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Work Upon The Water

By The Walsh Family

  1. The Old Polina
    Run The Rigging Again
    Jack Was Every Inch A Sailor
  2. Nellie Ray
  3. Waltz For Anna
  4. True Love And Time
  5. The Rose Of Prince Charlie
  6. Miss McLeod’s
    Flowers Of Edinburgh
    The Dashing White Sergeant
  7. Work Upon The Water
  8. Old Pal Of Mine
  9. Walsh’s (Hornpipe)
    Walsh’s (Reel)
  10. The Log Driver’s
  11. Let Him Go Let Him Tarry
  12. First I Courted My Love Jenny
  13. The Captain And His Whiskers
    Who Stole The Miner’s Hat?
    Tell Your Mother I Owes Her Four Pence
  14. Out Trough My Window

Three comments

The Walsh Family - Work Upon The Water

On this album:
- Ray Walsh (piano accordion/button accordion/vocals)
- Greg Walsh (guitar/mandolin/fiddle/banjo/drums/bass/vocals)
- Ron Walsh (guitar/vocals)
- Michelle (Walsh) Carew (vocals)
- Neil Hyde (bass/vocals)
- Ray Kerrivan (drums, track 6)
- Ollie Smith (piano)

All listed as traditional, except:
- True Love And Time (Tommy Makem)
- Work Upon The Water (Greg Walsh)
- The Log Driver’s Waltz (Albert Hemsworth)
- Out Through My Window (Greg Walsh)

Walsh’s Reel is a reel version of Walsh’s Hornpipe (which they learned from the playing of Kevin Burke).

Re: Work Upon The Water

Would you recommend this album? It sounds really intriguing.

Re: Work Upon The Water

Well that depends on what you like in an album. The balance of songs vs. tunes, the playing, the origin of the tunes (Irish, English, Scottish, Newfoundland, etc etc..), and so on.

This album is a mix of Newfoundland, Irish, Scottish, and English influences. Their instrumentals are good.

I usually listen to an album once through, and pick the one, few, or many of the tracks to add to various playlists. Sometimes I return to the album at a later date and re-discover, and come to like, tracks which didn’t draw me in the first time.

So with that said, thus far I’ve added tracks 1, 6, and 13 to my playlists.

The first is a collection of three songs, two of Newfoundland origin, another of English origin. It’s meant to illustrate the strong ties between our two islands, and I was very familiar with The Old Polina (which is a variant of an English song I think, called The Old Belina or something like that) and Jack Was Every Inch A Sailor. The middle English song was new for me, and I’ve been looking for an arrangement of the full song since, one that I like the band’s execution of. There seems to be a few versions of the song out there.

The sixth is a set of Scottish reels, with The Flowers of Edinburgh probably being the most popular in Nfld.

And the 13th is a set of Newfoundland singles/polkas. This set, and having heard some of the Walsh Family’s material elsewhere (to know that I like their playing), is why I decided to buy the album without being able to hear most of it beforehand.

Again, it comes down to what you like. I have an affinity for Newfoundland content, and have been collecting Newfoundland albums for quite a while now.