The songs on Home, A Healing Journey all have at their center the experience of "Home," in place, relationship, and memory. Mostly they are popular songs from the 19th century, before movies, radios, televisions, or stereo systems. To hear music you either had to go out to a performance or bring the music home to sing and play on the piano or other instrument. The indelible image of the family gathered around the parlor singing the popular music of the day is one which epitomizes the idea of Home in our musical history, and an experience in which many of us have directly participated. It is in this tradition that we begin the journey on this recording.

Despite his family's best efforts to keep him on the conventional path, Stephen Foster loved music more than anything. He based Hard Times Come Again No More (1854) on fragments of folk songs he heard at the family nurse's African American church. He was the first American to make a living and a lasting reputation as a songwriter, but it was not a living to sustain his habits, and the generous and improvident Foster was often heard singing the song later in life, when his own "hard times" were fully upon him. Often set to lively banjo accompaniment, here it is more reflective. Foster asks us to remember our own hard times, lest we overlook the hard times of others.

Few are unfamiliar with some part of American dramatist and actor John Howard Payne's Home, Sweet Home, published in 1830 by Firth and Hall, although originally from his 1823 opera Clari, The Maid of Milan, with music by Henry R. Bishop. In 1862 nineteen-year-old opera diva Adelina Patti sang it for the Lincolns at the White House, and for many years incorporated it into her recitals as an encore. Payne's poetry beautifully characterizes what we hold dear, where we feel safe and loved.

Robin Adair is of mixed origin. The tune is a traditional Irish one known as "Eileen Aroon," while the anonymous text is Scottish. Despite Robin's faithlessness, the heady experience of his attentions has awakened new longings, and the familiar now seems inadequate. Mira comes from Bob Merrill's 1961 musical Carnival. Lili runs away from home and becomes involved with a traveling carnival, yearning to rediscover herself in some new place - where everyone will again know her name. In 1991, Maury Yeston and Arthur Kopit wrote a new musical version of Gaston Leroux's famous 1911 novel, The Phantom of the Opera, entitled Phantom. The young soprano Christine stands on the stage of the Paris Opera House and finds a reality lying just beyond her dreams in Home.

The Vacant Chair was one of the successful and moving Civil War Songs for which George Frederick Root was well known. It is based on a real "Willie", a lieutenant in the 15th Massachusetts Infantry. It eloquently epitomized for grieving families of the time their "dark night" - what they knew and cherished was irrevocably gone, and in its place were confusion, pain and a faltering desire to continue their benumbed routine.

On the Banks of the Wabash, Far Away and After the Ball were two of the biggest hits of the 1890s. Wabash is the 1899 masterpiece of Paul Dresser, the brother of novelist Theodore Dreiser. Its compelling combination of longing, humility and nostalgia are unequaled in songwriting of the period. After the Ball is the 1892 sensation written by Chas. K. Harris, and many a sentimental waltz ballad thereafter sought to emulate it in hopes of equaling its phenomenal success. Despite its easy popularity, the narrator's tale of rash judgment and lifelong penance evoke our genuine sympathy.