Cathy Maguire - Who Knew

What's the "real" Country Music? Some choose "classic" Country, and despise the "New" Nashville, which reciprocates.

My feeling is that Country is less a style, than a state of mind, which makes me a "big tent" sort of guy. Let the circle be unbroken, and that sort of thing. After all, Country originally came from the Scots-Irish hill country music, and who better to carry that tradition than a young lass from Ireland?

Cathy Maguire grew up immersed in her Country's musical traditions. Following her muse, she moved to Nashville as a songwriter, and found herself working with old Country legends and sitting in on Johnny Cash's last recording session.

This isn't your "classic" Country music, with its string orchestra instead of steel guitar and banjo. But the feeling - bitter sweet memories of faded dreams, of days when everything seemed possible - would be right at home at an old time Medicine Show. Or Carnegie Hall. Big tent stuff: the circle, unbroken indeed.



Her album Portrait was released last year on the Celtic Collections label. Her web site has not only a collection of songs to listen to, but the photographs of days gone by that led her to write the songs.

Who Knew (Songwriters: Cathy Maguire/Roger Cook/John Goodwin)

There is a green hill far away
Beyond the city walls
That’s a song I used to sing in the old assembly hall
When the winters seemed so long
And the summers flew by fast
Before the seeds of innocence
Were buried in my past

When everything was possible
and no dreams were un-dreamable
And the future lay before me like a shining silver road
And I fell in love with you
And thought it would last forever
Who knew?

Walking down the street
Past my old school today
I heard small voices singing about a green hill far away
Standing very still with a smile upon my face
The music took me back again to a long forgotten place

Where everything was possible
and no dreams were un-dreamable
And the future lay before me like a shining silver road
And I fell in love with you
And thought it would last forever

But in this life only memories come true
Who Knew?

UPDATE 30 January 2010 11:37: Steve in the comments makes two interesting points.

(1) This song skates very close indeed to the edge of what is Country music. Taken by itself, there's some justice in this. In the context of the entire album, it highlights the broad range of sound that can find a home in Country Music. For example, the title track of the album, Portrait is much more of a traditionally-sounding Country Ballad (you can listen to it at her web site). I personally find the breadth of music to be something that attracted me back to Country from Rock, which in my opinion became excessively segmented into sub-markets where all the music sounded like all the rest. But that's just me; your mileage may vary, void where prohibited, do not remove tag on pain of law.

(2) Her voice does indeed sound a lot like Kathy Mattea, who has not (yet) been featured here. Where Have You Been? is one of my favorite songs, but you know that I get a little sentimental sometimes.