Gayle Skidmore: 'The Ashtabula River Railroad Disaster'

This year has been an incredible one for music releases and I haven’t always kept up. There is a ‘To Listen To’ pile that I am occasionally dipping into. One album that slipped through the net but remained on the pile comes from Gayle Skidmore, with her April 2025 release of ‘The Ashtabula River Railroad Disaster’.

This is an album of beautiful music that commemorates one of the worst tragedies in America’s history, but it is more than that: there is a sense of resilience that could be a lesson to us all.

On 29 December 1876, a rail bridge collapsed in Ashtabula, Ohio, claiming the lives of 92 people, including renowned hymn writer Philip P Bliss, a relative of Skidmore. Eventually, the coroner's report found that the bridge had been improperly designed by the railroad company president, poorly constructed, and inadequately inspected. As a result of the accident, a hospital was built in the town and a federal system set up to formally investigate fatal railroad accidents.

The eleven tracks on Skidmore’s album show her composition and piano skills that seem to capture the humanity at the heart of the disaster. The collection is also a tribute to her grandmother, who passed away in 2019, and who was proud of their family's connection to Bliss.

I don’t often put an album on and listen to it from beginning to end without stopping and going back or skipping forward, but this album revolves around the central, title track. Preceded by tunes which establish the context, followed by a series of heart-breaking melodies: Return to the Flames, Among the Wreckage, The River Bed, Ashes in the Snow and The Last Farewell of Charles Collins and Amasa Stone. I defy anyone to listen to the final, brief track - A Hymn for the Lost - without taking a pause to remember those we have lost in their own tragedies.

Skidmore explains, "I grew up hearing about Philip P Bliss and singing the songs he composed, but never knew how he had tragically perished until I discovered the details during the Covid-19 lockdown. Every account of the disaster that I came across was incredibly moving and emotional, and I really felt affected by the story. Not only is this album different because it is an entirely instrumental solo piano, but it is also focused on a singular historical event. I've never released anything like this before."

It may have taken more than four months for The Ashtabula River Railroad Disaster to reach the top of the pile, but I'm very glad it did.