[Cover photo credit to Richard Haughton]
On March 8, 2024, Juno Award-winning Canadian Celtic Folk artist Loreena McKennitt, who has been involved in music for over 30 years, will be releasing a new album that “harkens back to the earliest days of her career and the most traditional of Celtic music.”
The Road Back Home was recorded during the summer of 2023 when McKennitt performed at four folk festivals in southern Ontario. It was a return to her roots where she was inspired by playing early songs, the local musicians, and the spontaneity of the performances.
Soon to be released on CD and 180g vinyl, and via digital music services including Dolby Atmos, the album features 10 songs, including many pieces that date back to McKennitt’s earliest days on the Folk circuit and which have remained unrecorded until now.
Based in Stratford, Ontario since the late 1980s, several years ago, McKennitt serendipitously encountered a group of local Celtic musicians. This resulted in an impromptu collaboration as part of her 2021 Christmas concerts which were released in 2022 as her Under A Winter’s Moon recording.
These musicians accompanied McKennitt again this summer at the Ontario folk festivals, along with her long-time band mate, cellist Caroline Lavelle. In the spirit of the tradition, one show featured an unplanned guest vocal on “Wild Mountain Thyme” from Canadian singer-songwriter James Keelaghan.
McKennitt shares:
There are many ways to define the word ‘home’. It may well be the structure in which we live, but it can also be the cultural expressions of community which somehow reach into our hearts and souls and draw us together without us completely understanding why.
In addition to her musical career, McKennitt has engaged in a number of philanthropic initiatives, including:
