Wayfaring

Collection Contents

#		Title	Length
1		Heaven Calling	3:16	Play
2		Girl from Monreal	3:12	Play
3		Around the Bend	3:30	Play
4		The Road to Santiago	2:56	Play
5		Magdeline by the Sea	3:43	Play
6		You Scandinavian Girl	2:38	Play
7		The Devil in Red	5:40	Play
8		Gypsy Roses	5:59	Play
9		Marie	3:16	Play
10		With Every Step	4:01	Play
11		The Pilgrim's Way	2:57	Play

Items may be purchased individually.

Contributors

Details

Royalties

See the payment distribution when this media is bought.

Description	Amount
Bitmunk Marketplace Service	USD $0.98
CD Baby Artist Royalty	USD $5.97
CD Baby 9% Digital Distribution Cost	USD $0.54
Bitmunk Download Service	USD $0.54
Bitmunk MicroPayment Service	USD $0.01
Total	USD $8.02

Bitmunk uses a micropayment system that is accurate to 7 monetary digits.
Mouse over an individual amount to see its exact value.

Description

Wayfaring

...on the age-old Camino de Santiago, over the French Pyrenees and across the mountains and plains of Spain to the very ends of the earth itself...

...on the road to Santiago.

Where wonders are experienced, insights are gained and a wanderer’s heart finds solace and loss. The road is long and hard and sometimes even treacherous.

The journey begins with a sacred call. A call from above, heard amidst the frenzied urban riffs of Heaven Calling, through the ever-encroaching tidal wave of global rule, fading cultures and life signs measured by a click or two. There’s a full sense here of the urgency of responding to the call, and so our traveller embarks, without further ado,

...on the road to Santiago.

When next we come across him he is on his way with a spring in his step, accompanied by a Girl from Monreal. Her presence seems to ease the wanderer’s burden of long days spent alone on the road, re-routing his journey away from the soul towards a soul-mate. But just how long will she stay by his side? How off-course will this diversion take him? The road is long and life passes by and by...

Soon enough, the road itself fills our traveller’s mind. A country ease creeps into his song and step. The call has been heeded and his mind now turns to the many many miles ahead. As autumn fades and winter grips his soul, the wanderer asks - if not the end of the road, what might there be Around the Bend,

...on The road to Santiago?

Bounding along to a spirited Knoppfler-esque walker’s anthem, we find our pilgrim scurrying along red Rioja soil, his goal firmly planted in his and our minds. The journey has its mecca, James the Greater’s tomb, and we follow the wayfarer’s purposeful progress through fragrant forests of blooming chestnut, oak and eucalypt - forests as varied as life’s fickle fates.

Before he knows it, the ebbs and flows of time and tide have overtaken the walker’s life. Storms are brewing just over the horizon and the wayfarer finds - like his seafaring mates - that the sailing is never smooth boys. Trouble looms with Magdeline by the Sea, for every port brings its exotic enticements and every traveller, at some time in his life, has given in to a wanderlust.

One more romantic interlude - a Nordic detour with You Scandinavian Girl - before he moves on to a riskier wayside flirtation, this time of the Faustian kind. With The Devil in Red, Satan crosses our pilgrim’s path, as happened so often to wandering Mississippi Delta bluesmen of old. With more than a passing nod to the likes of Wall of Voodoo, we enter a world peopled by scoundrels and liars and the journey to the holy of holies in Santiago begins to take a sinister turn - a headlong rush into the jaws of judgement.

Beware, O pilgrim, the perils that may beset you, even

...on the road to Santiago.

With Gypsy Roses, we’re ushered into an enchanted cantina with the suggestive languor of an Eagles-style intro. The music is as lush as the air of the gypsy-temptress’ parlour is perfumed. To the tune of the sitar-sounding bridge, the pilgrim’s last resistance is melted away. The assault on the helpless pilgrim’s senses will linger on, long after his encounter with the scented flamenco princess is but a memory...

A subsequent tangle with French Marie has more than a touch of military precision about it, but its heavy nostalgia for a love sadly lost appears to haunt the weary traveller, threatening to halt his progress ahead. Now the fatigue of the many miles traversed has begun to take its toll

...on the road to Santiago.

The weight of every step is felt in the next etapa’s plodding pace. But with his weariness comes the dawning of wisdom. The towers of Santiago’s cathedral are now well within sight and the pilgrim begins to make his final reckoning. A sense of perspective is finally gained - an awareness of the ripples in life that are caused With Every Step we take.

The Pilgrim's Way leads us into the very heart of Celtic Galicia, a land of enchantment and witchery, where one journey ends and another begins. The road ahead is unmapped and not as generously populated with the helpful yellow arrows that have guided the traveller safely to James’ hallowed tomb.

The joy of arriving is mixed with the sorrow of leaving, as the wayfarer bids farewell to Santiago’s fair way...

And so, 800 kilometres on, having covered a vast stretch of emotional, mystical and spiritual terrain, Wayfaring leaves the acoustic pilgrim with a burning question.

Is the rich and varied musical landscape glimpsed along the way (spanning country, folk and rock) inspired by sensations and experiences on the Camino in Spain? Or are the album’s myriad of sensory inflections and soulful introspections a masterful reinterpretation of the journey to Santiago in a fluent North American musical vernacular?

As is often the case with that complex tapestry woven between life and imagination, the answer lies somewhere intriguingly in between...

© 2007 John Mifsud, Rome, Italy