Iona Calls it Quits

Around the time I turned 40, I was despairing of being able to find truly satisfying contemporary music to listen to. I had been listening to (mostly) rock for three decades, and was finding both new and old rock music increasingly unbearable, both musically and, especially, lyrically. Sometime during the autumn of 2000, I stumbled across an interview with Rick Wakeman where he was asked what his favorite Christian band was. He answered that his favorite band at that point, without qualification, was Iona. I thought that was a pretty good recommendation,...

Iona Rocks Lowell!

My wife & I saw Iona in concert yesterday at the Lowell Memorial Auditorium, and the band was just fabulous. We were fortunate enough to have ordered tickets early enough to have landed front-row seats, and were sitting just toward the center of the stage from new piper Martin Nolan. I’ve been following this band for twelve years, and this is the first time I’ve had a chance to see them, as this is apparently the only time they’ve ever been in this area. I hope they come back soon, as the show was simply fabulous. Excepting a brief tuning problem at ...

Raphael’s Journey

Music loving Pro-lifers might want to check out the latest solo album from Iona’s Joanne Hogg, entitled Raphael’s Journey. For those not familiar with Ms. Hogg, she is an angelic-voiced Irish beauty who has been the lead vocalist for the Contemporary Christian band Iona since its inception in 1989. Iona falls into more or less the same genre as bands like Clannad or Eden’s Bridge: playing ethereal, Irish-flavored pop, mixing traditional instruments and themes into the standard rock band ensemble. But when Iona rocks, which is not infrequent, they rock wi...