I remember one well-loved book in particular, its spine worn and bent with over-use: Tomas O’ Cròhan’s, Te Islandman: the English translation of the memoir Tomas wrote of his life, and of his community on a remote island in Western Ireland where Irish Gaelic was the native tongue.


I can’t say why exactly, but his story moved me profoundly, and I followed the thread of my fascination to a semester abroad as an undergrad in the village of Dingle, very near to the island Tomas once called home. I immersed myself in the music, met and played a few tunes with a fellow named Donogh Hennessy, the guitarist in a band called Lùnasa, who quite unexpectedly, would come to produce my debut album just a few short years later.


I returned to my final year of college in the US not knowing what I wanted to do with my life, but with the conviction that I loved Celtic music. I spent most of my senior year moving in and out of various Bluegrass and Celtic bands, preparing my proposal for a Fulbright Fellowship to go up to Cape Breton, Nova Scotia for a year aſter graduation to study


the effect that tourism was having on the traditional music of the island.


Somehow, along the


way, I’d stumbled into the high- energy addiction of Cape Breton fiddling. Settled by displaced Scots during the Highland Clearances of the late 1700’s. Cape Breton’s isolation had preserved a fiery fiddle tradition, as well as the beautifully musical Scottish Gaelic language.


I won the grant and headed up to Nova Scotia for a year aſter graduation. Unfortunately, it didn’t take long for my project to fall on the wayside of fiddling, learning Gaelic songs, and writing a few of my own compositions. I found inspiration everywhere, and penned ‘Te Star Above Rankin’s Point,’ one of my favorite tracks on my album, which is inspired by a short story written by Cape Breton author Alistair MacLeod.


I also brought with me the songs I’d written in college, most of which I wrote aſter falling in love with the poetry of Appalachian author Louise McNeill. A West Virginian by birth, Louise’s poems could all be put to music, and her stories inspired me to write my own ballads. My aim was to start writing


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