Meghan & Alex release new album, “The Skye Boat Song,” which was inspired by the show, Outlander.
Meghan & Alex’s new album entitled, “The Skye Boat Song,” features reworked original songs from the time-travelling Scottish TV series, “Outlander,” along with traditional songs and other surprises you won’t find together on any other folk/pop performance album.
Meghan Davis and her husband, Alex Keller, form the music group, Meghan & Alex. Meghan sings and plays the harp while Alex plays cello. Listen to their new CD, “The Skye Boat Song” here.
Meghan Davis of the duo was born and raised here in Dallas, where much of her family still lives. Over the years, Meghan & Alex have performed for Taylor Swift, Nancy Pelosi, Ambassador Geraldine Byrne Nason, Chris Matthews, and more. Now, Meghan & Alex hope to bring their latest album to the community because they feel that their music offers something you don’t often hear in NEPA. And — they’re definitely right about that!
“Not many pop/folk groups feature the harp and cello, but we do so in a way that we hope will feel accessible to our listeners,” said Meghan Davis. “We want to bring sounds that are familiar yet different. The harp provides a similar feel to a piano. Alex will play the lead lines you expect to hear on a violin. So, it appeals to people of all taste.”
“We’re doing the same types of things, just with different instruments. It’s a way to bring these instruments that aren’t heard as often to listeners. These instruments are versatile and can do a whole slew of different things,” said Davis.
The album engenders a feeling of the new world colliding with the old world to satisfy a more modern audience than a traditional Scottish music album. That may be why time-travelling TV show, “Outlander,” became the perfect medium for Meghan & Alex to showcase their ability to bridge the “old” with the “new.”
Davis started writing her own harp arrangements and then, during COVID, she and her husband got into “Outlander” on Starz. When she heard its theme song and the future namesake of their album, “The Skye Boat Song,” she realized that she actually arranged that music once before for a wedding she played.
Inspired the show’s Scottish roots, Davis decided to make a huge arrangement of that theme song. Before “Outlander,” Meghan & Alex mainly focused on Irish music so Scottish music was a new venture.
Meghan & Alex recorded the “Outlander” theme song and then decided to go shoot a music video on location. When they released it, they drew attention of the Outlander Festival in North Carolina, where they were then invited to perform.
“In the show, the music is a big part of it. There is a lot of interesting music in it”, said Davis. “So, I wrote an entire arrangement for the concert. We pushed through and recorded the whole album of ten songs.”
Some other original songs from the show on the album are “The Woman of Balnain” and “The Dance of the Druids.”
Fans of the romantic sci-fi drama will be in for some delightful Easter eggs. The album also features other traditional Scottish songs that play a role in the series, such as “The False Bride” which appears in an episode of the same name in Season 4 and “The Northern Lights of Old Aberdeen” which is hummed by a character to act as a mark of time.
There are also other surprises most harpists wouldn’t even dare, including “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy” and “Joy to The World.”
All these hand-picked songs together makes for a truly original listen from start to finish. “The Skye Boat Song” from Meghan & Alex may not be the album to pump you up before a night of drinking, but may be perfect over a peaceful dinner or before bedtime to sing a “wee lass” sweetly to sleep.
Davis says she was born in love with music. “When I was four, my aunt participated in the Mary from Dungloe competition and won it,” said Davis. Meghan and her family then went to see the popular Irish music festival in Ireland, where she saw harpists play for this first time. She knew from then on that’s what she wanted to do.
Davis began with piano, but still couldn’t shake her desire to play the harp. It wasn’t easy to find a harp teacher in Luzerne County, but Davis’s parents found a way. They found a student from Julliard to teach Meghan and brought her to New York City everyday to learn. Her parents really supported her in music, she said she owes a lot to them.
From there, Davis went to music school for Harp and Vocal performance at Peabody Conservatory at Johns Hopkins University, then went on to Temple University where she met her future husband and music partner, Alex Keller.
Keller was studying music history when they met but he was always a cellist at heart. Davis and Keller played together since they just started dating in 2010.
Davis then went on to win the “Mary from Dungloe” competition herself in the Republic of Ireland, the very same competition she had seen her aunt win as a child that inspired her to pick up the harp in the first place. After that, Davis started arranging her own music and bringing new possibilities to the harp; everything from Led Zepplin to John Legend.
Today, Meghan Davis and Alex Keller have three kids and live in Virginia. They say that even though life is crazy, they keep pushing through and creating new music together.
Meghan & Alex just played the Burns Supper at the Westmoreland Club in Wilkes-Barre, and hope to return soon to Northeastern Pennsylvania for more concerts and performances. Follow along with this Dallas-native and, from now on, remember to keep an open mind and open ear for the harp and cello.
