Aoife O’Donovan, All My Friends
Produced by Aoife O’Donovan, Darren Schneider, and Eric Jacobsen
Features collaborations from Anaïs Mitchell, Sierra Hull, Noam Pikelny, Griffin Goldsmith, The Westerlies, The Knights, San Francisco Girls Chorus and more
All My Friends is based around a collection of songs Aoife O’Donovan wrote, inspired by women’s suffrage and the passage of the 19th amendment. The album is a deep dive into the reimagining of the life of one of the leaders of that movement - Carrie Chapman Catt - juxtaposed with Aoife’s own experiences as a woman and mother.
The album is comprised of a 5-song “piece” with brass, orchestra, girls choir, bass, drums, etc, interspersed with 4 other songs - all dealing with the passing of the 19th amendment and how the country has and has not evolved over the past 100 years.
Aoife used speeches/letters from Carrie Chapman Catt and reframed them in a more modern light - Track 3 (“War Measure”) is a reimagining of an actual letter that Woodrow Wilson wrote to Carrie about women voting. And you’ll recognize the album closer, an arrangement of the Bob Dylan penned protest song, “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll”.
