The Free World (Words and Music : Colum Sands)

Описание: Writers and painters sometimes choose to put words or pictures to paper in an attempt to chronicle the places and times in which they live.
This song from the mid 1980's and resurrected video from around 1991 is an attempt to do that.

The song was written in the mid 1980's following a return home to County Down from a festival "behind the Iron Curtain" in Berlin. It was inspired by a couple of radio interview questions in Belfast after the trip, like "How did you cope with all the tension in East Berlin? And you must be glad to be home and back in The Free World?"

The song is illustrated by good friend and fellow artiste, Colum McEvoy and was part of a project which we called "Songs on a Wall" featuring his paintings with songs from "The March Ditch" album. (Spring Records SCD 1014)

What a time that was - rising costs of living, a lingering sense of Cold War tensions, unease and roadblocks along the Irish border, controversy around a major police enquiry in England and a sense of general uncertainty everywhere.

And there was us, carrying the songs, paintings, slides and musical instruments from Belfast to Ballyshannon, Clifden to Crossmaglen and then onwards to places like Glasgow and The Isle of Bute, Belgium, Germany and the Kerrville Festival in the USA.

Hope you'll enjoy this recording and may it help us all to change some of the things which remain uneasily familiar in 2022!

Thanks to Colum McEvoy for the imagination and skill in his paintings and to Jim Sheridan for making the video happen.

For adding the music around it all, thanks to Nuala Curran (cello), Brendan Monaghan (whistle), Anne Sands (vocals & bodhran), Ben Sands (vocals & mandolin) and Tommy Sands (vocals and banjo).