sarahillis's blog

That's right! I'm proud to announce that as your guest host (isn't that an oxymoron?) again this week on Funny Fridays, I have ensured the quality of the programming you are going to hear to the extent that there will be *no* Mrs. Miller anywhere in the playlist! It will be a Miller-free zone! The Miller will be so light that it won't even be there! None! Nada! Zero! Zip! NulloMilleris! (That's "no Miller" in Lattin of course.)

November 30th is coming up, and for Scots at home and abroad, this means St. Andrew's Day. He is the apostle who is credited with bringing Christianity to the area of the world we now call Scotland, and so over the years, his day has become a day to celebrate Scottish culture, and with that culture, of course, comes music!

"Nock nock!"
"Who's there?"
"Sara."
"Sara who?"
"Sara guest host in the house?"

Yes, indeed there is. I'm sitting in this week on Funny Fridays for Bruce, but don't worry. Though he's off this week, the laughs are very much on. We've got three hours of songs and sketches to keep you chortling through your entire weekend, so tune in tonight at the usual time, 9:00 PM Eastern, and see what it's like when I take over the laugh factory for a night. It should be quite fun.

Yes, since we've done a couple of themed shows recently, I thought it would be nice to simply get back to basics and do what Mushroom FM does best, Celtic style! So, I dug through my collection of Celtic musical goodness and found some of the best of the best this week for your listening pleasure. We've got some classics from Planxty and De Dannan, as well as a great Classic Rock Song as a Celtic Cover. In short, the motto for this week's show is: "WEll, that sounds good. Let's play that song!"

As November 11 is Remembrance Day in Canada and Veterans' Day in the United States, and as the Sunday nearest that date is celebrated as Remembrance Sunday in the UK, I thought it fitting to see what Celtic music has to say on the subject of war and its effects. Not all the songs on Sunday's show will be war-themed, but they will be peppered liberally throughout the show, along with the return of our usual features of course.

Leonard Cohen, the influencial poet, song-writer and novelist is dead at the age of 82. Scant weeks after his fourteenth studio album "You Want it Darker" was released, we are stunned to hear that his beautiful and bold voice will be heard no more.

Today on The Sara Hillis Show, I'll play a set of leonard's songs and reflect upon the effect that his music and words have had on me over the years. Someone said today that he had a line for every moment in your life. I think that's true.

As regular listeners will know by now, Come By The Hills is nothing if not eclectic in terms of how it defines Celtic music. I try every week to give you a range of styles, content and artists. However, this week, in honour of the fact that my husband and I will be attending a Loreena McKennitt concert this coming Tuesday, I've decided that this Sunday's show will be devoted to a look at the career and of course the music of that artist. Not only is she an excellent musician and businesswoman, but she has been an amazing ambasador for Canada throughout the world.

Shell out! Shell out! There are witches in the air! It is the eve of All Hallows Eve, and on this night before the big night of costumes and candy, Come By The Hills will be exploring some of the deep Celtic roots of this frightening and fun festival. I'll be taking you into the world of elves and fairies, ghosts and witches, myth, magic and mystery, where the veil between the living and the dead is at its thinnest and strangeness abounds.

And just who, you may as, is Wade Hemsworth? Well, he was the mind behind several Canadian folk songs which people later described as simply "traditional." If you've heard songs such as "The Blackfly Song" or "The Wild Goose," then you've heard Wade Hemsworth's music; And perhaps the best thing of all about Wade Hemsworth is that he was born and raised in my own home town of Brantford Ontario before striking out for places as far-flung as Newfoundland, Northern Ontario, Eastern Quebec, and many other musically interesting spots in this great land of ours.

Well, Thanksgiving is all over and life continues on here in Canada as normal, and also as normal, I'm in the Funguy DJ chair at 8:00 PM Eastern on Sunday evening with three hours of the best in Celtic music from around the world. We'll have all our usual features, some new (to me at least) artists to experience, an English song which sounds suspiciously like an Italian song that Tom Dekker played on Woofman's World Music this past Monday, and even a bit of Celtic commedy from the one and only Tom Lehrer.