Baxter Wareham is no stranger to Newfoundland audiences, or to folk festival audiences in other parts of Canada and the U.S. Since the early 1970s he

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2 Baxter Wareham is no stranger to Newfoundland audiences, or to folk festival audiences in other parts of Canada and the U.S. Since the early 1970s he has played with The Wareham Brothers, The Breakwater Troupe, and, latterly, with his brother, Roy, as a duo, and as a member of a trio with Pat and Joe Byrne. He has played most of the folk festivals in Newfoundland, and at the Mariposa, Vancouver, Atlantic, National, and Philadelphia folk festivals. He has appeared on records with various groups and individuals, but this is his first solo album. I have heard the tunes and songs which are recorded here many times before. I have heard them played and sung on the concert stage, and on calm summer evenings when we were tied up in Harbour Buffett, Spencer's Cove, Brule, or some other long abandoned Placentia Bay community. I have heard them at kitchen times. And I have heard them in hotel rooms in various parts of the world, when singing the songs became a justification for our being there at all and not back in Placentia Bay. Now, those who hear this album \Vill have the opportunity to take the same journey-a journey that always ends in Placentia Bay. Baxter's music is Placentia Bay music. This is not to say that it is to be heard nowhere else, or that Baxter has not listened to, enjoyed, and admired the music of other performers from Newfoundland and elsewhere. No musician is deaf to other performers, and Baxter has traded tunes and songs with some of the best. But when Baxter strikes up one of his tunes or launches into one of his songs, one immediately realizes that there is a special flavour about them that comes from their having been rolled around a good many times on the swell in Golden Bay, from their many incarnations in fo'c'sles ripe with the scent of a drop of stuff from St. Pierre, and from their having ''rattled a few loose panes in the windows'' at many a dance. Baxter is one of my generation of outport Newfoundlanders who, despite the dates on our birth certificates, were born in the eighteenth century-a time some forty or fifty years ago when the way of life was much as it had been in the time

3 PIPCD-7324 of our grand-parents. Before we were ''dragged kicking and screaming into the twentieth century,'' we had lived long enough to be forever aware of the gulf that separates us from the life of those who came before us. Only memory can bridge the gulf. Music jogs the memory. The music preserves something of what might have been passed on to the next generation, but has been left ''to the wind and the rain and the sea.'' But music is more than memory; it is a celebration. Baxter's music celebrates the life which is no longer there in wood, soil, or sinew; no longer there in timber, sail, or trawl. It celebrates that life where it has always meant the most-in the heart. The selections on this album are grounded in that heritage. With the exception of' 'The Harbour Buffett Waltz,'' which is an original composition, and ''The Buffett Double,'' a traditional tune often used by an accordionist to test a dancer's metal, the other instrumentals are Baxter's renditions of tunes learned from the playing of Herb Reid and Mac Masters. "The Old Smite," "Donald Monroe,'' and ''Down by the Riverside,'' are versions \vhich Baxter learned from the singing Mac Masters. ''] ennie on the Moor,'' was a favourite of Skipper Nat Slade; the version which Baxter sings here was the one sung by Nat. The recitation, ''The Yankee Privateer,'' was learned from Lester Lockyer. ''The Tragedy of Resettlement,'' a poignant comment on the changes which have touched the lives of so many Newfoundlanders in the recent past, was composed by Sam Butler. ''Mickey Relligan's Pup'' is one of those perennial favourites which is bound to surface some time during the wee hours at a kitchen time. Mac Masters and Skipper Nat Slade are no longer with us. Like so many of their generation, they have slipped the earthly bonds and are charting new courses around the heavenly shores. But their spirits linger, for they were more than simply men of their time; they were the embodiment of much that gives a distinctive character to the life we live on ''this rock within the sea.'' Baxter's album is a tribute to their legacy- another notch on the rod of endurance. -Pat Byrne-

4 Recorded, mixed and digitally mastered at Dadyeen Studio, St. J ohn's, Newfoundland September and O ctober, Engineered by Don Walsh and Dave Panting. Cover Photograph of H arbour Buffett by Rowena Wareham. All selections are traditional, arranged by Baxter Wareham, except: Tragedy of Resettlement'' composed by Sam Butler, and "Harbour Buffett \Valtz'' composed bv Baxter Wareham. ~ Copyright Pigeon Inlet Productions Ltd. M anufactured and Distributed by Pigeon Inlet P roductions Ltd. Site 13, Box 26, RR#l Torbay, Ne\vfoundland Canada AOA 3ZO Produced by Kelly Russell

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