Author Archives: An Fear Blog Eireannach

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About An Fear Blog Eireannach

Lacking any musical talent, I started writing about Irish music and arts more than 20 years ago. My writing has appeared in Irish Music Magazine, the Irish Herald in San Francisco, History Ireland, and several artists' websites. More recently, I have been writing about the Women's World Cup in Australia and New Zealand.

From Hidden Ground to Common Ground: More shared notes from Martin Hayes

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New music from Martin Hayes is always worth the wait. He is primarily a live performer but his recordings are unique, accomplished, and accessible. Peggy’s Dream is a graceful and adventurous album, building afresh on his other ensembles: The Gloaming, The Blue Room Quartet, Brooklyn Rider, and his long, profound partnership with the late Dennis Cahill. The album is dedicated to and inspired by Cahill and Hayes’ mother, Peggy.

Hayes brings a high degree of artistic, intellectual, and cultural credibility to Irish music, universally defined. He takes traditional music to the most prestigious arenas where it meets many other music genres as an equal and a willing partner. He has expanded and enriched Ireland’s cultural capital as a musician himself and as a facilitator of imaginative combinations. His partners on this new album are luminaries in their own right, selected for their musicianship and mutuality.

Cellist Kate Ellis is a prolific performer and musical leader. She is the artistic director of Ireland’s leading contemporary music group, Crash Ensemble. Her folk and traditional interests are well established, having played and recorded with Iarla Ó Lionáird, Gavin Friday, and Karan Casey. Guitarist Kyle Sanna has worked with Seamus Egan and Dana Lyn. Cormac McCarthy is a pianist, composer, arranger, and conductor from Cork. He is primarily a jazz and contemporary music artist with an album/band called Cottage Evolution. Brian Donnellan is the most mainstream traditional member of the group playing bouzouki, concertina and harmonium. Like Hayes, he is from an East Clare family and is a member of the legendary Tulla Céilí Band.

I have long thought that there is a case for the cello in the Irish tradition. The seminal Hidden Ground recording in 1980 from Paddy Glackin and the late Jolyon Jackson was a major influence on my thinking in this respect. I described it previously as the most artful deconstruction of Irish traditional music up to that point. Jackson played cello and a multitude of other instruments on the album, and his playing was also featured on The Chieftains Boil the Breakfast Early the previous year. More recently, Iarla Ó Lionáird’s thrilling and brilliant 2011 album, Foxlight, had two cello players, a viola, and Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh! It sets a new bar for the integration of cello into traditional arrangements. It could well be an inspiration for Peggy’s Dream and this grouping. The hidden ground is now part of the commons.

The cello brings other dimensions and flow to the slower, more contemplative tunes. The Boyne Water opens with a jaunty melody from the fiddle and piano, then darkens with the cello’s arrival and a set of low, deep chords on the piano. Cá Bhfuil An Solas is a Peadar Ó Riada composition first recorded on the Triúr Arís (Three Again) album. The piano lays down a lively backing. Garrett Barry’s Jig has a moody, dissonant start with somber cello and harmonium throughout. It’s a mesmerizing piece with a perfect tonal balance of low and high. The Glen of Aherlow was written by Tipperary fiddler the late Seán Ryan, a prolific composer. Here it gets the “high lonesome” treatment from Hayes with a tight bit of ensemble playing, Sanna channeling Dennis Cahill on guitar. The piano and cello colorations are delightful. Aisling Gheal is a “goltrai” (an old Irish term for a lament) classic where the fiddle gets pride of place with empathetic piano.

The title track, Peggy’s Dream, was sourced by Steve Cooney from the Goodman Collection, like the Fainne Geal An Lae track on Foxlight. Plucked strings (is it piano or cello?) give a percussive base to the tune that is picked up by the concertina and fiddle. Like a few other tracks, this has a gentle, fade-out ending, perhaps dictated by the limitations of making a record. Live performances of these tunes may be very different.

The more up-tempo tracks contain the bones of Hayes’ trademark long sets. Toss The Feathers/The Magerabaun Reel opens with fiddle and guitar before McCarthy embarks on a jazzy piano section with shades of The Gloaming and Thomas Bartlett. Hayes soars to a big flourishing finish spurred on by the company. Johnny Cope, an old hornpipe I first heard on a Planxty album, is paired with the vivacious Hughie Travers’ Reel. The Longford Tinker has the rhythm of a joyful train journey. 

Hayes worked with McCarthy and Donnellan on a gorgeous EP recording, Live at the NCH 2020. Like any creative person, Hayes does not like to repeat himself. Even with tunes he’s played hundreds of times, he is always looking for another angle, a deeper emotional realm to explore. In his musical memoir, Shared Notes, Hayes describes it like this:

I must go to the space that I want others to enter, go as deep as possible and trust that the invitation is powerful enough for others to come along.

Some of Hayes’ favorite melodies get beautifully reconsidered on this album: Lucy Farr’s Barndance and, one of my all-time favorites, The Wind Swept Hill of Tulla.

Hayes is a vivid expression of the history of Irish music, a procession of musicians, composers, and listeners that stretches back many hundreds of years. His playing was so rooted in the best of the past that, in his early years, older musicians called him a ghost. Martin Hayes’ ensembles seem to be almost covenants. They are a set of intentional relationships intended to advance the tradition and enhance the Irish musical legacy. The Common Ground Ensemble enriches the musical identity of high-level players like Ellis, Sanna, McCarthy, and Donnellan. This is a beautiful recording brimming with inventiveness, intelligence, and integrity.

