Across the Divide

Constant international touring for the last decade, including a stint opening for The Jools Holland Orchestra, as well as playing rhythm guitar for some of the world's leading Gypsy jazz guitarists, has given Shrewsbury-born acoustic guitarist and vocalist Chris Quinn an enviable confidence that's displayed to good effect on this debut album.

Some fine guest musicians, including Dan Cassidy (fiddle), Eamonn Coyne (tenor banjo and tenor guitar), Cormac Byrne (percussion) and Larry Melton (double bass), join him on a set of mostly original tunes, heavily influenced by his love of British folk music and bluegrass, and opening with ‘Fly Away’, an optimistic song about creativity. Elsewhere he explores those eternal concerns of the touring musician, homesickness and love lost on ‘The Call of Home’ and ‘The World Was Spinning Around’ without falling into too many of the clichés, while ‘The Tail [sic] of John Lewis and Little Omie’ is a very creditable stab at a murder ballad. Tellingly, he's assured enough in these tunes of his own to present them alongside the well-known likes of ‘Shady Grove’, John Watt's ‘Pittenweem Jo’ and Buddy Mondlock's ‘Comin’ Down in the Rain’, as recorded by Nanci Griffith and many others.