There’s an old saying attributed to that funny old German dude Otto Von Bismarck which he used as a way of explaining the often ugly process of governing: “Laws are like sausages. It’s better not to see them being made.” (The “Iron Chancellor” was always coming out with knee-slappers like that.)
Unless you are unnaturally patient (or musically masochistic), you might say much the same thing about how the top Irish band Lúnasa makes music. It’s a painstaking process indeed, according to Lúnasa flutist Kevin Crawford.
Speaking by phone from his home outside the town of Ennis in County Clare, Crawford says that, before the band began recording their most recent CD, Sé, they began with what he calls a “short list” of tunes. By “short,” Crawford means about 90 or so.
“We brought that list to the table a good six to eight months before we even went in to record the tunes,” Crawford says. “We offered the list to (guitarist) Paul (Meehan) and to (bass player) Trevor (Hutchinson). Generally, Paul and Trevor troll through the tunes we give them, keeping the ones that work and throwing out the rest. They come back with at least half of them. From there we just start whittling it down. We get that list down to about 30 tunes and before you know it you have an album.”
If you’ve heard Sé—pronounced “shay,” it’s Irish for “six”—or any of the five other Lúnasa recordings, you’d have to agree that all the fuss is worth it. The music of Lúnasa is brilliantly melodic, but what really sets it apart is its boundless rhythmic adventurousness. Crawford and colleagues have an affinity for mind-bending time signatures. They have a rare talent for bending and blending tunes together in ways that they really weren’t meant to go.
Developing that unique sound was always the plan, says Crawford: “It was always the case that we wanted it to be slightly different. We had all done different things. We decided that, when we came together, we wanted to try out a new approach. It was to give an equal share to both melody and rhythm.”
Maintaining that balance translates into an awful lot of work.
“We do spend an awful lot of time sourcing tunes and trying to figure out whether they’re going to fit the jigsaw,” Crawford says. “A lot gets discarded. We do actually drive ourselves crazy looking for the correct tunes. We’ve gotten more skilled at it over the last 10 years we’ve been working.”
“Skilled” doesn’t half describe Lúnasa’s virtuosity.
Find out yourself at the 33rd Annual Philadelphia Ceili Group Festival Friday, Sept. 7, starting at 7:30 p.m., at the Philadelphia Irish Center, Carpenter and Emlen Streets, in the Mount Airy neighborhood of Philadelphia. Tim Britton will open. Tickets are $25 ($27 at the door).
