All My Friends is Aoife O’Donovan’s finest yet. Veined with intimate personal and political passion, it’s a timely, broader testament to the power of the community of women to bring about change.
Released to coincide with Women’s History Month, Aoife O’Donovan‘s ‘All My Friends’ was inspired by the passing of the 19th amendment and asks what has – and hasn’t in the 100 years since women gained the right to vote. The album is comprised of a 5-song “piece” featuring The Westerlies brass ensemble, The Knights chamber orchestra led by Eric Jacobsen and The San Francisco Girls Chorus, interspersed with four others, one of which is an arrangement of Dylan’s The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll.
Carrie Chapman Catt was an American women’s suffrage leader. She campaigned for the Nineteenth Amendment, which gave American women the right to vote in 1920, founding the International Woman Suffrage Alliance in 1904 and the League of Women Voters in 1920 and O’Donovan has reframed her speeches and letters in a more modern light. Featuring strings, woodwind and brass, the album opens with the title track, initially unaccompanied before being joined by the instruments and The San Francisco Girls Chorus, serving as a thematic introduction as she sings, “I always knew and so did you that we were going to war/Years have passed I’m trying to remember who it’s for/If we reach thirty six, or if the door gets slammed at least I know we’ve tried…Steady on, America, you know it’s time to heal/If you open your arms you’ll feel us, warm and ready for the change”; a message as timely now as it was back then.
Joined by Sierra Hull on mandolin, with strings, woodwind and brass carrying the play-out, the airy, jazz-tinged and increasingly swirly Crisis was inspired by the September 7, 1916 edition of Chapman Catt’s rallying cry newsletter The Crisis, in which she wrote “the struggle for woman suffrage is not white woman’s struggle but every woman’s struggle. … Everybody counts in applying democracy. And there will never be a true democracy until every responsible and law-abiding adult in it, without regard to race, sex, color or creed has his or her own inalienable and unpurchasable voice in the government”. Or, in O’Donovan’s words, “I see our final victory/I know that we don’t all believe that it’ll be what it’ll be/But a crisis ‘tis indeed, like a boulder gathering speed/And if we fail to act upon it/It might mean the chance has been lost and we will have to wait to win… It’s 1916, we’re talking war and battle cries/Oh women dry your eyes- gotta rise up and fight”. Quoting Chapman Catt, she sings, “Oh America look up the star is getting nearer/It’s time to shout aloud to everybody who can hear us”.
That’s followed by the folksy strum, woodwind and bluesy tones of War Measure, inspired by a letter from President Woodrow Wilson to Chapman Catt on June 7, 1918, in support of women having the vote, as she has him saying, “Carrie- I see you standing on the precipice/I begging of you, keep fighting for true justice/and you’ll find the laws of the land will soon be in your favour”. The suffragette movement supported the war against Germany (the war measure), shifting public opinion in their favour. However, the amendment didn’t come before the Senate until 1918 and wasn’t passed until May 1919, after two narrow defeats.
Opening with a military drum beat, Rob Burger on accordion and Noam Pikelny on banjo, Someone To Follow offers a tangent to the core platform in a prophetic number sung in the voice of both Chapman Catt’s mother and herself, addressing her daughters (“On the night you were born I cradled you/I held you in my arms/And with every planet in Capricorn/I knew you’d sound the alarm/I know whichever way the wind blows you’re gonna face it/Stand tall you can be someone to follow- you’re gonna make it”). Likewise, with Jim Fitting on harmonica, the story shifts to Chapman Catt herself embarking on her mission. moving from Iowa to San Francisco, for The Right Time (“I’m a full grown woman/Keep my chin held high/Farewell, old Charles City/I’ll give you something to talk about…I feel my power growing/Blood pulsing under thick skin/I’m gonna move a mountain baby/That’ll give them something to think about”).
Opening with a drone and continuing down a musically sparse and atmospheric bluesy path, Daughters speaks of the ongoing struggle from generation to generation, noting that the suffrage movement was not embraced by all women (“protected and serene the rich women are still/Honing their malevolent skills/Growing bolder in their treachery…There are those who are willing to vilify/Their sisters ‘cross the land- they declare them too quick to cry/Saying don’t trust them with the privilege”), resolving, “we can’t leave the fight to the daughters of our daughters/So we go into the fray, shoulders bare, feel the fire and liberate/Women in schools and counting houses, in shops and on the farm they’re all around us/They got babies crying at their breasts, sun sinks in the west/The veins of these women are not filled with milk and water/These are mothers of bold American daughters/They are not afraid/They’re lying in wait/Listening for the bugle call to send them in/Suffrage is the only way to end”.
The final number derived from Chapman Catt, the strings and woodwind-swathed America, Come, again with the Choir, adapts its text from two speeches, 1917’s The Address to Congress on Women’s Suffrage and 1918’s Women’s Suffrage as a War Measure as she asks “What is the democracy for which the world is battling/for which we offer up our man power, woman power, money power, our all?” and urges “Lady Liberty points onward and upward says “America, come.”…Suffrage is coming — you know it”.
Featuring Luke Reynolds on pedal steel and accompanied by Anais Mitchell on vocals, the piano-backed Over The Finish Line, with its show tune feel, brings it into the now and a reminder that the struggle isn’t over and (echoing the title of her previous album) there’s no space for apathy (“Once in a lifetime/The power is ours/But we’d rather stare at our phones/Talking about nothing/Heads in the clouds/Might as well leave it alone”), conjuring the zeitgeist (“America’s bleeding/We’re watching her die/Fire and blood on the screens/ Her headlights receding/She’s waving goodbye/Curtain comes down on the scene”) and the need to carry the torch (“What is this democracy?/Carrie I fear that we’ve made our beds/If I could change a mind, whose mind?/If I could make something to get us o’er the finish line”).
It ends, then, with the waltzing Dylan cover, The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll, opening with brass playing The Battle Hymn Of The Republic/John Brown’s Body and initially sung a cappella, the song an account of the killing of the 51-year-old African-American barmaid by a young man from a wealthy white tobacco farming family in Charles County, Maryland, who was subsequently sentenced to just six months in county jail, after being convicted of assault. It’s a closing reminder of the ongoing fight to overcome racism and patriarchy.
All My Friends is an album veined with intimate personal and political passion and, in an election year, a timely broader testament to the power of the community of women to bring about change; it’s Aoife O’Donovan’s finest yet.
All My Friends is released through Yep Roc Records (22nd March 2024).