Local music legends Sandy Morris and Anita Best release a collaboration of 16 tracks decades in the making, fittingly titled Some Songs.

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Few names in Newfoundland and Labrador’s musical lineage come attached with the copious amounts of respect and adoration as Sandy Morris and Anita Best have acquired through decades in the industry. 

Musical Dream-Team

From Best’s involvement in Figgy Duff and as an ambassador of Newfoundland culture and folklore, and Morris garnering a reputation as a maestro guitar-player through stints with The Wonderful Grand Band and Fretboard Journey, a collaboration between the two could be called a dream-team. 

“We reached the point in our lives where we realized if we didn’t do a recording, we’d have this whole body of work that would be lost for all eternity,” Morris shares in a sitdown with The Newfoundland Herald.

Not content to let such an opportunity slip through their fingers, Morris and Best have released a 16-track collection entitled Some Songs. The album contains a mixture of tunes from the likes of Ron Hynes and Mark Walker, with Best’s soulful voice perfectly complemented by the seasoned instrumentalist in Morris. It’s a move decades in the making, as the pair recount that they first performed together at a wedding in 1969. At this point, performing together is near effortless.

“Sandy is a mind reader, a total mind reader,” shares Best. “Whatever I do with a song, there he is jumping in and can easily feel what I’m going to do. I feel I have perfect freedom as an accompanist. He just follows me.”

“I had to learn to play with a singer who mostly sings unaccompanied, because they go their own way,” adds Morris. “ It’s kind of like you have to not think, ever. It just doesn’t go through you.”

Some Songs is available now at Fred’s Records and O’Brien’s Music.