This recording is particularly excellent because it is a risk-taker. Nothing is more difficult to manage from a performer’s or an engineer’s perspective than presenting and capturing a live performance that will become a recording for distribution to the public. The refreshing, risk-taking point about Reflections is that the listener is not subjected to engineer trickery intended to disguise the truth of the music. This band took risks. They should be applauded for their integrity and courage. The audio quality is stunning. The musicianship is a faithful capture of a live experience with From The Well. This recording is marked by its honesty, ingenuity, and belief in the music. These musicians know their trade and present their music convincingly.

One of the joys of listening to recordings of traditional music is hearing how artists interpret well-know songs and tunes. Tracks such as Star of the County Down, Cooley’s Reel and St. Anne’s Reel on Reflections give the listener the opportunity to hear melodies freshly packaged with original orchestration and arrangements. The mix of whistle, hammer dulcimer, guitar, cello and violin deliver a marvelous listening experience. This is not to short change the vocal work. Caledonia is especially wonderful track.

If you seek something other than the predictable, over-compressed, insipid hum-drum delivered by large music corporations, you can do no better than settling down to a thoughtful and pleasant listening session with Reflections by From The Well.

But I thoroughly enjoyed From The Well Band’s “Reflections” at least as much as I enjoyed two of their concerts. The band’s playing is sincere, easy to listen to, and all its members obviously enjoy trying to charm artistic performances out of their instruments and voices as they bring their music to us. At this they succeed admirably. Some of the tracks affect me more than others; some of them sound somehow different from the way I remember hearing them in person.

I do know how difficult it is to synchronize the time, consciousness, energy, and talent of just one person, let alone several, to strive for perfection in anything. (A friend in another field likened this to a team compressing a spring.) Perfection requires a great deal of dedication and, with or without the wonders of electronics, the lavish expenditure of time, one of the universe’s rarest and most costly elements. Everybody already knows this, more or less. But as somebody who has always walked with one foot on the road and one in the creek, I’d like to emphasize something that tends to be easily forgotten.

Music is comfort food for the soul. Introducing a new kind of music, gently, will expand the listener’s consciousness and ability to assimilate the music and begin to feel parallels and connections between life, experience, and the music. Yes, there is an element of teaching involved. Most people have heard Auld Lang Syne, or Danny Boy, but if that is the extent of their knowledge of Celtic or British Isles folk music, Steeleye Span or the Strawbs may not be the best next step. You’d want to walk them past a meadow, a couple of ancient stone walls, and some sheep well before arriving at the alehouse.

This is a role into which From the Well Band plays admirably. From the Well Band is led by Bill Stine, a music teacher of long experience and a perfectionist. The band is improving constantly, and expanding its repertoire. People, including many “new” people, come to the concerts and leave happy after the last chord. The promoters book them again, far into the future. To paraphrase Rachael Ray, “How great is that?”

Place the CD into the player, close your eyes, and visit with the family. Remember the anecdotes offered between the songs and tunes, smile as you think of the “Argyll’ and “Bodhran” jokes retold, akin to family stories which are shared when extended family gathers, which every frequent audience member anxiously await in each performance (unfortunately excluded from the CD). See in your mind’s eye how skillfully, in each song, a fiddle can be set down and dulcimer mallets appear, or, how swiftly dulcimer mallets are silenced and whistles appear from one’s back pocket of trousers. See how musicians craft their music, taking cues from each other through smiles, a wink or a laugh or two. See, as father encourages daughter, and friends together, play and sing with all their heart. Remember your experience, through this live and living CD.

This is family music. As you listen, see the spontaneity of children in the audiences who clap and jig and play imaginary whistles. See the seasoned, yet young at heart, as they close their eyes to reflect on the music they hear. Hear the quiet sigh, see the glisten in the eye; this is music very well received, with refinement and out of respect to the venue. Don’t expect boisterous, thunderous, whooping applause on the CD. The gentle people who skillfully perform here attract audiences of a different character and consciousness – the hard working, reflective sort, uninterested in barrooms and dance halls. This is a band who seeks (and audiences who choose) to pass on a musical legacy to their young and generations to come. American. Celtic. Folk. Innovative and captivating music, drawn From The Well.

If you are lucky enough to buy this CD at a live” From The Well concert,” you will be taking home with you exactly what you heard that night, not what the band or the producer would like you to think you heard. Similarly, if you buy and love “Reflections” before seeing “From The Well” live, you will not be disappointed when you do manage to get to a concert: this is an honest recording. It is as if you have been privileged enough to be able to invite four multi-talented musicians into your living room and to spend the evening listening to them play…not to you, or for you, but for their own pleasure and the love of the music. This is what comes across so clearly: these people love what they do. They are friends with each other and they are friends with their audience. They are happy to be where they are, doing what they do, and it shows.

The music they play is alive, and evolving all the time, in the true spirit of folk music. This is not just a live recording but a living one, drawing the audience into the songs and the music, making feet tap, faces smile or tears glisten on cheeks. It transports the listener effortlessly to mountains and bogs and mists, intimate ceilidhs in crofting villages with the scent of peat in the nostrils and curlews calling over the moors. The music is truly Celtic folk music, drawing not just from the usual Irish sources but from Scotland and from the USA itself, where so much Celtic music is played, sung and made uniquely their own.

The CD is well-balanced in its selection of songs and tunes. It is given variety and an element of surprise because it appears that everyone can do everything: one never knows who will be singing lead and who on backup vocals, or which instruments will be used in a particular piece. There are four vocalists, who are also the four instrumentalists, but the selection of instruments includes 2 hammer dulcimers, a violin, a cello, 6 and 12 string guitars, high and low whistles and a bodhran. It is not easy to sort out who is doing what, but it all blends beautifully into a harmonious whole.

This is music to listen to, to sit quietly and dream to, to hum along to and to take home in your head to keep you awake at night. It is not music to be played in a noisy bar, hardly heard over the background hubbub. Take your family, kids to grandparents; share the pleasure that this band finds in making music. Go to a concert, if you can, but if you cannot, the “Reflections” CD will give you a true taste of music “From the Well.”