On one of only two Scottish dates Ben Glover will play at the Voodoo Rooms on 6 April 2017. Support will be up and coming musician Roseanne Reid – recent BBC Radio 2 Young Folk Musician of the Year nominee
He is Irish, but now based in Nashville, and his rich powerful voice mixes Americana and his native Irish soul.
His most recent album The Emigrant released just last year, folds his two worlds into one.
Co-produced by Glover and Neilson Hubbard (who also produced Scot Dean Owens’ acclaimed Into the Sea CD) the album features a mix of traditional folk songs and original compositions (including co-writes with Gretchen Peters (with whom he also co-wrote the award winning song Blackbirds), Mary Gauthier and Tony Kerr) as Glover addresses the universal theme and personal challenge that is immigration. When an ocean separates the two halves of your whole, it’s worthy of contemplation.
Glover says: “Over the past couple of years, I have been going through the process of getting my U.S. Green Card, so the reality of immigration was very present in my world”
Not only did he have to slice through web of bureaucratic issues, he also found himself face-to-face with the bigger questions posed by the process. “Contemplations like ‘What and where is home?’ were never far from my thoughts,” he adds. To work through it all, Glover turned to music. “Around the same time, my interest in Irish roots music and folk ballads was rekindled. My head and heart were back in that musical world. Having to deal with the issues of immigration while going back to the music I grew up playing is how The Emigrant was born. The project is my story — it’s who I am at this time in my life”
Glover’s childhood in the sleepy seaside village of Glenarm in the north of Ireland had a soundtrack from both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. When he started playing gigs in the local pub at the age of 13, he played Irish music, of course, but he also slipped in songs from Hank Williams and Johnny Cash. In the summers of his university years. Glover paid his way across the pond by performing Irish folk ballads along with the songs of Christy Moore and the Pogues in the bars in Boston, while back home in the pubs of Ireland he was singing Dylan and Springsteen.
In 2009, Glover relocated to Nashville and immersed himself in Southern culture. He began exploring the locations that were closely associated with the music he grew up listening to — Hank Williams’ tombstone in Montgomery, Alabama; Johnny Cash’s childhood home in Dyess, Arkansas; Robert Johnson’s grave in Greenwood, Mississippi. Those experiences informed and infused the soul of his acclaimed 2014 solo album, Atlantic. With The Emigrant, Glover continues to search for his place in the world.
Have a taste of this:
Founding Editor of The Edinburgh Reporter.
Edinburgh-born multimedia journalist and iPhoneographer.
