All-star cast join Ballad Lines musical for 18 track album

The Herald Scotland

28-07-2025

The album will be launched with a special one-off concert at Cottiers in Glasgow on Monday, September 15.
The album features original songs alongside some reimagined traditional Scottish and Appalachian ballads.
The music is from the Scottish folk musical Ballad Lines and will feature an all-female band made up of one of Scotland's foremost acoustic guitarists Anna Massie, renowned Highland fiddle player Laura Wilkie, electric guitarist Jenny Clifford, bassist Charlotte Printer and Scottish-Icelandic percussionist and drummer Signy Jakobsdottir.
In the run-up to the album launch, a teaser EP will be released on July 18 with a single – Queen Among The Heather – to be released on August 29.
Previously known as A Mother's Song, Ballad Lines is a five star-reviewed new musical that shines a light on how th songs and choices of our ancestor can change the course of our futures.
The 18 songs will include new arrangements of Handsome Molly, The Four Marys and Let No Man Steal Your Thyme alongside 14 original songs by Finn Anderson.
The musicians on the album come from a diverse range of folk, roots, pop, rock and alternative music scenes and draws on a range of styles.
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The musical began in 2014 after being created by Anderson and Tania Azevedo and it was commissioned by the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland and Northwestern's American Music Theatre Project.
Anderson said: 'This has been one of the most challenging and exciting projects of my career so far - a culmination of everything I've learned working in music and theatre over the past decade.
'Our dream for this project was to create a true fusion of folk and musical theatre. For the album, we've brought together some of the most exciting folk and traditional musicians and singers from Scotland and North America, alongside some of the UK's best musical theatre performers.
'The result is an 18-track score that I hope captures both the authenticity of traditional Scottish and Appalachian ballad storytelling, and the dramatic emotional sweep of great musical theatre.
Most of the musicians and folk singers on the album have not worked in theatre before, and the Scottish and Appalachian traditional styles are relatively untapped territory for a musical.
'As an artist who straddles the music and theatre scenes. it's so rewarding for me to cross-pollinate and blend these two worlds, bringing artists from the different sides of my work together in a way that feels really authentic to who I am and also just really right for this story.
'Ballad Lines explores how songs travel — how they evolve, shift, and change hands over time. So it feels especially meaningful to have assembled a cross-genre, cross-continental company to bring these songs to life.'
Tania added: 'Ballad Lines places queer and female voices at the heart of an art form historically dominated by patriarchal narratives.
'By reinterpreting traditional ballads through the lens of a modern queer woman tracing her matrilineal line, we both hope this show reclaims folklore as a space for diverse, intersectional storytelling—something rarely seen in either folk or musical theatre.'
Tickets to the special gig at Cottiers are on sale from https://www.balladlines.com/.