“So many murdered women!”
Brooke Wood took up the cello as a child. She’d sit on the front porch of her family home in a holler in East Tennessee and play the Bach Solo Cello Suites. But what she heard on the radio and on the cd’s her Dad would bring home were Murder Ballads. She was fascinated by this macabre sub genre of folk music. When she and her partners in Laughing Molly, Terri McCoy and Peggy Monaghan, were casting around for the next project she interjected that she’d always wanted to do a concert focused on Murder Ballads. The response was an immediate “Let’s do it!”.
But as the research began the task seemed overwhelming to the trio. Peggy Monaghan delved deeply into the histories of classic songs like Pretty Polly, Delia’s Gone and Frankie and Johnny, and found that there were so many songs that, though they reflect some of the facts, do not tell the story of the victims. And there were so many, many murdered women whose stories ended up as popular entertainment.
“I researched the stories behind the songs, and then started going deeper into the history of Murder Ballads and the reasons for the public fascination with them, said Peggy.” She found that there is a very strong and very fluid connection between the societal appetite for Murder Ballads and the popularity of True Crime stories.
It is in the nature of Folk music to take elements from older songs and mold them into something new. “The Knoxville Girl” stems from “The Wexford Girl” and many songs have their roots in the British Isles, where they were printed in broadsides — cheap pamphlets that were the 17th century version of tabloid newspapers. In the case of “The Knoxville Girl” the story can be traced back to the death of a woman in England in 1683.
As the research unfolded, the show began to take shape. But there was so much material to cover, so many women’s stories to tell, that the group decided to do a concert series under the umbrella moniker of Love Gone Awry.
The first installment will be a house concert on May 17th entitled Only Murders in the Ballads. The scope of the show covers songs from the 1500’s forward to today. Songs covered will include: The Outlandish Knight, a song with an interesting twist of fate for the murderer; Colleen Bawn, the story of Ellen Scanlon, a 15 year old Irish girl murdered in 1819; The Willow Garden, where the young lover makes triply sure he has killed Rose Connolly by poison, stabbing and drowning. There are many more as well.
Since so many things can go wrong in a love affair, the group has several more shows designed. Sometimes when love goes awry it can be very funny.
For more information on the Love Gone Awry concert series, contact Peggy Monaghan at [email protected]. Seating is limited.
Brooke Wood took up the cello as a child. She’d sit on the front porch of her family home in a holler in East Tennessee and play the Bach Solo Cello Suites. But what she heard on the radio and on the cd’s her Dad would bring home were Murder Ballads. She was fascinated by this macabre sub genre of folk music. When she and her partners in Laughing Molly, Terri McCoy and Peggy Monaghan, were casting around for the next project she interjected that she’d always wanted to do a concert focused on Murder Ballads. The response was an immediate “Let’s do it!”.
But as the research began the task seemed overwhelming to the trio. Peggy Monaghan delved deeply into the histories of classic songs like Pretty Polly, Delia’s Gone and Frankie and Johnny, and found that there were so many songs that, though they reflect some of the facts, do not tell the story of the victims. And there were so many, many murdered women whose stories ended up as popular entertainment.
“I researched the stories behind the songs, and then started going deeper into the history of Murder Ballads and the reasons for the public fascination with them, said Peggy.” She found that there is a very strong and very fluid connection between the societal appetite for Murder Ballads and the popularity of True Crime stories.
It is in the nature of Folk music to take elements from older songs and mold them into something new. “The Knoxville Girl” stems from “The Wexford Girl” and many songs have their roots in the British Isles, where they were printed in broadsides — cheap pamphlets that were the 17th century version of tabloid newspapers. In the case of “The Knoxville Girl” the story can be traced back to the death of a woman in England in 1683.
As the research unfolded, the show began to take shape. But there was so much material to cover, so many women’s stories to tell, that the group decided to do a concert series under the umbrella moniker of Love Gone Awry.
The first installment will be a house concert on May 17th entitled Only Murders in the Ballads. The scope of the show covers songs from the 1500’s forward to today. Songs covered will include: The Outlandish Knight, a song with an interesting twist of fate for the murderer; Colleen Bawn, the story of Ellen Scanlon, a 15 year old Irish girl murdered in 1819; The Willow Garden, where the young lover makes triply sure he has killed Rose Connolly by poison, stabbing and drowning. There are many more as well.
Since so many things can go wrong in a love affair, the group has several more shows designed. Sometimes when love goes awry it can be very funny.
For more information on the Love Gone Awry concert series, contact Peggy Monaghan at [email protected]. Seating is limited.