“The Songs On ‘Heartbreak Residue’ Sound Like A Novel Set To Music. ” - J. Poet
— East Bay Express

Heartbreak Residue, the new LP from Bay-Area songwriter and activist Briget Boyle is a record that is ripe with raw, honest emotion. Buoyed by propulsive percussion and shimmering electric guitar, Boyle paints melodic pictures of the pivotal moments in life. Told with an eloquent economy of language, she speaks to the universal human experience. The tales written in this melodic jewelbox journal are imbued with a bittersweet nostalgia, yet they are far from maudlin. Rather, Boyle’s gift of a voice, leaping effortlessly from aching and intimate, to a soaring, razor-edged flash of power, rings with such a purity of sentiment that the listener is immediately drawn into her world, soon to find themselves shouting along with every chorus.

Crimes & Misdemeanors

California

Gravity

Birdlike

Heartbreak Residue

Apocalypse

Loops & Sockets

Mandolin

Difference Between

Even-Keeled Heart

Lyrics and music by Shirley Bergeron and Lee Lavergne/Jon Music, BMI 
Arranged by TLT

 We fell in love with this waltz which was recommended to us by Leslie’s fiddle partner of many years, Joe Finn. Steve Riley and the Mamou Playboys do a lovely rendition as well.  “My old home is not the same now that you’re gone – it’s nothing more than an abandoned place…I’m living in hell today, wondering if I’ll ever seen you again…You and I, so happy in our old home.”

Old Home Waltz-TLT

Prespa, Macedonia, traditional, collected by Jane Sugarman
Arranged by TLT
Ethnomusicologist Jane Sugarman has collected numerous Albanian polyphonic songs from the Lake Prespa district of southern Macedonia that she has generously shared at Eastern European Folklife Center Balkan Music and Dance Camps over the years. This one is a wedding song sung by female relatives of the groom or bride. It is a “sitting song” (literally a "song sung on the behind" ) as opposed to a song sung while doing a sequence of dance steps (a  "song sung on the feet"). Jane’s study on Prespa weddings and songs is available as a book with an accompanying CD: Engendering song:  Singing and subjectivity at Prespa Albanian weddings (University of Chicago Press, 1997). “Why don’t you sing for me just once…Oh, nightingale! Why have you come near me, why have you made my heart sad as a tambura stirs a young girl’s heart? Tak tak goes the nightingale, to sing to you in the rosebush, to sing without letting up, to marry off ALI bey, and the make his mother happy.”


As Ja Merr, Ja Thuaj Një Erë - TLT

Oseacco, Resia Valley, Italy, traditional, from Karmina Šilec
A song in honor of Mount Kanin, a mountain in the Julian Alps on the border of Slovenia and Italy. We were able to come by a source recording, lyrics and a translation for this song with the help of several people in our extended folk music community, including Larry Weiner, Marie DiCocco and Celest DiPietropaolo. The song is sung in Resian, a slavic language most closely related to Slovenian. “Mount Kanin (Ćanen) has changed its clothes. It has put on a white shirt and green trousers, with embroidered flowers of white, red and yellow.”

Da Pa Ćanen Ë Se Zmudow - TLT

Briget Boyle's songs are compelling reminders that healing and redemption are coming. With gritty, vulnerable lyrics, pristine vocals, and driving playing on her antique Gibson J45, Briget’s 90s rock-tinged songs center the truth-telling power of the human voice. Sincerity is magnetic and Briget's songs often inspire listeners to put pen to paper, clear their throats, and dust off their old guitars. What will happen when you listen?

Briget Boyle

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