Sources, Resources, and links to the artists:

The next opportunity to see Hayes perform with some of his many musical partners will be August 23-27, 2023, at the West Cork Music venue in Bantry.

https://www.westcorkmusic.ie/masters-of-tradition/

The Ensemble has a tour of Ireland and England in the works for later this year. Some details here:

Martin Hayes & The Common Ground Ensemble Announce UK & Ireland Tour

The Common Ground Ensemble in full flow playing at the New York Irish Arts Center in 2022. Recording by Bruce Egar.

For some details on the many musical activities of Kate Ellis start here:

https://www.crashensemble.com/

Explore the music of Cormac McCarthy and Cottage Evolution here:

https://www.cormacmccarthymusic.com/

Kyle Sanna and Dana Lyn have a series of albums that showcase their environmental activism:

https://danalynkylesanna.bandcamp.com/album/the-coral-suite-ep

The little gem of an album with Hayes, Donnellan and McCarthy is available here:

https://martinhayesfiddle.bandcamp.com/album/live-at-the-nch-2020

And, finally, the complete seminal Hidden Ground album from Paddy Glackin and Jolyon Jackson can be heard here:

A resounding evening with Cormac Begley at Vicar Street, Sunday, April 23, 2023

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Mrs. Elizabeth Crotty must have been dancing with delight in the afterlife. The legendary concertina player would be astounded that one man playing that iconic instrument could fill a large hall and be so rapturously received. It was a memorable concert in Dublin’s most eclectic venue with excellent sound quality and a deeply appreciative audience. The opening performer, singer-songwriter Niamh Regan from Galway, set the stage beautifully.

Begley began by strapping on wrist supports for each hand. His playing of the larger bass concertina requires strong and forceful actions. The instrument is extremely versatile, with built-in plaintive tones for slow airs and laments and powerful, percussive sounds (enhanced by rods attached to one of the concertinas) for marches, polkas, and slides. He brought a collection of instruments: bass, baritone, anglo, piccolo, and a baby concertina. And took the time to educate us about the origins of the instrument with short demonstrations on the “Jew’s Harp” and the harmonica, precursors of the concertina.

The range of ethereal tonalities and deep sighs he draws from the “breathing” box is extraordinary. I hear echoes of Doug Weiselman’s bass clarinet on Martin Hayes’ The Blue Room Album or, from an earlier era, Steve Cooney’s didgeridoo playing on the album, Meitheal, with Begley’s late uncle Séamus. The late Tony Mac Mahon is another clearly audible influence, and Begley played a set he put together for Tony’s 80th birthday concert.

Begley is a beguiling and brilliant figure among younger traditional players. From a famous West Kerry musical family, he has blazed a unique path playing solo and in various fruitful combinations with musicians such as Caoimhín O Raghallaigh, Martin Hayes, Liam Ó Maonlaí, Liam O Connor, Lankum and Lisa O Neill. Ye Vagabonds are frequent partners, and Brían Mac Gloinn from the duo was a guest at this concert, singing and playing mandolin. Begley first came up on my radar in a Myles O’Reilly film where he sits beside the Shannon playing the bass concertina. The sound was loud and loamy, like uilleann pipes from another dimension.

During his wry and funny interstitial comments, Begley noted that Kerry people don’t come to Dublin to take part: they come to take over. Which he did, as storyteller Eamon Kelly used to say, with a group of West Kerry set dancers, two cousins on accordions and concertinas, and Stephanie Keane, a loose-limbed traditional dancer from Limerick. His mother was in the audience too but with his vigorous, virtuoso playing gave her no opportunity to use any of the cryptic put-downs he ascribed to her on the night.

The concert was the musical highlight of my Spring visit to Ireland. I went with my son, Bryan, who heard plenty of Irish music growing up in our family, but Begley upended his perceptions of traditional music. He was deeply impressed. “I was blown away by his interaction with the crowd and the enormous energy it took to captivate the audience with the squeezing of a small musical box. A powerful performance of incredible music by one of Ireland’s future greats.”

Additional Resources on Cormac Begley and other concertina players

Myles O’Reilly’s film, Backwards to go Forwards, was the one that introduced me to Cormac Begley and other cutting-edge Irish artists. There’s more of him on YouTube

Backwards To Go Forwards

Siobhan Long’s Irish Times interview and album review of Begley’s second album, B, is profound and penetrating:

https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/music/cormac-begley-you-want-to-stand-over-your-work-and-know-it-had-integrity-1.4857548

A (very) partial list of concertina players and recordings:

There are a number of women concertina players who continue the Mrs. Crotty line. Mary McNamara is a concertina master from the Clare tradition. Caitlín Nic Gabhann and Edel Fox are two well-known musicians who feature in The Irish Concertina Ensemble alongside Mícheál Ó Raghallaigh, Pádraig Rynne, and Tim Collins.

Noel Hill was the trailblazer who drew from a rich Clare traditional background but expanded it exponentially. He is a noted concertina teacher who gives classes in the United States.

Biography

His melancholic playing on I Could Read the Sky was a highlight of that film’s musical score composed by Iarla O’Lionaird.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Could_Read_the_Sky

Jack Talty is Noel’s nephew, and he is a composer and producer.

https://www.jacktalty.com/

He plays music on piano and concertina and is co-founder of Ensemble Eriu, an innovative group rearranging some traditional ideas.

https://www.improvisedmusic.ie/listen-discover/artists/ensemble-eriu

Niall Vallely has been one of my favorite concertina players for years. He composes a lot of his own music, and his playing has a “blues harp” and jazz feel to it. His three albums are Buille and Buille 2 and, the most recent, BuilleBeo.

http://www.niallvallely.com/Home.html

A more recent, lively concertina recording comes from Phádraig Mac Aodhgáin/Paddy Egan.

https://www.tobargantra.com/
A short clip from Cormac Begley’s concert at Vicar Street

Dennis Cahill: Litir ó Do Chara

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I know there are many musical and artistic events going on during the American Irish version of March Madness in and around St Patrick’s Day. But let me recommend one event that does not require you to leave the house: the documentary film Dennis Cahill: Litir ó Do Chara currently playing on the TG4 player. It is a poignant tribute to the late master guitarist drawn from the letter Martin Hayes addressed to his long-time musical soulmate.

