This is the first release featuring Aoife with a string quartet.
Co-produced by Jeremy Kittel and Aoife, the album was recorded in
Brooklyn on the last days of October 2019. The title of the project
comes from the Peter Sears poem, “Valentine”, which is the final
movement of the 3 song suite along with Sears other poems “Night
Fishing” and “The Darkness”. Peter Sears (1937-2017), was named the
seventh poet laureate of the state of Oregon in 2014. The suite was
penned in 2015 by O’Donovan along with Jeremy Kittel and Teddy Abrams,
the conductor of the Louisville Symphony Orchestra and premiered at
the Britt Festival in Jacksonville, OR.

In addition to Bull Frogs Croon are fresh takes on two songs that have
been part of O’Donovan’s repertoire for years, and both fit
beautifully. The Irish folk song Lakes of Pontchartrain, which Crooked
Still recorded 15 years ago, gets revisited and reimagined with a bit
more bounce in its step than the now classic Paul Brady approach. The
other is Hazel Dickens’ Pretty Bird, which O’Donovan recorded years
ago for an unreleased Dickens tribute album and again with Crooked
Still. “I think the through-line for me is that the poetry of both of
those songs fit well with how Bull Frogs Croon ends in such a
beautiful loving way.”

Tracklisting:
1. Bull Frogs Croon
I. Night Fishing
Ii. The Darkness
Iii. Valentine

2. Lakes of Pontchartrain
3. Pretty Bird