''Sings the Songs of Robert Burns'' is the seventh studio album by

Eddi Reader Sadenia "Eddi" Reader MBE (born 29 August 1959) is a Scottish singer-songwriter, known for her work as frontwoman of Fairground Attraction and for an enduring solo career. She is the recipient of three BRIT Awards. In 2003, she showcased the w ...

. It was released in the UK on 12 May 2003. The album was premiered at the

Glasgow Royal Concert Hall Glasgow Royal Concert Hall is a concert and arts venue located in Glasgow, Scotland. It is owned by Glasgow City Council and operated by Glasgow Life, an agency of Glasgow City Council, which also runs Glasgow's City Halls and Old Fruitmarket v ...

as part of the

Celtic Connections The Celtic Connections festival started in 1994 in Glasgow, Scotland, and has since been held every January. Featuring over 300 concerts, ceilidhs, talks, free events, late night sessions and workshops, the festival focuses on the roots of tra ...

Festival in January 2003 and on release garnered Reader some of the best reviews of her career. Reader explained how the album came about in the extensive liner notes, how when her family was relocated to the Ayrshire town of Irvine (Burns was from Ayrshire), how it "saved my life to be introduced to an alternative Scottish beauty and language... I often thought Robert Burns was for the highbrow and not the likes of me, the hardly educated, council estate, overspill girl. Now I see that I was wrong and that I am precisely the person Burns wrote for." Reader says she has discovered in

Robert Burns Robert Burns (25 January 175921 July 1796), also known familiarly as Rabbie Burns, was a Scottish poet and lyricist. He is widely regarded as the national poet of Scotland and is celebrated worldwide. He is the best known of the poets who hav ...

something she believes has been overlooked in the approach to his work, and she believes that her interpretations of his poetry will reach more ears than have previously heard him. She explains: "I sang My Love's Like a Red, Red Rose to a bunch of 'worse for the drink' people in a bar in Glasgow one cold January night and I felt something happening between me and the words and the people listening, something profoundly moving. After all my travels singing songs to people, I recognised this as being a vein of emotional gold as yet unmined ... I began to be spooked by him and started on a journey to find him, Robert, the guy from Ayrshire that I would have drunk with, walked with and probably got into trouble with. I wanted to show him off to everyone, sit folk down and say 'no! no! listen, listen, really listen, listen to this...'"

Track listing

#"Jamie Come Try Me" (Robert Burns, arranged by Reader, Carr, Cunningham, Hanson, Hewerdine, McCusker, Reid, Vernal) - 4:41 #" My Love Is Like a Red, Red Rose" (Robert Burns, arranged by Reader) - 3:50 #"Willie Stewart/Molly Rankin" (Robert Burns, arranged by Reader, Carr, Cunningham, Hewerdine, McCusker, Vernal, Rankin) - 4:18 #"

Ae Fond Kiss The Scots song "Ae fond kiss and then we sever" by the Scottish poet Robert Burns is more commonly known as "Ae fond kiss". It is Burns' most recorded love song. History After the publication of his collected poems, the Kilmarnock volume, Bur ...

" (Robert Burns, arranged by Reader, Carr, Cunningham, Hewerdine, McCusker, Vernal) - 6:35 #"Brose and Butter" (Robert Burns, arranged by Reader, Carr, Cunningham, Hewerdine, McCusker, Vernal, McGoldrick) - 4:02 #" Ye Jacobites" (Robert Burns, arranged by Reader, Reid) - 4:03 #"Wild Mountainside" (John Douglas) - 3:54 #" Charlie Is My Darling" (Robert Burns, arranged by Reader, Carr, Cunningham, Hewerdine, McCusker, Vernal) - 3:22 #"John Anderson My Jo" (Robert Burns, arranged by Reader) - 1:52 #" Winter it is past" (Robert Burns, arranged by Reader) - 4:15 #" Auld Lang Syne" (Robert Burns, arranged by Reader) - 4:36

Deluxe edition

A new edition of the album, with seven extra tracks, was released in the UK on 12 January 2009. The album was re-released to coincide with the 250th anniversary of the birth of

