns
Type = Album
Artist = Eddi Reader


Released = Flagicon|United Kingdom May 12 2003
Flagicon|United States February 3 2004
Recorded = By Robert Rankin at CaVa Studios, Glasgow
Genre = Folk
Length = 45:34
Label = Rough Trade
Producer = Boo Hewerdine
Reviews = *Allmusic Rating|4|5 [http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=10:hy67mpmk9ffo link]
*Pop Matters [http://www.popmatters.com/music/reviews/r/readereddi-singsthesongs.shtml link]
*Daily Telegraph [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2003/12/13/bmcds13.xml&page=15#col CD of the year]
*BBC [http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/release/9fxm/ link]
Last album = Driftwood (2001)
This album = Sings the songs of Robert Burns (2003)
Next album = Peacetime (2007)

"Sings the songs of Robert Burns" is the seventh studio album by Eddi Reader released in the UK on May 12, 2003.

The album was premiered at the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall as part of the Celtic Connections Festival in January 2003 and on release garnered Reader some of the best reviews of her career.

Eddi explained how the album came about in the extensive liner notes:

I want to tell you about the beauty of the Ayrshire countryside (Burns's birthplace) and the people who I met there when my family were relocated to the town of Irvine, Scotland in 1976. It saved my life to be introduced to an alternative Scottish beauty and language.

I discovered that my adopted town, two hundred years before me, had adopted Robert Burns. It was 1781. He was twenty-two years old. His father had sent the young poet ploughman here to learn the more lucrative trade of flax dressing. At that time Irvine was a thriving and wealthy port, bigger than even Glasgow or Greenock, therefore full of sailors. Robert was enchanted by their tales and experience. He became a man in Irvine, learning about women, drinking and life.

Two hundred years later at school I learned some of his poetry but I often thought Robert Burns was for the highbrow and not the likes of me, the hardly educated, council estate, overspill girl. Now I see that I was wrong and that I am precisely the person Burns wrote for. As I read more and more about him, I get the sense that he was the same as the rest of us, a spokesman for the glorious in the ordinary, the sublime in the mundane. I have met many, I guess, who might be like him, in that county of Ayrshire, and in the rest of Scotland. We are all Robert's babies.

Eddi says she has discovered in Burns something she believes has been overlooked in the approach to his work, and she believes that her interpretations of his poetry will reach more ears than have previously heard him.

She explains: "I sang My Love's Like a Red, Red Rose to a bunch of 'worse for the drink' people in a bar in Glasgow one cold January night and I felt something happening between me and the words and the people listening, something profoundly moving. After all my travels singing songs to people, I recognised this as being a vein of emotional gold as yet unmined ... I began to be spooked by him and started on a journey to find him, Robert, the guy from Ayrshire that I would have drunk with, walked with and probably got into trouble with. I wanted to show him off to everyone, sit folk down and say 'no! no! listen, listen, really listen, listen to this...'"

Track listing

#"Jamie Come Try Me" (Robert Burns, arr. Reader/Carr/Cunningham/Hanson/Hewerdine/McCusker/Reid/Vernal) - 4:41
#"My Love Is Like a Red, Red Rose" (Robert Burns, arr. Reader) - 3:50
#"Willie Stewart/Molly Rankin" (Robert Burns, arr. Reader/Carr/Cunningham/Hewerdine/McCusker/Vernal/Rankin) - 4:18
#"Ae Fond Kiss" (Robert Burns, arr. Reader/Carr/Cunningham/Hewerdine/McCusker/Vernal) - 6:35
#"Brose and Butter" (Robert Burns, arr. Reader/Carr/Cunningham/Hewerdine/McCusker/Vernal/McGoldrick) - 4:02
#"Ye Jacobites" (Robert Burns, arr. Reader/Reid) - 4:03
#"Wild Mountainside" (John Douglas) - 3:54
#"Charlie Is My Darling" (Robert Burns, arr. Reader/Carr/Cunningham/Hewerdine/McCusker/Vernal) - 3:22
#"John Anderson My Jo" (Robert Burns, arr. Reader) - 1:52
#"Winter It Is past" (Robert Burns, arr. Reader) - 4:15
#"Auld Lang Syne" (Robert Burns, arr. Reader) - 4:36

Personnel

*Eddi Reader: vocals, acoustic guitar
*Boo Hewerdine: acoustic guitar, backing vocals
*Roy Dodds: percussion
*Ian Carr: acoustic guitar, piano
*Phil Cunningham: accordion, piano, whistles
*Christine Hanson: cello
*John McCusker: violin, cittern, whistles, backing vocals
*Colin Reid: acoustic guitar
*Kate Rusby: harmony vocals
*Ewen Vernal: double bass
*Royal Scottish National Orchestra: strings conducted/arranged by Kevin McCrae