Taken from her latest album, 30 : Happy Returns, which celebrates her 30 years as a professional musician in 2022, watch Kate Rusby performing Ghost, the title track of her 2014 album. The original version, also an original composition, closed that album and was simply set with just Kate and her piano. On this new version, there are no less than three electric guitars (played by Nick Cooke, Sam Kelly and Damien O’Kane), Moog & synths, and drum programming.
That may sound like an intense arrangement on paper, but it’s far from it in practice. The arrangements provide a spacious symphonic-like atmosphere that gives the song an appropriately uncanny stillness, accentuating the tranquillity of the original.
In an earlier interview with Folk Radio, Kate told us: “Ghost was written on the piano at home in the room where our ghost lives. We have seen it a few times and after asking about it we know it’s been there for a very long time. I thought it deserved a song so [I] sat in there and serenaded him until the song was formed.”
Kate is on tour now; full details can be found here: https://katerusby.com/
30: Happy Returns is out now: https://purerecords.net/collections/kate-rusby-cds