sarahillis's blog

St. Patrick's Day is on its way, and so is Come by the Hills, the Folk and celtic music show on Mushroom FM. This week, not only are we celebrating St. Patrick's Day with our usual somewhat wreckless abandon, but we're celebrating ST. Patrick's Day on St. Patrick's Day itself, at least in terms of the Mushroom FM official time zone. How can that be? Well, starting this week, Come by the Hills is returning to its ancestral air time of Sundays at 8:00 PM Eastern! What's on this edition of the show? Well, put simply, we've got three hours of music from or about Ireland!

It's a momentous episode of Come by the Hills this week, celebrating the latest live album by Loreena McKennitt called The Road Back Home. Recorded at a couple of summer folk festivals in 2023, The Road Back Home hearkens back to Loreena's roots in folk clubs and as a busker in the late 70s and 80s. I'll be playing the entire album throughout the show, as well as some small items in Loreena's own words about each of the ten tracks. I'll also be playing other fantastic Folk and Celtic selections for your enjoyment.

Yes, it's time once again to get thoroughly Welshified on the Folk and Celtic music show, because March 1 is St. David's Day, Wales's major national festival! We'll hear many lovely songs yn Cymraeg (in Welsh) with a few English ones thrown in for good measure, so I hope you'll join me. We'll keep a welcome for you, to be sure!

So, catch Come by the Hils live on Saturday at 2:00 PM Eastern, or check out the replay on Tuesday at 5:00 AM Eastern! Whenever you can listen, I hope you'll enjoy it! Dydd gwyl Dewi Sant! (Happy St. David's Day!)

Yes, today's the day for another awesome episode of Come by the Hills, the Folk and Celtic music show on Mushroom FM. This week, I'll be playing songs with names in them. We'll have some songs about John or Jack, some songs about Jenny, at least one song about a redheaded Anne, and several songs about Robin, not to mention a couple of williams. We'll also do some dreaming and hear some lovely harp music. I hope you can join me!

Yes, I'm back once again in real time to present three hours of fabulous Folkish fun today on Mushroom FM. I've got lots of great music for you by the likes of Mary Black, Gordon Lightfoot, Nancy Griffith, Stan Rogers and more! WE'll have a great time, so why not come along and hang out for a while?

Do you remember what you were doing on February 4, 2023? Likely not, but as music is a powerful trigger for memory, perhaps listening to this week's episode of Come by the Hills, originally aired on February 4, 2023, will bring that day back as though it were yesterday! Ah well, we can hope, can't we? The truth is that things are rather frenetic around here, in a good way thankfully, so I've decided to do a rerun of Come by the Hills despite my promise last week that I wouldn't.

There is very exciting news from Loreena McKennitt-land! On March 8th, 2024, her new live album, The Road Back Home, will become available. This is a collection of performances taken from a couple of different folk festivals she played at last year, and it consists of songs she sang during the earlier part of her career, traditional for the most part. Well, on tomorrow's show, we've got one of those songs for you on Come by the Hills, along with three hours of great Folk and Celtic music as usual. I can't wait!

Just a few short hours ago, I promised you a live Robbie Burns special this week on Come by the Hills. I've had to change this due to a sudden social engagement which will be happening on Saturday. Therefore, instead of a live Burns special, I'll be presenting an encore Burns special from the archives, this time from January 22, 2022. Of course, this means that some of the promos will be out of date, so do keep that in mind and check the Mushroom FM schedule for your slightly changed Saturday evening lineup!

The time has come again for the annual Robbie Burns celebration on Come by the Hills! We'll have three hours of songs and poetry written or collected by the man himself, as well as many other Scottish songs in honour of the national poet of Scotland. We'll also hear a little about burns's life, pipe in the haggis, of course, and generally have a bonnie time! So why not tak a wee dram and join me live from the seventh floor!

I have no special reason for showcasing the sun, the moon and the stars this week on Come by the Hills, Mushroom FM's Folk and Celtic music show, but searching for those words in my database of music has yielded some interesting results. so, while there will be a couple of departures from those main themes, that's what this week's show is about. It comes to you in just a few short hours, live from the seventh floor!

also, a heads-up about next week's show, which will be our annual Robbie Burns celebration. If you have any Burns-related requests, do let me know in the usual ways.