No Place Like Home - Martha L Healy
LCM #SongOfTheDay: ‘No Place Like Home’ - Martha L Healy
WIth a brand new Nashville recorded album ‘Keep The Flame Alight’ due for release on October 5th via Frogeye Records, our LCM featured artist today is Glasgow based singer-songwriter Martha L Healy. Although the new album was recorded in Nashville, it retains a strong sense of Martha's Celtic heritage. We love Martha’s album opener ‘No Place Like Home’, a an ode to home and Scotland and a reflection on how the place we come from can frustrate, but ultimately inspires us.
Martha comments “I started to write this before I left for a “life sabbatical” in Nashville in 2016. Scotland and me had reached a point in our relationship where I had to leave and escape for a while. I also knew I couldn’t stay in Nashville for ever…As I wrote the next verse, in Nashville, I was still intent on easing the blow of my return to Scotland and I also found myself writing lyrics about the things that I both love and hate about my homeland: the rain; the greyness; the cold wind but I also write about missing the warm fire and the fact that the people are ridiculously honest. The whole song is about feeling weary but also that feeling you get – wherever you’ve been in the world – when you get in your own front door and sit down in front of the fire.”
Through a mix of personal insight and story songs, Martha provides a fresh take on some classic themes – the need to leave somewhere to help find your place in the world, the ache of an unfulfilled love, the complexity of family and friendships and the need to live your own dreams. She also explores how being a woman in the 21st century is not without its fair share of pressures and demands.
The majority of ‘Keep The Flame Alight’ was written in Nashville on Martha's 3-month life sabbatical in 2016. Following receipt of Creative Scotland funding, the album was recorded back there in October/November 2017, with David Spicher in the production chair and a host of fantastic Nashville session players.
Photo Credit: Kris Kasiak Photography