Cassie & Maggie MacDonald – The Willow Collection
Frank Gutch Jr.
Posted On November 17, 2016
Willows. I thought they were beautiful when I was a kid, various forms of the tree evident throughout the Willamette Valley of the fifties and sixties— umbrella trees with waterfall branches which sometimes hung to the ground. Thick in the trunk and more delicate as it grew outward. They were everywhere and I was attracted to them, sometimes for the beauty of the hanging limbs, sometimes for the cover they would give you. Then they were only trees. As I grew, they became architectural treasures and then trees of legend. One of the things I never knew about them was that some cultures attributed supernatural powers to them, laying willow wands beneath pillows at night to help people cope with what Maggie MacDonald refers to as “strong feelings.” One nights sleep over the branches and you would be better in the morning. I wish I had known. Puberty was a bitch.
If Cassie and Maggie’s reason for titling this album The Willow Collection was to attach the aura of human emotion to the music, they did right, the songs ranging from heartbreakingly beautiful and soft to loud and boisterous, fit for a party of consequence. Some brushing the edge of traditional music, some dragged kicking and screaming into the modern world. You don’t have to be an expert to tell. The instrumentation says it all. Fiddle, guitar with piano and electric guitar overlapped when wanted.
And voices. Cassie and Maggie’s vocals are sisterly voices a la The Vogts Sisters and Gold Heart (The Gold Sisters)— voices which blend in such a way that you automatically know it is genetic. While there are many voices that blend, there is something about familys’ which transcends the norm. Ever listen closely to The McGuire Sisters? The Andrews Sisters? The Everly Brothers? The Cowsills? The one thing you will notice if you listen hard is that the voices wrap themselves around each other more than others. Cassie and Maggie’s do the same on tunes such as “Down In the Willow Garden” and “Turn Me Gentle When I’m Dying.”
They could do a bit more of that for me because I am a vocal nut, but they more than make up for it with a series of more upbeat vocal tunes and instrumentals bordering on jigs and reels. Music to let the fiddle fly, as it were, for these girls are from Nova Scotia and is that not part of if not close to the Cape Breton tradition. No, I don’t know the specifics of Cape Breton but I do remember a few compilation albums given specifically to the stylings of Cape Breton fiddling and I can sat that I was and am impressed. They are fiddling fools on Canada’s East Coast and on the islands to the east of that. And, as the MacDonalds show, they are damn good fiddling fools.
And they dance too.
