The Rose Sessions
Introducing the Rose Sessions, by Marty Moonshine McKernan and Don Banjo Smith(with a little help from their friends!) This now popular Album on CD was the brainchild of Don Smith back in the ‘90’s, when he performed with Peggy Greene and Jeanie Cassels as “the Thorn Between the Roses”. After almost 15 years of inactivity on the project, NY Metropolitan area musicians Marty “moonshine” McKernan and Don “banjo” Smith finally got back on it, and the results are impressive! Helped along by Jeanie Cassels, Peggy Greene, James Sattler, and Lynn Panico, this collection of Rose songs have been favorably critiqued around the world by reviewers such as Irish Music Magazine, Trad-Connect Dublin, The Irish Edition, and Folk World, Europe. All acoustic, and recorded by Bob Both of Twain Recording(think James Brown), this album features guitars, banjos (of course!), concertinas, fiddles, whistles, flutes, porchboard bass, bass guitar, ukuleles, and accordions. Blend this with their well-blended voices, and the result is a 14 Rose bouquet of sumptuous song.
These songs, some very old and with well-known titles, are handled very differently on this recording. None is trite or cliché. They are sung and played with a maturity, sensitivity, and respect that only a lifetime of learning, loving, and performing these songs can allow. A number of the recordings on this album may very well end up being the standard by which these songs are remembered.
For further information visit www.donbanjosmith.com
