Eamonn Flynn brought his Dublinesque music hall event to the Back Room in Berkeley on February 1, St Brigid’s Day. I’ve seen this show a few times in recent years, and it’s always lively, entertaining, and ever-changing. Led by Flynn on piano and vocals, the ensemble includes Darcy Noonan from Oakland on fiddle, Hector Bragado from Balboa on banjo, and Felim Egan from Offaly on accordion.
As the name suggests, the show focuses on Dublin songs and stories; every song has a story, and vice versa. The show is built around Flynn’s grooving, tuneful Dublin tribute album from 2022, Anywhere But Home. The city has its share of catchy, light-hearted songs: Molly Malone, Dublin Saunter (Dublin Can Be Heaven), Daffodil Mulligan, and Flynn’s own classic, Strollin’ (Baile Atha Cliath).
But there are darker songs, too. Sack ‘Em Ups is a rhythmic riff on the spooky subject of grave robbers in 19th-century Dublin. May Oblong is a tribute to one of Dublin’s most famous Red Light madames. Weela Weela Wayla, a well-known children’s song popularized by The Dubliners, is a gruesome tale wrapped in an infectious tune.
Another grim story is told in Hunting the Wren, written by Ian Lynch of Lankum. Darcy Noonan set down her fiddle to bravely and boldly take the vocals on this dark, intense song. It commemorates The Wrens of the Curragh, a shameful episode in the history of Irish mistreatment of women. Willie O is a lovely old song that many singers have covered (I recommend Niamh Parson’s version.) Flynn paired it with a Dr John instrumental, Cajun Moon.
He is part of many wide-ranging musical groupings in the Bay Area. He and Egan play with the Black Brothers, who have some Bay Area shows in March. Check his website for upcoming performances in February and March. He has also been part of the Glide Memorial music program for a couple of years and brought some of the Glide Choir as guests for this show. They provided the highlight of the evening with Dennis Hersey singing Danny Boy. It’s an overused piece, but Hersey sang with it with great heart and reverence.
Dennis Hersey of the Glide Memorial choir brought a deep interpretation of Danny Boy
St Brigid seems to have taken on a new agent in recent times. There were three other musical events in the East Bay on her feast day. The second Bank Holiday created by the Irish government to commemorate her occurs this Monday, February 5. Maybe someday, her life will be as widely celebrated as St Patrick’s. Flynn opened the evening by reading a poem attributed to Brigid known as The Lake of Beer. So, could there be a similar amount of sanctioned drinking on her holiday?
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.
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For more information on Keehan’s music and performances visit:
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.
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