Director Donal O’Conner, himself a fine fiddle player, chose to have other Irish musicians speak admiringly about the guitar player: concertina player, Cormac Begley; singers, Iarla O’Lionaird and Niamh Parsons; fiddlers, Liz Carroll and Caoimhin O’Raghallaigh; accordion player Jimmy Keane; and a posse of guitarists, Seamie O’Dowd, John Doyle and Steve Cooney.

Consequently, not much is heard from Cahill or his playing but his enduring influence is pervasive. The short film features some delightful performances but the guitarists take pride of place. Here’s their symbiotic playing of the O’Carolan melody Sí Bheag Sí Mhór.

And, if that was too beautiful and slow for you, here’s the trio with a gorgeous powerhouse performance of the Bearhaven Lasses & The Morning Dew that did not make it into the film. Thanks to Michael Black for bringing it to my attention with a Facebook post.

The Quiet Man of Irish Music has left the Stage, my own tribute to Dennis Cahill, was offered last year soon after his death. This old blog of mine owes its origin to my attraction to and curiosity about the musical journey of Martin Hayes and Dennis Cahill. The first posting back in 2008 was Hayes and Cahill: Recalibrating the Tradition. Enlightenment about playing the music was guaranteed whenever you talked to them. I described Cahill’s accompaniment as taking minimalism to new heights on this album:

His playing becomes a sub-sonic shadow to Hayes’ fiddle on Mulqueen’s. It’s an amazing musical symbiosis. In their collaboration, it often seems like Cahill has the map in his head but Hayes knows the roads and backroads and the negotiated journey is always worthwhile and wondrous.

The Journal of Music published a perceptive review of the film, Every Note To Be Magical. One combination graced by Hayes and Cahill, the Blue Room Quartet, does not get much of a mention in the film. Hayes has said elsewhere that many of the arrangements on The Blue Room album came from Cahill. Myles O’Reilly’s film captures the process of making that amazing album illustrating many subtle but essential contributions from Dennis Cahill.

The film is available now on the streaming channel of Irish-speaking television network, TG4. This link will work only if you have downloaded the free TG4 Player.

Secret Superstars: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Cup

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The field in Moville where the Kennedy Cup was played

For fans of Donegal, football, and quirky stories that had almost slipped away, Secret Superstars: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Cup is a real treat. A summer tournament that was played in Moville, Co Donegal featured teams that combined junior (non-professional) players and big-name players from clubs in Scotland, England, Northern Ireland, and the Republic. The catch was that the professionals were not supposed to play during the summer months but they found various ways to play incognito. The Cup was played from the mid-1950s up to the start of “The Troubles” in 1970.

A labor of love produced and directed by Tom O’Flaherty, the film explores how some of the best professional footballers of the 1950s and 1960s came to the picturesque little shoreside pitch in Moville to play in the Kennedy Cup. The prize money of two thousand pounds sterling was the big draw but the camaraderie and hospitality of the town were equally attractive. This was long before professional soccer players were paid daft sums of money for signing or transferring from club to club. The local volunteers fund-raised year round to get that prize money, almost 60,000 pounds in today’s money.

O’Flaherty found some fine eye-witnesses to interview. Paddy Crerand, of Scotland and Manchester United, was more of an ear-witness (he never played in that Cup) but he heard the unlikely stories and fills in some of his own footballing history. Johnny “Jobby” Crossan from Derry was someone who did feature in the Cup throughout his extensive professional career with clubs in England, Northern Ireland, Holland, and Belgium.

The archival football footage is remarkable and three of the men who filmed get mentioned in the credits. And there are classic scenes from the famous European Cup finals of 1967 and 1968 won by Glasgow Celtic and Manchester United. Celtic’s wing wizard, Jimmy Johnstone, did play in the Kennedy Cup but watch him dancing by defenders in the European highlights. Donegal produced two legendary Irish football goalkeepers, Packie Bonner, and Shay Given, but this film includes a surprising revelation about the great Irish actor, Ray McAnally, who grew up in Moville.

I can testify that Moville is and was passionate about football and Glasgow Celtic in particular. I stayed one night in Moville during a driving holiday in the late 1990s through Antrim, Derry, and Donegal with my son, sister, and brother-in-law. We went to a small pub for dinner and were ushered into a side room with a cosy fire. Over the fire, where many houses would have had a Sacred Heart picture, there was a large painting of Henrik Larsson, the Swedish international star who was then playing and scoring goals for fun at Celtic. The picture of him with his glorious dreadlocks dominated the room. The film was screened at the San Francisco Irish Doc Fest on Saturday, March 4, along with some other intriguing films: Violet Gibson: The Irish Woman Who Shot Mussolini; North Circular; and, The Man With The Moving House, Brendan Begley’s saga about getting permission to build on his ancestral land near Dingle.

The Team’s the Thing: Reflections on the 2022 World Cup

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Morocco player Sofiane Boufal dancing with his mother

Watching the games of the 2023 World Cup in Qatar was, in equal measure, uncomfortable and compelling. How do we assess the moral balance sheet of this tournament? Is the notion of morality even applicable with FIFA? Can moments of footballing loveliness ever be considered more valuable than the lives lost, the obscene spending on transitory stadiums, and the astounding, continuing carbon footprint? But the football and Messi were exciting, often beautiful and highly competitive. It was a humbling experience for some of the big football nations: take your pick from Germany, Holland, Spain, Belgium, Brazil, Portugal or England.

