Mary Jane Lamond

Mary Jane Lamond
Mary Jane Lamond, August 2009
Background information
Born	1960 Kingston, Ontario
Genres	Celtic folk
Occupation(s)	Songwriter, performer, recording artist
Instruments	Vocals, accordion
Years active	1995-present
Labels	New Scotland Records, Pheromone Recordings
Associated acts	Ashley MacIsaac, Wendy MacIsaac
Website	www.maryjanelamond.com

Mary Jane Lamond (born 1960) is a Canadian Celtic folk musician who performs traditional Canadian Gaelic folk songs from Cape Breton Island. Her music combines traditional and contemporary material. Lamond is known as the vocalist on Ashley MacIsaac's 1995 hit single "Sleepy Maggie.", and for her solo Top 40 hit in Canada, "Horo Ghoid thu Nighean," the first single from her 1997 album Suas e!. Her 2012 collaboration with fiddler Wendy MacIsaac, Seinn, was named one of the top 10 folk and americana albums of 2012 by National Public Radio in the United States.

Born in Kingston, Ontario, the youngest of five children, Lamond moved a number of times during her childhood, to a series of cities and towns in Ontario and Quebec. Her parents were both originally from Nova Scotia, however, and she often visited her father's parents in Cape Breton during her summer vacations. There she was first exposed to Celtic culture in general and to Gaelic music and the Gaelic language in particular. Lamond graduated from Westmount High School in Montreal, and then returned to Nova Scotia to enroll in the Celtic Studies program at St. Francis Xavier University, where she studied the school's collection of 350 field recordings of traditional Scots-Gaelic songs. She graduated with a minor in Music at St. Francis Xavier University in Antigonish, Nova Scotia.

While still a student, Lamond recorded an album of traditional material called Bho Thir Nan Craobh (From the Land of the Trees), which she released independently in 1994. Among the musicians on the album was fiddler Ashley MacIsaac. MacIsaac had first seen Lamond perform in 1991 with a local band in Antigonish and was impressed with what he saw as her "punk attitude," even as she was singing Gaelic songs. MacIsaac and Lamond collaborated again in 1995 on the song "Sleepy Maggie" for his album Hi™ How Are You Today?, which became a breakthrough recording for both of them.