An entertaining week

I should go to bed, but I can't just come home, no matter how late it is, and go straight to bed. I always need some wind-down time. So I might as well use that time well!

Tonight I went to the first of two concerts I'll be attending this week. TWO! I think that's a first for me! Tonia and I went to see the Rankin Family at the Civic Centre.

Oh my god, what a wonderful, wonderful show! Both of us were in tears three or four times through the evening. Tonia's worst was during "Fare Thee Well," which was one of her late mother's favourite songs. My worst was during "Gillis Mountain." That's not a song I'd have expected to get so emotional over, but there were some descriptive passages in it that gave me a powerful flashback of driving down along Bras D'Or Lake on Cape Breton Island after a few days in Sydney. The sun sparkling off the water of the huge lake far below on my right, the tree-studded mountains rising up high above me on the left. Everything looking so perfect and right. The song made me feel intensely nostalgic for a place I've only visited a few times.

We both cried during "Rise Again," which is my all-time favourite Rankin song. I can never sing along to it without crying. It's just so moving to me. Ironic, as I never wanted to have children.

It was a real goose-bumpy moment during the first song when the three girls finally opened their mouths and started to sing. It's always so amazing when you finally hear a band live that you've only ever experienced electronically. There's an incredible fullness to the experience that can never be duplicated, even on the best sound system. Even if you close your eyes and just listen, it's better.

Jimmy Rankin has a nice voice and he lends a great texture to the group's sound, but it's the girls who really make the sound shine. There's something so perfect about their voices. Each of them alone is stunning, but together they sound like one voice with an impossible depth of tone and texture. Listening to them, it occurred to me that if the sound of someone like Barbra Streisand can be compared to a rich, smooth red wine, then the sound of the Rankins is a pure, crisp white. Cleansing, refreshing, invigorating. Goosebump-inspiring.

And there's a new Rankin! The daughter of the late John Morris Rankin, who died seven years ago in a car crash on Cape Breton. I'd been expecting to see Molly Rankin on the stage tonight, having read on their website that she has written some music for the group, and performs herself. Well.... what a voice! What a delicious new sound! She sounds like a Rankin, but there's this fantastic newness about her sound. Like old and new melded together into something completely unique and wonderful. Both Tonia and I felt this different sound reminded us of some other singer, perhaps Billy Holliday (sp?)...which is odd, as such a new sound reminding us of a classic singer. It's someone else too though...it'll come to me eventually.

Molly is a very gifted fiddler and a step-dancer too!

I think that if I could gather a small group of loved ones around me, and if we could all open our mouths and sound as captivating as the Rankin Family does, that I would never, ever stop singing. There was sheer joy there.