For his latest single, singer/songwriter Milan Miller has released Ghosts of Galway Bay, a fictionalized personal story that dramatizes a character from the great famine in Ireland during the mid 19th century.
When a blight drastically reduced the potato harvest in successive years (1845-1852) in southern Ireland, it is estimated that more than two million Irish citizens left the island nation to escape grinding poverty and starvation, many coming to the US. To this day, many blame actions by the British government in London for continuing to export other food crops from Ireland while people were dying, and absentee landlords for evicting tens of thousands of tenant farmers from their land.
Many’s the descendant of Irish immigrants who share family lore here in the States from these horrible times, not to mention those still living in Ireland.
Miller shared a few words about the song and the sentiments expressed within it.
“Ghosts of Galway Bay is a tune that Beth Husband and I wrote a couple of years back. It lives within the bluegrass realm, but when compared to most things that I have released, it offers a slightly different aesthetic with the groove and melody, while offering a glimpse of an Irish immigrant’s famine-era story, the struggles of surviving in a new country, and a lament for friends and family members that were left behind.”
Milan sings lead and plays guitar and mandolin, with Scott Vestal on banjo, Aubrey Haynie on fiddle, and Buddy Melton on bass.
The song revolves around a powerful story about an immigration crisis from 175 years ago, and makes a fine bluegrass number in the process.
Ghosts of Galway Bay is available now from Melton & Miller Music at popular download and streaming services online, and to radio programmers at AirPlay Direct.