Morocco were the feel-good story of the tournament and the images of Moroccan players dancing with their mothers are unforgettable. But there were many admirable teams who played their hearts out. Neutral fans like myself found it hard to pick a side in the third-place game where Croatia’s compact, creative midfield finally ended Morocco’s dream. Then, there was the speedy, purposeful football from Japan; the valiant South Koreans, and the rugged play of Australia and Switzerland.

Messi showed up with his magic feet and a renewed commitment to winning. I have written about him glowingly before and his influence on the time-space continuum. And more critically, the team around him were deeply invested in giving him a fitting farewell to his international career. Argentina’s victory was like the second coming of Diego Maradona who brought the Cup home in 1986. Messi is a more complete player but less charismatic person than Maradona, as my former East Bay United teammate and Argentinian, Andy Connell notes.

Maybe lifting the World Cup will correct that charisma deficit. Messi has always been easy to admire and love, unlike Ronaldo, who is an equally graceful player, but rarely gracious. Teammates seldom wax eloquent about Ronaldo but nobody has a bad word to say about Messi. Ronaldo’s egotism often got the better of him in team dynamics. He seemed to spend more time sulking on the sideline than playing in this competition, an inelegant finale to his international career.

It was not a happy tournament for those who fixate on star individual players like Neymar, De Bruyne, Van Dijk, or Lewandowski. None were able to bring their team beyond the quarter-finals. The two best individuals, Mbappe and Messi, were integrated into solid teams and showed their class in the exhilarating finish to the Final with the two best goals of the tournament. And then, there were other stars in waiting who stepped out of the shadows here: Brighton man Mac Allister for Argentina, Chelsea player Ziyech for Morocco and Gvardiol for Croatia. 

Argentina had hundreds of “brujas” casting spells to protect Lionel Messi and the team. England, on the other hand, were undone by a kind of karmic deficit (Brexit?) against France. Olivier Giroud, who is so familiar to English Premier players, slipped between Stones and Maguire to head home the decisive goal and then, almost unbelievably, Harry Kane misses the second penalty kick. It was disappointing for Gareth Southgate who has shown leadership qualities that are sadly lacking elsewhere in the English political sphere. And ironic because the quality of football in the Premier League (itself an anti-Brexit project before that nightmare was foisted on English people in 2016) is a big reason for the renewed credibility of the English team.

During the competition, I watched the Netflix series, FIFA Uncovered. It made for sobering viewing exposing the full stories behind the disgraceful shenanigans that brought the World Cup to Russia and Qatar and cast some shade on the decision to award a World Cup to South Africa. The revelations about behind-the-scenes bribery, corruption and sports-washing that went into the decisions to hold the World Cup in two totally unsuited locations were distressing and depressing.

Of course, there is a long history of politically ambitious, power-hungry administrators with a purely transactional attitude to football. In Ireland, we had John Delaney running the Football Association of Ireland as his personal fiefdom for years and the 2002 debacle of Roy Keane’s abrupt departure from the Irish squad’s preparations in Saipan.

Sepp Blatter, who is banned from participating in the game until 2024, had no regrets and claimed he was not responsible for the actions of representatives from other countries or cultures. The U.S. representative on the North American federation (CONCACAF), the late Chuck Blazer, was finally forced by the FBI investigators to spill the beans on all the illegal wheeling and dealing. Two notable and timely tidbits about him from the documentary: he lived in Trump Tower and had not paid any taxes for 15 years -is it something in the water there?

I have written about the FIFA scandals previously in 2015, when the s-word hit the fan, a piece called Bye, Bye Blatter.  

“There has always been a certain type of narcissistic, immature -invariably male- character attracted to administrative roles in soccer. In my experience, it can happen even in youth leagues. The opportunity to exercise power and authority is irresistible for some who are patently ill-suited to the responsibility. They are generally disinterested in the more beautiful elements of the game which don’t readily translate into bottom-line or status considerations. FIFA is a graphic, global example of this phenomenon and maybe the worst offenders will finally be held accountable.”

But don’t take my word for it. The late Eduardo Galeano, in his extended love poem to the game, Soccer in Sun and Shadow, has plenty to say about administrative ineptitude and the stench of corruption which has hung over FIFA for years. His pithy indictment of FIFA: “Like everything else, professional soccer seems to be run by the almighty, even if non-existent, UEB (Union of the Enemies of Beauty).”

Or Phillip Lahm, the German international and Bayern star, who Pep Guardiola called “the most intelligent footballer I have ever coached.”

“There is nothing wrong with football itself. But the people who govern, manage and market it are squandering the unrestricted joy of it. They forget that they are merely service providers for a common good.”

It is time for FIFA to start making reparations for past and current sins. The decision for where the 2030 World Cup will be played has not been made. Let’s cut through the crap and award it to Morocco, who has tried five times unsuccessfully to host the Cup. Saudi Arabia is said to be interested, but please?

One other annoyance in the World Cup coverage in the United States is the unevenness of Fox Sports coverage. It leans towards jingoistic, lowest common denominator commentary and analysis. Yes, I am talking mainly about Alexie Lalas who dug a fine hole for himself by admitting early on, that he had never warmed to Messi.  Fox Sports is stuck in a kind of early 90s time-warp where U.S. audiences needed spoon-feeding about tactical approaches, styles of play, and the rules of the game. They don’t seem to realize that almost ten years of continuing soccer education from NBC Sports sophisticated coverage of the Premier League has greatly expanded knowledge and appreciation for the game. The coverage on the Spanish channel Telemundo was often more enjoyable to watch.

****

Commonwealth Closing

A sad note for East Bay soccer fans was the closing of Commonwealth Pub in Oakland at the end of the World Cup. It was a fine, friendly location with good food and drink that drew a diverse crowd. I went to the US-Iran final group game. The place was packed. Brian Watt from KQED radio was working the room, interviewing fans. I have always enjoyed his work, so it was a fun sidebar seeing him in action.

