We head now to Montreal (and if you think you’ve hit on this week’s theme, then you’re probably right) for a new song by Daniel Isaiah taken from his album Western Medicine. It’s an album that came together in a practice room on the top floor of a building with a panoramic view of Montreal, where Daniel honed the songs right up to the album’s recording sessions in May 2025 at Montreal’s Mixart Studios with a band comprised of drummer Robbie Kuster, bassist Mishka Stein, pianist Jérome Beaulieu and guitarist Warren Spicer, who also oversaw engineering and mixing. He says of these sessions, “I had almost no preconceived ideas of how the songs should take shape in the studio. Before the session, I made rough demos of all the songs—just me on guitar or piano—and sent them to the musicians. We had one rehearsal where we played through each song once or twice. That was the extent of preparation.”
Fortunately, it all worked out pretty well, as shown by today’s gently swaying reflections on family connections, passed, or not passed, on traditions and mysteries which are unresolved. The horn of the title is his grandfather’s shofar, a symbol of Jewish culture. There’s a question here of what to do with treasured things (or beliefs) that come to you which have no real place in your own life, as Isaiah sings, “My father left to me this old ram’s horn, my father left this old ram’s horn, but I never knew his lord.”