. Of the seven additional songs, two were from the original 2003 sessions ("Green Grow the Rashes O", "Of A' the Airts"), three were previously available on 2007's Peacetime ("Ye Banks and Braes", "Aye Waukin-O" and "Leezie Lindsay") "Dainty Davie", also from that session was previously unreleased, and "Comin' Thro the Rye/Dram Behind the Curtain" was a brand new recording. "Dram Behind the Curtain" was written by the Scottish Highlands composer and accordionist Mairearad Green. The album was promoted, like its original release, with two sold-out shows at the Celtic Connections festival in Glasgow. The deluxe edition is dedicated to Kevin McCrae, the Scottish composer, arranger, conductor and cellist, who died in April 2005. McCrae conducted and arranged the strings on the original album. The additional tracks are: :12. "Green Grow the Rashes O" – 4:36 :13. "Comin' Through the Rye / Dram Behind the Curtain (Maireard Green)" – 2:34 :14. " Ye Banks and Braes o' Bonnie Doon" (Robert Burns, arr. Reader, McCusker, Hewerdine, Dodds, Kelly, Reid, McGuire) – 3:37 :15. "Aye Waukin-O" (Robert Burns, arr. Reader, McCusker, Hewerdine, Carr) – 4:04 :16. "Dainty Davie" (Robert Burns, arr. Reader, McCusker) – 5:27 :17. "Leezie Lindsay" (Robert Burns, arr. Reader, chorus written by Burns, verses by Reader, Hewerdine) – 4:49 :18. "Of A' the Airts" (Robert Burns, arr. Reader, Hanson) – 4:45

Personnel

–

vocals Singing is the act of creating musical sounds with the voice. A person who sings is called a singer, artist or vocalist (in jazz and/or popular music). Singers perform music (arias, recitatives, songs, etc.) that can be sung with or withou ...

, acoustic guitar *

Boo Hewerdine Mark "Boo" Hewerdine (born 14 February 1961) is an English singer-songwriter and record producer. His work includes lead singer and creative force behind The Bible, formed in the 1980s, and reformed in 1994, as well as solo recordings and work f ...

– acoustic guitar,

backing vocals A backing vocalist is a singer who provides vocal harmony with the lead vocalist or other backing vocalists. A backing vocalist may also sing alone as a lead-in to the main vocalist's entry or to sing a counter-melody. Backing vocalists are ...

*Roy Dodds – percussion, cajon *

Ian Carr Ian Carr (21 April 1933 – 25 February 2009) was a Scottish jazz musician, composer, writer, and educator. Carr performed and recorded with the Rendell-Carr quintet and jazz-fusion band Nucleus, and was an associate professor at the Guildhall ...

– acoustic guitar,

piano The piano is a stringed keyboard instrument in which the strings are struck by wooden hammers that are coated with a softer material (modern hammers are covered with dense wool felt; some early pianos used leather). It is played using a keybo ...

* Phil Cunningham – accordion, piano, whistles *Christine Hanson –

cello The cello ( ; plural ''celli'' or ''cellos'') or violoncello ( ; ) is a bowed (sometimes plucked and occasionally hit) string instrument of the violin family. Its four strings are usually tuned in perfect fifths: from low to high, C2, G ...

John McCusker John McCusker (born 15 May 1973) is a Scottish folk musician, record producer, and composer. An accomplished fiddle player, he had a long association as a member of the Battlefield Band beginning in the 1990s and was later a band member and p ...

–

violin The violin, sometimes known as a '' fiddle'', is a wooden chordophone ( string instrument) in the violin family. Most violins have a hollow wooden body. It is the smallest and thus highest-pitched instrument ( soprano) in the family in regu ...

cittern The cittern or cithren ( Fr. ''cistre'', It. ''cetra'', Ger. ''Cister,'' Sp. ''cistro, cedra, cítola'') is a stringed instrument dating from the Renaissance. Modern scholars debate its exact history, but it is generally accepted that it is d ...

, whistles, backing vocals * Colin Reid – acoustic guitar *

Kate Rusby Kate Anna Rusby (born 4 December 1973) is an English folk singer-songwriter from Penistone, West Riding of Yorkshire, England. Sometimes called the "Barnsley Nightingale", she has headlined various British folk festivals, and is one of the be ...

– harmony vocals * Ewen Vernal –

double bass The double bass (), also known simply as the bass () (or by other names), is the largest and lowest-pitched bowed (or plucked) string instrument in the modern symphony orchestra (excluding unorthodox additions such as the octobass). Similar i ...

*John Douglas –

ukulele The ukulele ( ; from haw, ukulele , approximately ), also called Uke, is a member of the lute family of instruments of Portuguese origin and popularized in Hawaii. It generally employs four nylon strings. The tone and volume of the instrumen ...

*Stephen Douglas – shakers, Mark's sister's bag * Anna Massie – fiddle, mandolin *

Hamish Napier Back of the Moon was a Scottish musical group from the Isle of Arran which played both new and Scottish traditional tunes and songs cast in modern sounding arrangements. Since forming in 2000, the band had toured annually throughout the UK, Ca ...

–

whistle A whistle is an instrument which produces sound from a stream of gas, most commonly air. It may be mouth-operated, or powered by air pressure, steam, or other means. Whistles vary in size from a small slide whistle or nose flute type to a lar ...

, piano * Mairearad Green – accordion *Jenn Butterworth – guitar *Royal Scottish National Orchestra – strings conducted/arranged by Kevin McCrae

Certifications

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Sings The Songs Of Robert Burns 2003 albums Rough Trade Records albums Adaptations of works by Robert Burns