MP3 Douglas Lee Saum / William Butler Yeats - The Rose @ the Crossway

Early W. B. Yeats poems to original music in a folk plus surprises style.

27 MP3 Songs
WORLD: Celtic, FOLK: Modern Folk



Details:
âA new world of beauty and wonder . . .â
Blair Jackson
Author of Garcia: An American Life, Going Down the Road: A Grateful Dead Traveling Companion, Senior Editor Mix Magazine.

âDoug Saum is a resident of Reno Nevada who has compiled several CDs in which he has put the poetry of William Butler Yeats into song. His renditions of the poems capture the essence of the work of Yeats. Many have previously sought in vain to do this, and Saum has succeeded.â
Declan Foley, Editor
Beyond Ben Bulben (An Australian Yeats Society)

âYeats believed that every soul sings a ââ¬Ësweet crystalline cry.â Here is music which has at its heart that clear and indomitable cry.â
Donovan Welch, Poet

[Saum] â . . . is utterly faithful in preserving these poems . . . has a knack, and obviously a passion, for taking Yeatsâs stirring poetry and recasting not just the Irishmanâs words but his spirit into . . . sounds that variously recall the Celtic-tinged folk rock of the Waterboys or the folky side of Neil Young.â

Rick deYampert
The News-Journal
Daytona, Florida


On September 30, 1996 Douglas Lee Saum prepared for work as usual, shower, shave, daily vitamins, etc. When he looked at his Cuala Press water-colored litho of W. B. Yeats' poem "The Fiddler of Dooney," however, it ceased to be a normal day. This day he did not just read the words, it was as if the poem sang to him. A clear, distinct melody rang out in his head as he read the first two lines. "That's unusual," thought Douglas as he realized he was late and must leave. In the car, before he travelled the two miles to school where he taught English, the entire melody for this poem had presented itself. "Cool beans," he thought "but I'll never remember it." To make the story short, he did remember it. In fact, in the next nine years he got quite used to the poems of W. B. Yeats singing their melodies to him. Not all of the poems, certainly, but about two hundred and fifty of them . . . so far. And so he began to record these songs and is sharing them with the world.