*****

Women’s World Cup 2023

I plan to write more about football in a sub-section of the blog titled Foot Notes. I will be in New Zealand next summer for the Women’s World Cup and I plan to offer a series of pieces about the teams and the players before and during the competition. I have tickets for six games, four in Auckland and two in Wellington. The competition opens in Auckland with New Zealand against Norway followed by the United States versus Vietnam, a meeting with a big historical shadow. Can the women’s game transcend the misogynistic FIFA culture? We shall see. If you come for the football, please stay for the music.

Songs of the Road by Vincey Keehan

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Vincey Keehan was sidelined by the Covid lockdown but it gave him time to write some new songs and pull some old ones from the bottom drawer. Before he knew it, he had a fine album on his hands, Great Highway. Galwayman Keehan is a vital, long-time node in the San Francisco Bay Area music community. He gathered the village luminaries to produce this lively, lyrical collection of songs, a piece of high-level, homemade art honed over years of playing with like-minded working musicians.

My first impression of these songs with the traveling themes was that Mayo Troubadour, John Hoban, might have a hand in the work. And, sure enough, Hoban gets credited with inspiring Keehan years ago to begin writing songs that were personal and dealt with everyday life. Blended in with memories of childhood and life in Ireland it makes for a memorable mix. Keehan composed all the songs and does most of the singing with help from his son, Michael, and daughter Rosie. The liner notes include a number of beautiful historical family photos.

The album is filled with sturdy, tuneful songs. Any worthy singer-songwriter would be proud to have songs like Working the Streets, Rosmuc Hero, Going Down the Road, The Classic, Argentina or Georges Street.  Working the Streets has a measured pathos with Rosie on vocals. Eamonn Flynn on piano, Kyle Alden on guitar, and Dana Lyn on fiddle provide a lovely setting for a sad story. Going Down the Road is a fine country anthem with the pointed refrain,

You call me anytime you’re thinking about the road.

The Classic is a honky-tonk opener inspired by nights at the Classic Ballroom in Gort, Co Galway, Keehan’s home territory. It’s a sketch of his journey from the showbands to traditional music and later emigration to the U.S.  The band are firing on all cylinders: the ubiquitous pair of Flynn and Alden; Gas Men regulars Kenny Somerville and Cormac Gannon; and backing vocals from Michael Keehan and Susan Spurlock

Argentina was my favorite song on The Gas Men’s Clement Street album with the touching lines, Although we speak in Spanish now, in Gaelic we sing our songs. Here Mary Noonan takes the lead vocals.  It’s a lovely lean arrangement with Colie Moran on acoustic guitar and Paddy Egan on concertina. Another uncluttered song is the ballad, The Lovely Woodlands of Clare, a tribute to Keehan’s niece, who died tragically at a young age. 

Rosmuc Hero honors the boxer Sean Mannion. The song tells the poignant, painful portrait of a man’s rise, fall, and redemption. It has a layered lonesome sound with sax, guitar and harmonica. Make It Back is sung vigorously by Michael Keehan, giving Van Morrison a run for his money. Along with Morning, this is a new song developed in street sessions during the Covid lockdown. This song and Pride Comes Before the Fall are wonderfully embroidered by Bill Sparks saxophone playing.

Many of these songs will have longevity and be carried on down the highway by other singers. Kyle Alden shows the way with Georges Street on the album with a solo performance. He applies the style from his W. B. Yeats albums Songs From the Bee-Loud Glade (2011)and Down in the West, Volume I (2013). Yeats might relish lines like, 

My mother said my neck would break,

Staring at the Gateaux cakes.

Alden contributes some musical adornment on almost every track and co-produced the album with Keehan.

Another delightful ballad is I Got to Dance with the Rose of Tralee. Rosie Keehan’s other claim to fame was representing San Francisco at the Rose of Tralee Festival in 2014. She also gets her own song Rosie is Going to School, one of Keehan’s early songs. The Blackbird Set is a fine string adventure with the band showing their traditional chops on two mandolins, a fiddle, a concertina, and guitar.

Keehan has been singing trad and folk songs for many years. There are songwriting lessons to be learned from the old songs and Keehan has absorbed them well. He continues his journey down the Great Highway, making all the stops along the way. Like many of us, Keehan found the San Francisco Bay Area is just like the Hotel California: you can check out any time you want, but you can never leave.

The CD launch party has been rescheduled to October 7 at 7:00 pm at The Balboa Theater, 3630 Balboa Street, San Francisco.

Selected Blogiography

For more information on Keehan’s music and performances visit:

http://www.vkmusic.net/

The album is available from Bandcamp and will be on sale more generally after the album launch on October 6.

https://vinceykeehan.bandcamp.com/album/great-highway

The definitive Gas Men album, Clement Street, was released in 2008. My review is here:

https://theoldblognode.blogspot.com/2009/01/playing-in-street-with-gasmen.html

Keehan made a lovely album about 10 years ago, Nights in Shanaglish, with Paddy Egan and many of his cohort from this album. My review is here:

https://theoldblognode.blogspot.com/2013/04/nights-in-shanaglish.html

Paddy Egan -Pádraig Mac Aodhgáin has a splendid solo concertina album, Tobar Gan Tra.

https://www.tobargantra.com/

Kyle Alden’s Yeats album, Songs from the Bee-loud Glade, is reviewed here:

https://theoldblognode.blogspot.com/2011/11/songs-from-bee-loud-glade.html

For news and updates on the inspirational John Hoban:

http://www.johnhoban.net/

Sean Mannion, Rocky Rosmuc, is interviewed here:

Mick Moloney, another good ancestor passes

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A selection of Mick Moloney’s albums and writing

Mick Moloney is a giant figure in the Irish music universe. His sudden passing last week at age 77 has left musicians and music lovers all over the world reeling with grief. Coming so quickly on the heels of other major departures, Dennis Cahill, Tony Mac Mahon, and Paddy Moloney, makes this a sad season of mortality. Each represents an enormous loss to the diverse rainforest of Irish music and Moloney is another huge tree whose fall echoes throughout the ecosystem. However, the roots he put down in Ireland and the United States, and the seeds he has sown in many other corners of the world will nourish new growth for years to come. Even his shade will be fertile.

