Heart's Delight by Finest Kind

FINEST KIND: Heart’s Delight

"And if they labour to impress me, I will not doubt or scoff. Since I myself have done no less, and I've sometimes pulled it off."

THIS chunk of slightly folk-processed Rudyard Kipling is from "A Pilgrim's Way," the final song on Finest Kind's last (and first) recording, Lost in a Song. With Heart's Delight, its successor, we "labour to impress" you with more of the same, risking as always that we will be doubted or scoffed at for the ocean-hopping variety of songs and musical styles we tackle. We admit that it can sometimes be startling to hear a Hank Williams song segue into an English ballad, or a Sacred Harp hymn follow a drinking song, but we come by such variety honestly. We were born and raised in three different countries on two sides of the Atlantic, and came together as Finest Kind after enjoying quite different if overlapping musical backgrounds. And in any case, we like to startle

For those who may have wondered, our name, not quite as immodest as it may seem, is a North American maritime expression of approval, rating with "not bad", "some good," and "fair dinkum" in other parts of the English-speaking world. We're not alone in hitching our wagon to it. A recent search of the World Wide Web on the key phrase "Finest Kind" picked up two fish companies, two charter boat companies, two woodworking shops, two books about fishermen, a fish recipe book and a National Film Board of Canada movie.

From our own perspective, the finest things about Finest Kind are that we love to sing together, that we share an affection for the old songs (and for new ones that sound old), and that we frankly get a kick out of producing the kind of vocal harmony that reviewers have called "thrilling" and "richly-textured" (not to mention our favourite testimonial, "They sing closer 'n putty on a window").

All this being so, we leave you to listen to Heart's Delight and judge for yourself whether, in our labouring to impress, we have indeed pulled it off— at least sometimes

Self-described “singer and writer of old songs”, Ian Robb started out singing in English folk clubs in the 1960s, before emigrating to Canada in 1970. Since then, he has sung with Finest Kind, The Friends of Fiddler’s Green, Jiig, Arrowsmith:Robb Trio and most recently, with James Stephens. In 2005 he was awarded one of the first Canadian Folk Music Awards for “Best Singer: Traditional”.

ianrobb.com