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A new album of Irish traditional music is set to help people whose lives were devastated by the Asian Tsunami. It’s taken 12 months and thousands of hours work — but now it’s here.

As John Cutliffe recalls: “It was December 28, 2004, and I was watching the horrific news, which had been coming out of south east Asia for the last two days.

“While I was watching, my good pal Andrea Zonn called from Nashville to wish us a belated Merry Christmas. “Somewhere in the conversation we decided that between us we knew some pretty good musicians and we were sure they wouldn’t mind helping out if we were to set something up to ease the suffering caused by the Tsunami.

“Following that conversation I wrote a quick email to Garry West — the owner of Compass Records — and within an hour Garry, who was on vacation, replied and weighed in with 100 per cent support for the idea.

“Within hours the Compass PR team of David Haley and Corrina Greenberg and Brad St. Martin, now with Rounder Books, were brought in to start work on the project.

“Twelve months later we have spent thousands of hours on the project, some weeks working 15 or 16 hours a day, in and out of the studio trying to put the pieces together. In the process we have used more than 100 musicians, 29 different studio engineers and 27 different studios from Nashville to Sydney Australia and all points in between.

“Now we have 16 tracks of beautiful music from some of our favourite people, working together to help children they don’t even know in countries thousands of miles away”.

Co-organiser Andrea Zonn is one of the best-loved musicians in Nashville today. She grew up in a house filled with music and at an early age competed in fiddle contests.

John Cutliffe is from Donegal but now lives in Atlanta Georgia. John grew up playing Irish traditional and bluegrass music.

He’s the owner and editor of Jig Time — a site that chronicles Irish and American roots music — and is the tour manager and general US man on the ground for Irish traditional band Altan.

Ciarán Tourish (Altan) a long time friend and colleague of John’s became Irish artists co-ordinator. Ciarán is a very well-known and respected member of the Irish music community and his love of music from many different traditions made him a strong ally in getting the project off the ground in Ireland. He is also be featured as a musician on the album as part of Altan.

John Cutcliffe said: “When we first started this project we had no idea just what sort of album would result from the basic idea of getting our friends on both sides of the Atlantic to work with each other — in some cases without ever meeting.

We let the artists choose their own tracks and offer us a new song or a piece that they would trust us to mould into something a little different from their original intention.

Some of the artists we approached knew many of their transatlantic counterparts and knew just who they might want to collaborate with. In many other cases we had to look at our list of people who wanted to participate and come up with some interesting and occasionally odd pairings.”

Although many artists are from the traditional genre this is a musically diverse CD which you can confidently give to your friends as a Christmas gift, whatever their musical taste. Hands Across the Water should be in all good record stores filed under folk.

If you prefer, donations can be made directly to:

Call 678 571 0828 or email info@handsacrossthewater.com www.compassrecords.com.

All proceeds will be donated to one of the major charity organisations helping to rebuild the lives of children devastated by the south east Asia Tsunami.

Artists Involved Are...

Vince Gill: Lets Heal

John and Fiona Prine with Dermot Byrne: Til a Tear Becomes a Rose

Andrea Zonn with Flook and Bill Shanley: Standing Still

Jerry Douglas with Ciarán Tourish: In The Sweet By and By

Tim O’Brien with Lúnasa: Fair and Tender Ladies

Paul Brady with Rodney Crowell: 40 Shades of Green

John Cowan with the Brock McGuire Band: Cumberland Plateau

Beth Nielsen Chapman with Christina Quinn, Bonnie Raitt, Michael McGoldrick and Donald Shaw: Be Still My Soul

Sharon Shannon with Jackson Brown: Man Of Constant Sorrow

Jim Lauderdale with Maura O’Connell: This World’s Family

Cerys Matthews with John Jorgenson and Stuart Duncan: An Occasional Song

Blue Merle with Pauline Scanlon: Part of Your History

Jon Randall with Máirtín O’Connor and Alison Brown: Get Through It

Karen Matheson with Donald Shaw, The Duhks and Bryan Sutton: Ae Fond Kiss

Solas with Mindy Smith: Reason Land

Darrell Scott with Muireann Nic Amhlaoibh, Oisín McAuley (Danu) and Paul Rodden: This Beggar’s Heart