Moxie

Description

Product Description Moxie means energy, pep, know-how, expertise. That describes Frank Ferrel and friends, and it describes this recording. The tunes you're about to hear are steeped in tradition, yet bear Frank Ferrel's own stamp of originality. It's music with spunk, with guts, with hard-dancing joy. As the old bumper sticker used to say, "What this country needs is plenty of Moxie." About the Artist Who knows where dance tunes come from? For a fiddler like Frank Ferrel they might come from his long acquaintance with old-time dance music, which began in the sounds he heard pouring out of the Irish and Canadian bars and dance halls in the remnants of Roxbuy's old Dudley Street neighborhood. They might come from further back: from the hungry and homesick immigrants from Cork and Cape Breton who came to American cities in the nineteenth century. Or further back still: from the dances, churches and kitchens of the Old World. The music on this recording comes from all of those places, but, more directly, it comes from Frank Ferrel himself. Like Moxie, all of these tunes are from the New England he knows. He wrote them. Frank is joined again by keyboard Master, Peter Barnes, and guitar whiz, John McGann. A special guest is Joe Derrane on accordion. Joe received the National Endowment for the Arts National Heritage Fellowship aware in 2004.