Premiere: Michael McDermott takes wing again

"Meadowlark" among songwriter's Orphans

Michael McDermott’s new album, Orphans, offers songs with an extra power. “Some songs won’t go away,” McDermott explained. “These songs were too loud in my heart, they kept waking me at night.” The dozen songs were orphaned from earlier albums, and recently McDermott has felt orphaned himself. The loss of both his parents and the constant touring which kept him away from his own family these last 36 months left McDermott without family himself—literally orphaned.

McDermott’s deeply personal songwriting draws on a tumultuous career marked with ups and downs, downs and ups: early success followed by self-destruction, ten years of addiction and subsequent recovery, then the loss of his parents and building a new family of his own.

Growing up on the Irish Southside of Chicago, McDermott honed a work ethic that he’s clung to in a tumultuous career full of twists and turns. He’ll talk about his innermost self in a song, but said of writing, “It’s sacred to me, and I feel like I’m doing it a disservice by discussing the mystery and wonder of it all. I just try to keep my eyes down and do my work.”

We asked McDermott why he named this song “Meadowlark,” when it made no reference to the bird, and he explained:

“My mother’s nickname was Tweedie. After she died people would often say, “Now you have an angel looking over you.” However, I didn’t feel that at all. All I felt was distance. After the success of Willow Springs, my touring increased tenfold, and I was traveling most of the time. As thrilled as I was to be in demand, being gone from my wife and daughter is incredibly hard. Long tours sometimes become unbearable.

“When writing and recording this song about being homesick, I noticed a yellow bird outside the window. It would visit me every day. It was a yellow bird, a Tweedie Bird I’d thought. It almost seemed a wounded or a flightless bird, because it was always in the grass outside my window. It would watch me for hours. For a few days there, I even wondered if it was a visitation of my mother.

“I found out it was a Meadowlark. Then, just like my mother, one day….she was gone. This is a song about longing, and trying to be brave in the face of those enveloping feelings of loss and isolation. Even though we may feel flightless sometimes, we all still have wings.”