Mick Moloney could be described as a universal unitarian since he did not recognize clear-cut musical borders between Irish, Irish American, folk, and other cultural traditions. The outpouring of eloquent, dignified, and heartfelt tributes on social media has been overwhelming. Many are from musicians who knew him, were mentored or taught by him, had their first performances engineered by him, or were touched by him at critical moments in their development. Many are well-known names, others less so. What is crystal clear, is that every encounter with him was enlightening and uplifting, sometimes life-changing, and often memorable.

He was a brilliantly accomplished musician but his modesty meant that he rarely hogged the limelight, preferring to praise and honor other musicians. He loved ensemble playing and the list of his collaborators is extensive. His style was composed and cool but he wanted always to be known as a banjo-driver.

I met him through his music, initially with The Johnstons whose Colours of the Dawn album was a mind-blowing experience that still has resonance fifty years later. It was one of an early series of ear-opening Irish music performances that stretched from Sean O’Riada, the Clancy Brothers, and The Dubliners to Planxty and Horslips. For many years, my go-to party piece song was The Old Man’s Tale (by Ian Campbell) appropriated from Mick’s rendition on that album. And, I can still sing a couple of verses of The Fields of Vietnam (by Ewan MacColl) from his 1973 solo album, We Have Met Together.

Then there is the song, Kilkelly, composed by Peter Jones from letters sent to his great, great grandfather by his father back in Ireland. I first heard this on the compilation album, Bringing It All Back Home in 1991, played by Moloney, Jimmy Keane and Robbie O’Connell. This poignant song became emotionally powerful for me in 1994 when my father died in Dublin and I did not get home in time to say a last goodbye.

He is an archetypal Good Ancestor who landed in a nurturing family in Limerick and spent summers with his grandparents in Sliabh Luachra, that mysterious space that borders Cork and Kerry whose music belongs to neither county. Heeding the biological imperative to bloom where you are planted, Moloney absorbed the cultural and musical riches around him. When he moved to Pennsylvania in 1973 to study ethnomusicology at the University of Pennsylvania, he sought out, acknowledged, and proclaimed some of the Irish musicians who had toiled in the U.S. for years, notably Ed Reavy, Mike Flanagan, Eugene O’Donnell, and Sean McGlynn.  He was determined to honor these living ancestors who kept the music alive in often inhospitable circumstances.   

Our paths crossed a few times, most memorably at Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2003 when a Who’s Who of Irish artistic, literary, musical, political, and cultural characters participated in the Reimagining Ireland Conference. Moloney was a compelling, lively, and witty talker and he was in his element at this extraordinary gathering. When he chaired the panel on Irish Music in Charlottesville (an occasion when there really were “good people on both sides” in that gracious city) he opened the session by commenting on the “almost frightening display of punctuality” he was witnessing at an Irish event.

I had some informal interviews with him when he played in the Bay Area. You always knew a little more about music, culture, or social history after a conversation with him. He oozed erudition. In 2016, he performed a program of song, dance, and poetry at the Freight in Berkeley for the centenary of the Irish Rebellion, a pivotal and cathartic moment in modern Irish history. In typical fashion, he was more keen to sing the praises of his fellow musicians that night: Billy McComiskey on button accordion, dance champion Niall O’Leary, and Athena Tergis on fiddle.

I was a very minor figure in his Irish music universe but nevertheless, he generously responded to my requests and messages. We remained in contact via email for many years and I was surprised to find how many messages I had received from Moloney, oftentimes from his adopted home in Bangkok.

Moloney was an unabashed liberal with a life-long passion for social justice. He was woke before it was popular or profitable inspiring Joanie Madden to form the all-women group Cherish The Ladies, still going strong after almost 40 years. He was, as the Irish Times obituary described him, a renaissance man with many strings to his bow. He also received a half-page obituary in The New York Times. His capacity for positive and progressive work in and around the music was immense and he was playing right up to his final days.

In the follow-up publication from the Reimagining Ireland conference, Moloney contributed an insightful and incisive essay on Irish music. He was fundamentally optimistic about its future. The music has preserved a core identity, he argued, while accommodating a variety of outside influences. It has shown itself to have enduring aesthetic value and cultural meaning and thus may be hard to uproot from Ireland’s cultural ecology. Moloney deserves a big share of the credit for that rootedness.

Additional Resources

By Memory Inspired, Mick Moloney Songbook is a riveting series created during the Covid era and available on YouTube. Each episode features a song or tune around which Moloney weaves a tapestry of social, cultural, and historical context. Start with this one but take the time to view them all: you will be enriched and uplifted.

The book on the Charlottesville Conference is:

Re-Imagining Ireland: How a storied island is transforming its politics, economics, religious life, and culture for the twenty-first century. Book and DVD, Edited by Andrew Higgins Wyndham, University of Virginia Press, Virginia & London, 2006. 288 pages.

https://www.upress.virginia.edu/title/2357

My review of The Johnstons Reunion concert in 2011 can be read here:

https://theoldblognode.blogspot.com/2011/07/johnstons-reunion-concert.html

And I recently found an excellent recording of highlights from that concert posted on YouTube. It’s nicely organized into segments, so you can easily find your favorite Johnstons song.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GMNqH8MLVAw

Eamonn Flynn’s Dublinesque at The Freight

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Eamonn Flynn playing at the Poretta Soul Festival in Italy

Irish singer-songwriter/pianist Eamonn Flynn is making up for pandemic lost time with his recent performance schedule. He has crafted a show titled Dublinesque from his grooving, moving, tuneful Dublin tribute album, Anywhere But Home. I saw this lively, lovely and engaging performance in May at the Back Room in Berkeley with his musical partners Darcy Noonan, Autumn Rhodes, and Hector Brogado.

