they all say ‘my, there’s something really traditional about that
one.’ On The Lass Of Glenshee I was singing it and Sam said
‘that’s really gorgeous’ and started picking out a part on piano
which just made the song. He’s brilliant like that.”


Album closer Fil, Fil A Run O is sung in Gaelic, a language

Dillon admits learning to speak while at school whilst not

being fluent today.
“I always loved that song – it’s got such a gorgeous melody
– and people in my home town used to sing it. I didn’t really
know what it was about but I asked Sam if it was OK to
record it and he said ‘cmon, it’s music, be confident!’ And
since people have heard it I’ve not had criticism from fluent
Gaelic singers, instead I’ve had e-mails and messages saying
‘more please!’”


Hill Of Thieves arrives at an appropriate time as Dillon’s sole

2008 release was The Redcastle Sessions DVD (Proper Films).

This remarkable film captures Dillon, Lakeman and friends as

they retire to a spacious house by the water on the shores of

Lough Foyle in County Donegal. Here they gather to perform

some of Dillon’s best loved songs including such classics as

Black Is The Colour, I Am A Youth That’s Inclined To Ramble,

the previously unreleased False False (now recorded for

Hill Of Thieves) and original Dillon-Lakeman songs Never In A
and double bass. Hill Of Thieves is very much an album
Million Years, Bold Jamie and I Wish You Well. The Redcastle
focusing on Cara’s beautiful voice and across the eleven
Sessions also includes interviews with Cara and follows
songs she sings with a remarkable, elegiac yearning.
her as she rambles around the sea shore and her uncle’s
farm where she meditates on her grandmother – “a great
“So many Irish traditional songs are about leaving home. traditional singer” – who made music in the kitchen with any
Emmigration is such a theme,” says Dillon, “so I think that’s friends who dropped in. Dillon is an evocative storyteller and
where the sense of loss comes from. Most of the songs were she conjures up days gone by where her uncles would leave
ones I’ve know for a very long time. What brought the genesis the farm for the United States, often never returning again,
of this album on was when I was pregnant with the twins while grandma and friends would overcome their loss by
I spent a lot of time listening to old albums by Planxty and fiddling and singing, hobnail boots sparking as they danced
The Bothy Band and they hit me hard, just how direct and on the slate floor.
unfussy their recordings of Irish traditional songs were. Then
when I was nursing the boys I tended to block out everything
else and that was when I decided to sing songs I’d grown

up with. Sam heard me out and said ‘maybe this is the way

forward’ and so we started searching out songs and it came

very naturally.”

In a way Hill Of Thieves is, then, a return to Dillon’s Irish

roots. She is, it’s worth noting, someone who won a fleadh

for traditional singing aged twelve.


“Yes, the album is a roots album. It’s organic, raw. We just
recorded it as we played – no fuss. What you hear is what you
get.”
Considering Dillon’s Irish but Sam Lakeman is British, how do

the two collaborate on making what is a very Irish folk album?


“Sam’s great in the sense he approaches things fresh as some
of the material is new to him so he hears things in it that I or
someone else who has grown up with the music wouldn’t. I’ll
be singing a number and he will find a piano melody I would
never have imagined to accompany me.”
Dillon admits she and Lakeman are very proud of Hill Of

Thieves and describes making the album as a journey of

reinvention, allowing her to both reconnect with her roots

and fall in love with the recording process again.


“There are so many great Irish traditional songs out there. A
real wealth of them. So for this album we focused on getting
some of the best and interpreting them in our own style.
Track two, Johnny, Lovely Johnny is such a sad song – it really
expresses that sense of loss at the heart of Irish song. The
album’s title track, Hill Of Thieves, Sam and I wrote together
and it’s an amalgamation of lots of traditional songs I grew
up with. A few of my old friends have heard it back home and
8 Properganda 10
Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37