This Compilation of songs is a mixture of old and new, I released my first album ‘Travellers way’ in 2004 which was produced by Arthur Wilson in MacArthur studios in Preston Pans.Two of the songs from that album i have selected here are ‘Traffic lights’ written about my dear old Dad who grew up in Sutherland in a remote part of Scotland in the 1950’s and also ‘Sing out loud’, a wee Bluegrass tune which was inspired by my friend Andy McKay better known as ‘Banjo Andy. 

In 2016 I began work on my second album after Ross Macfadyen from Celtic radio told me I needed a big kick up the arse to produce a new recording. So ‘Black and White dog followed’ which was produced by Samir Aroud. Some of the recordings took place in Gorgie parish church where I used to run ‘ All singing all dancing’ (a community music group for adults with special needs)
I have much appreciation and gratitude for my fantastic friends, musicians from the ‘Cosmic Ceilidh band who performed on this album including Ian Stoddart on drums (Stoddy)
Ian Mackenzie(accordion), Peter Ballentyne(bass) and Maureen Hunter(backing vocals). I’ve selected three songs from that Album ‘Railway girl’ ‘They came knocking’ and ‘ Little square’.

Then in 2020 the world went bonkers ! due to the Corona virus and lockdown, so in order to keep myself sane I started writing songs again. Because I couldn’t meet anyone outside of my immediate family  I began focusing on home recordings using my garage band. I enlisted the help of my good friend Florian schmidinger(drums. We started working together on the songs remotely and Flo recorded his drums in his home in ‘Penicuik’ and then sent the files to me, (thank God for the internet). 
The first song we completed was ‘Zoom Zoom Zoom’ which expresses some of the frustration and isolation of being in lock down. The song was written with a rhythmic reggae feel.  
Following this a more country sound appeared in Ruby’s little song and most recently I wrote ‘World needs to breath’. This is the first time I’ve written a song with an environmental message, it’s my hope that COP 26 which is to be held in Glasgow later this year will be great success for Scotland and the wider ‘global climate change movement’. 

all three songs which I call the ‘Lock down EP are included in this mix. 
Despite the challenge of working in this way in lock down and the crash course I took on home audio production I’m still very proud of the results. it’s definitely been a lifeline working with Flo and still being able to enjoy the love of creating music.

Singer/Songwriter, Lover of the autumn red in a maple tree and fainting dewdrops in the morning light

Singer/songwriter Claire McGrail from Whanganui, New Zealand.
Debut Album 'Lay It Down' released in March 2013.

harpmo is following