Now he is bringing an online, solo version to the Freight and Salvage on August 13. Flynn is no stranger to the Freight stage. He’s played there many times over the years with the Black Brothers, Elvin Bishop, and under his own name. The show is online because Flynn is playing and traveling in Europe this summer. Last week, he was in the house band for the 34th annual Poretta Soul Festival in Italy. From San Francisco, the Anthony Paule Soul Orchestra contained, according to Flynn, “an embarrassment of singing riches we are backing up: Omega Rae, Nona Brown, Larry Batiste, Salassie Burke, John Ellison, Mitch Woods, and Chick Rodgers.”

Flynn also spent time teaching kids at the 2nd annual United Irish Cultural Center Summer Camp in June. The wide-ranging program included hip hop dance, drama, coding, sport, improv, and lots of music. And he played music for the Bloomsday Celebration on June 16 at the Mechanics Institute in San Francisco.

Dublinesque is a soulful celebration of Dublin, its music, stories, and history. As Sean Laffey put it in his Irish Music Magazine review of Anywhere But Home: “Dubliners need have no fear. The well is not dry; Flynn is the bard to continue the canon of songs for Dublin because every generation needs its memories and melodies.”

The Quiet Man of Irish music has left the stage

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Portrait by Nutan Jaques Piraprez
(from his Facebook post at Nutan Jacques Piraprez’s )

Dennis Cahill died this week at his home in Chicago. His low-key style, superb guitar playing and authoritative musical presence expanded and enriched Irish music. His relationship with Martin Hayes is one of the most enduring and inspiring musical achievements of the past 30 years, one that extended into two other influential groups, The Gloaming and The Martin Hayes Quartet. Accompaniment always seemed like a pale descriptor for his beautiful work.

Dennis Cahill was the quiet man in the Hayes-Cahill partnership. But his silence was studied, voluminous and eloquent. In other settings like workshops or classes, he had plenty to say, much of it pointed, precise and passionate. And, he had a good ear for humor and jokes.

He embodied the traditional value of modesty which takes a particular variation in Irish culture. He never flaunted his universal musical wisdom and experience. It was this very global reach which drew Hayes to him, first as a friend, and later as a harmonic partner. In his recent biography, Hayes describes their second round of playing together on tour in Norway. (There was some serendipity around them becoming a pair.) Instead of becoming a traditional guitarist in a generic sense, he encouraged him, “…to look at these tunes in the way one might imagine a Bach partita or a Beatles song.” The harmonic and chordal side of traditional music is not so clearly defined and Hayes felt that together they could find some unexplored territory.

I had the great privilege, with a cohort of other Bay Area admirers, of seeing their partnership grow and flower over almost thirty years. I saw them play many times in San Francisco and Berkeley before I ever tried to write about their music. One element of their performances I always enjoyed watching was their on-stage communication. Traditional music is full turns, repetitions, not-quite-repetitions, and shifts in cyclical patterns. Rabbit holes of a sort. Someone has to call the changes even in a duo. Early on, Hayes’ signals were broadly visible: the headshake, the direct stare or the half-turn. Over time, though, this communication became subtle, almost imperceptible. Hayes says in his Facebook tribute to Cahill: “There were so many times on stage when you were simply able to read my mind…”

One of my favorite passages in Martin Hayes’ book describes their routine when they drove to gigs, Martin behind the wheel and Dennis on the maps:

We were both OK with long stretches of silence where an hour or two would pass by without either of us saying a word.

This was easy to imagine since in any long-term relationship there is a plateau where people are content to say only what needs saying.

One reality that is painfully illustrated in Martin Hayes’ biography is how precarious a pursuit of artistic integrity can be. There are many years spent playing to small audiences, in cramped venues with relentless travelling and very limited income. There is no guarantee of a safe and successful passage from the noisy stage in the cavernous Fort Mason or the tent in Sebastopol or the old Freight and Salvage in Berkeley.

The last time I saw Cahill play live was in 2018 when Hayes and his Blue Room Quartet were featured at the Freight. I noted that Hayes was, “Doubling down fruitfully on his long association with guitarist Dennis Cahill, Hayes has now created a Quartet..” The full review is found here. One of the duos most memorable shows at the Freight was 10 years ago when sound engineer Tesser Call created a sonic wonder for the enraptured audience.

Interviews with Hayes and Cahill were always enlightening, a colloquium in the finer points of playing music and the creative process. One of my most memorable interviews with the pair also took place at the Freight in 2008. When I asked about how they prepare for concerts, Hayes explained their shows this way:

“Our live performance is sort of its own thing. Whatever happens, happens. They go a certain way. The live show doesn’t vary hugely from night to night, it kind of gradually changes. No two nights are the same –I might like it to be- but some tune will fly and another one won’t. There’s not much you can do about that. You have to feel it out every time.”

Dennis weighed in with this observation:

“And you have to do it that way for two reasons. One, there’s only two of us up there, so you’re very exposed. And if you don’t let it flow, and get in the habit of doing that, you run the risk of becoming your own tribute band –sounding like somebody doing a version of you.”

You could tell from his expression that this was the worst fate he could envisage for them.

