Debra Cowan with guests Michael DeLalla and Nancy-Jean Ballard (Monthly Program)

Dad's Dinner Pail and Other Songs From The Helen Hartness Flanders Collection The Folklore Society of Greater Washington and Falling Mountain Music are proud to present a CD Release Concert to celebrate Debra Cowan's newest recording "Dad's Dinner Pail and Other Songs From the Helen Hartness Flanders Collection" on the independent recording label, Falling Mountain Music. Along with special guest composer and guitarist Michael DeLalla, she will be performing songs from the new recording. In addition, Mrs. Flander's granddaughter, DC area resident (and FSGW member) Nancy-Jean Ballard will also give a brief description of the Flanders Collection and her grandmother's life.Debra Cowan's 2005 release, Dad's Dinner Pail and Other Songs From the Helen Hartness Flanders Collection, is a captivating alliance of new and old. Co-produced with composer/guitarist Michael DeLalla and released on the Falling Mountain Music label, Dad's Dinner Pail offers eleven traditional songs from the Flanders Song Collection that feature a dance between Michael's exquisite guitar settings and Debra's elegant vocals. Helen Hartness Flanders, the wife of Vermont Senator Ralph Flanders, was a published poet and someone who felt strongly about preserving musical traditions. In 1930 she got involved with song collecting and over the next 30 years, she and her assistants traveled throughout New England collecting, recording, and transcribing thousands of folk songs from people eager (and some not so eager) to sing them. The Flanders Collection initially came to Debra's attention in 1997 when she lived in Scotland. Debra was attending an all day workshop in Auchtermuchty in which the theme was "The Scottish-American Connection: Ballads Crossing the Ocean." There was an hour-long presentation which focused on the Scottish songs that had been found in New England. Debra eventually became quite familiar with the Flanders collection.In 2002, Mrs. Flanders' granddaughter, Nancy-Jean Ballard, approached Debra Cowan about recording songs from the Collection. Throughout 2002 and 2003 Debra spent many hours in front of a reel-to-reel tape machine traveling back some 60+ years listening to Mrs. Flanders' singers come alive once more and recording them on "Dad's Dinner Pail."Debra Cowan's ability to communicate the story within the song is rare. Accompanied or unaccompanied, her rich voice conjures images of stony-grey Celtic castles, green and rolling English landscapes, or humorous American urban scenes.? Through Debra's story-singing, the listener empathizes with the embittered war survivor, an adolescent girl pining for love, exhilarated sailors at sea, or the hilarious relationship quandaries that are just as relevant today as they were in the past. When she sings with children, her younger audiences are introduced to the joys of the voice, letting all kids big and small know the delight that comes by singing.