What makes a song memorable? It’s more than a tune with an assemblage of words. It’s a feeling, a journey, and a place that calls you back. It’s something that makes you want to sing along on the choruses and listen closely during the verses for all their twists and turns, laughs and tears. Nancy McCallion is a natural born singer/songwriter. The daughter of immigrant parents, she grew up listening to the Clancy Brothers songs her Irish father loved and the blur of American folk and pop she was exposed to when the family moved to Tucson, Arizona from England when she was nine. The Beatles and Bob Dylan were her favorites of the sixties, while her high school years shifted focus to the new wave and punk scene, especially the Pogues. As she started her own musical career that mix of music, plus the Mexican songs of her Arizona border home came out in her involvement with such McCallion-led groups as Nadine and the Mophonics, the Skeptics, the Last Call Girls and especially The Mollys. Her border Irish band the Mollys propelled her out on the road, barnstorming America singing originals and collaborations with co-founder Catherine Zavala and others. Throughout her musical career, McCallion developed a poetic gift that captured the twinkle-eyed wordplay and local dialect of the Irish pub songs her dad loved, blended with a more modern view of women in the world. Like Mark Twain’s writing, McCallion’s songwriting opens a window of storytelling that brings characters and circumstances to life with wry wit, irony and regional flair. In this latest CD, Possum and Praties, McCallion brings to bear a lifetime of songwriting craft that will make her audiences want to sing out, smile and have another round. McCallion’s silvery, delicious voice and able rhythm guitar find the perfect musical partners in husband Danny Krieger’s gleaming, light-footed slide guitar and Heather Hardy’s supple fiddle. Like McCallion both are steeped in a lifetime of multi-genre musical experiences and have honed their craft to evocative perfection. It is a dream team. Old friends Catherine Zavala and drummer Ralph Gilmore add their musical shadings on a few tunes to round things out. Possum and Praties, feels like a career summary and a new beginning. It’s a classic either way. – Daniel Buckley, 2016