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Holmes Hooke, Bobby Watt, Oliver Schroer
This is a truly amazing collaboration between three musical friends. Bobby Watt and Holmes Hooke speak and sing, while Oliver Schroer plays violin. Watt and Holmes share most of the songwriting, with Schroer composing the instrumentals. The violin parts are not just tunes, but musical comments, exclamations and punctuation. There's also Robert Service's poem "The Cremation of Sam McGee", for good measure, recited by Holmes, with fiddle sound effects by Schroer. Service is well serviced by this rendition. The CD mixes spoken poetry, songs, and instrumentals to remarkable effect. It's a refreshingly original work of unusual poems serving as introductions to terrific songs with instrumental interludes separating different streams of consciousness. Those streams run from ecology, to the sea, to an homage to World War II casualties, to the reconstruction of Canada's parliament building, to the flatulence of cattle. Watt, Hooke, and Schroer kidnap you on a fascinating journey that you don't want to end.
Talent radiates from these artists whether reading, singing, picking or bowing. Schroer's fiddle accompaniment of the poetry speaks almost like a second voice reading. They invite other musicians and vocalists in where appropriate, providing an even more interesting texture to the recording. Particularly memorable are the songs "Old Kilkeel" and "Twenty One Graves", and the poems "Men of Stone" about the stone masons who rebuilt parliament, and "The Word". Obviously this recording was made for love, as such originality and creativity rarely make money. If you appreciate art that departs from the beaten track, give Watt, Hooke and Schroer your money, you'll love this recording.
"Hooke...manages to capture, both in writing and in its recitation, the simple beauty of his subject matterr.
"Hooke makes music with only the artfully spoken word. And these words will transport and move you"
"Holmes Hooke has become a national treasure and one of Ireland's greatest gifts to Canada thanks to his beautiful poetry and his brilliant interpretive work"
"Holmes Hooke is an extraordinary entertainer with a voice of such distinction it render all helpless."
"Imagine putting together a group of planets preoccupied with the workings of their own orbits. What's needed now is the sun. Holmes Hooke brought that with him as though it were in his back pocket. The planets saw a wider view of themselves and of each other. New trees took root in the doing: the life of which were sustained as though they might endure a long cold year".
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