Hounded by the security police in the early 1980s, musician and journalist Roger Lucey is launching Now Is The Time his first studio album in 30 years, writes Glynis O’Hara.
Gently rolling country rhythms blend with gorgeous slide guitar as folk troubadour Roger Lucey reflects on everything from the tragedy of war to simply getting older, learning to forgive and taking a healthier path through life.
Sometimes wistful, sometimes celebratory, the lyrics are those of a great survivor and master of reinvention. And as he sings in Now Is the Time, composed for his new wife: “There’s no time like the present/ There’s no life left in the past”.
That past included 15 armed security cops climbing through his window after midnight in the early 1980s when the security branch was, bizarrely, shutting down his career. It also includes recovery from Welcanol addiction and covering war zones in Chechnya, Bosnia and Angola as a WTN cameraman. The work nearly destroyed him. Then came the day his replacement on a story was killed in an ambush. His resignation followed but, by then, he was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.
So there has been a lot of living, recovery and changing direction, the latest being going to Duke University in North Carolina to do a master’s degree, and writing his autobiography, Back in from the Anger.
Now he has returned to his first love, music.
The 15 songs, Lucey says, are “a chronicle of my time of recovery from a very, very dark and horrible place. It was when I was in the news business that the music died. I struggled to keep going.”
With a country/Celtic/folk troubadour sound, the album delivers some beautiful textures with instruments such as the upright bass, violas, uillean pipes, Irish whistles and bouzouki, all skilfully blended by producer Jonny Blundell. The Celtic pipes, whistles and the bouzouki are played by Massimo Giuntini, who lives in Arezzo, Italy.
Other musicians include Barry van Zyl on drums, Roger Bashew on bass, Brendan Jury and Terence Scarr on viola and violin, Shawn Johannes on upright bass, Blundell on guitar, Adrian Brand on accordion and trumpet, and Fancy Galada and Tonia Selley on vocals.
See full review by Glynis O’Hara in the Mail & Guardian
PHOTO CREDIT: More reflective: Roger Lucey’s new album