Then, he added this acute analogy:

“You have to have a framework and you have to keep it in your head. I think of it as being like one of those chairs you need to assemble –you can put the screws in place but don’t tighten them. Because if you do, it may not fit and you’ll end up with one leg hanging too high in the air. Each piece, each performance has to work like that.”

With exquisite communication and profound intuition, Hayes and Cahill assembled many magical musical chairs over their years together. Hayes says Cahill was one of a kind, a very special blend of talent, humility, grace and good humor. He will be deeply missed by the music, the musicians, the audiences, his family and friends.

Dublin Can Be Heaven, songs of longing and love from Eamonn Flynn

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Anywhere But Home sits atop my collection of albums with Dublin singers and songs

Anywhere But Home is a grooving, moving, tuneful tribute to Dublin by Eamonn Flynn, a proud Northsider, who swapped the docks for the Dock of the Bay some years ago. He plays piano and sings in various genres and with a wide range of musical combinations. He is currently heading out for a West Coast tour with Maria Muldaur and her Bluesiana band. Flynn first came to my attention some years ago when he joined the Black Brothers band bringing new dimensions to their shows. He was a key contributor to their brilliant 2020 album Glackanacker.

Like many people, Flynn was “working from home” these past two years. His usual offices in clubs, pubs and halls were closed and he had to get by on his Spotify earnings! However, he was very productive with regular online performances and two “studio” albums, this one and an excellent instrumental album The King of the Cats. While the album’s tone is nostalgic it surges musically past any cheap sentimentality. Flynn’s experience shows in the way he blends the building blocks of notes and lyrics into a set of songs that will quickly take up residence in your head. 

Flynn builds on a long tradition of catchy songs inspired by Dublin: Molly Malone, Dublin Saunter, The Foggy Dew, The Rare Old Times, and Remember that Summer in Dublin, just to mention a few. Non-Dubliners may be unaware of the (mostly) friendly cross-river rivalries that animate Dublin’s culture. The Southside, for example, gets a lot of airtime in the songs: Grafton Street, St Stephen’s Green, the Coombe, Raglan Road and the Grand Canal. Flynn’s album brings some limelight to the neglected Northside with songs about the Bull Wall, the Docks and St Anne’s Park. He follows the tracks laid down by the late singer-songwriter Mick Fitzgerald, a Cabra man, who also showcased the Northside in his songs.

St Anne’s recalls the childhood joys of playing in a large park in Raheny, a Guinness family property with follies and sculptures that became a public park in the 1930s. The park is home to a modern sculpture carved into an old tree by Tommy Craggs which is featured in a short film Building the Ark by Pat Boran, himself a Northside resident. Boran has created a whole new accessible genre of short poetry films mostly shot on the Northside.

Ringsend Balcony Bingo is a crafty, clever tribute to one of Dublin’s most creative pandemic lockdown responses. In Italy they sang opera from their apartment balconies but in working class Ringsend, community bingo was the favored activity. In other parts of Dublin, local musicians gave impromptu concerts in front of their house while the neighbors came out to watch and listen.

Sack ‘Em Ups is rhythmic opener on the spooky subject of grave-robbers in the 19th Century Dublin.  Bull Wall is an R&B tribute to a Dublin Bay landmark sung with bluesy style. Baile Atha Cliath is a dynamic song with a samba beat and classic potential. The indelible “Strolling” chorus dissolves into a crescendo of pipes and whistles.

Penalty Shootout in the Dockers echoes Christy Moore’s Joxer Goes to Stuttgart in reminiscing about the days when Ireland had international soccer success thanks to Jack Charlton’s management. Flynn wrote this song after Charlton’s death in 2019. It hits all the right notes: Put ‘Em Under Pressure and Oh, Ah, Paul McGrath. He has a funny line, “When Republic had four syllables,” as he squeezes an extra syllable into “television.”

He makes only two trips out of Dublin. An tOilean Tiar honors the people and culture of the Great Blasket Island off the Kerry coast. The now deserted island is “moving through the mist like a dream,” where “We’d a name for everything that we had.” The Meeting of the Waters is from Thomas Moore, a Dubliner, who, as Flynn notes, was a bit of a rock star in his day (1779-1852) and wrote many classic songs. This is Flynn solo giving this old standard a fresh sonic coat. The song is dedicated to his mother who was a Wicklow woman.

Every good album has a song that works in mysterious ways. Sorry for your Trouble is that song, for me. Flynn, solo again, weaves a lovely litany from the phrases and clichés employed to comfort others after a death. It’s a ritual where, as Flynn says, “We all improvise from a well-rehearsed script.” It’s one of the songs that is smoothly bi-lingual with lines in Irish.

I doubt that Flynn was ever in the same room as his Who’s Who of musical collaborators but you would never know it from the seamless, rounded sound with stand-out contributions from Mike McGoldrick and Todd Denman on pipes and whistles; Athena Tergis on violins; James Blennerhasset on bass; Mick McAuley on accordion; Brian Collier and James Macintosh on percussion; and, permeating the entire musical enterprise, John Doyle (another Northsider) on guitar, vocals and mixing. 

I’ve had my own Dublin memories activated by the centenary events marking the first public housing development in the Free State in the Tenters on the edge of the Liberties where I grew up. And this bright and beautiful album is good company for reminiscing. It is a fine addition to his excellent collection of recent albums: The Irish Channel (2017) and Black Coddle (2019.) Seek them out and buy them from Flynn, an independent artist who, like many others, could use the support. All are available on Bandcamp in various formats, https://eamonnflynn.bandcamp.com/album/anywhere-but-home

I suggest that you listen to it in the order laid down. Don’t second-guess the creative choices by hitting that shuffle button. And listen a few times before settling on favorites or playing just one song repeatedly. So, there you have it. Flynn takes us down the less rocky road to Dublin’s fair city where you can still have a rare old time on a sunny summer morning as long as you’re alive, alive-o.