Seamus Kelleher
When Seamus Kelleher left what’s arguably the best gig on Philly’s thriving Celtic rock scene—lead guitar for the SRO band, Blackthorn—it was for a rite of passage only those of a certain age can understand.
In the 1990s, he and wife both worked at the World Financial Center. When the towers fell on 9/11, six people from their town, Cranford, NJ, never came home. Then, a little more than four years ago, Kelleher tumbled down a steep staircase, fracturing his skull and suffering a traumatic brain injury.
Apologies to Emily Dickinson, but when death stops for you, even if it’s only as a reminder of your mortality and not, mercifully, the last ride, you pay attention to everything you’ve left undone. Kelleher had some musical wings he needed to stretch and working fulltime, being the father of four, and gigging with Blackthorn didn’t allow much time for writing and singing the songs he knew were in him.
So he took off on his own. His first solo CD, “Four Cups of Coffee,” was not just a musical autobiography, it was a revelation of the eclectic roots of a musician who is equally at home with Irish music—he’s from Salthill, Galway—as he is with folk, rock, black blues, Irish blues (think Rory Gallagher) and the finger-picking guitar style of Chet Atkins.
And while “Four Cups of Coffee” was smokin’, it nearly pales by comparison to Kelleher’s latest offering, “Another Side of Town,” which was recorded at Cambridge Sound Studio in Newtown, PA.
People who know me know that I almost never write music reviews because, frankly, great music tends to leave me virtually speechless or, at least, inarticulate. I turn like rote to just a few words, “wow” being the most common. In fact, if I were to review music for a living, I’d have to use the “wow” the way movie critics use stars and restaurant reviewers use spoons or, like the Inquirer’s Craig LeBan, bells, but without the insightful commentary.
From the first track of “Another Side of Town” to the last, I was wowing all over the place. The first wow was for Kelleher’s voice. Like his guitar playing, honed by years of studying with the masters like finger-picking all-star Pete Huttlinger, Kelleher has polished and perfected his voice until it’s as smooth as a single malt. He sounds a little like Willie Nelson—if Willie had stopped smoking, drinking, and taken a few singing lessons early on. The soul and heart are there, but the roughness is gone. It makes songs like “Reno Winter’s Sky,” about an encounter with a soldier at the baggage claim in Reno, all the more poignant.
“Did he leave behind a sweetheart? Did he leave behind a friend? Did his mother stay awake at night? Did his daddy ever cry?” Kelleher sings in this heart-touching story song.
If you’re a back button hitter like me, you’re probably going to have a hard time getting past the first, eponymous track, “Another Side of Town,” about Kelleher’s brush with death (and why he’s not going there again any time soon). Beautiful melody, great lyrics, that new, improved voice—to me, it’s the single that ought to be getting play on mainstream radio.
He even does a remake of his “Four Cups of Coffee,” from his first solo release, a rocking improvement spiced with harmonies provided by singer Charlene Holloway, a native Philadelphian who has recorded with Patti Labelle, Anita Baker, Teddy Prendergass, Lou Rawls, and Luther Vandross. That you’re not seeing any Irish singers in there is a testament to the risks Kelleher is willing to take to make the music better and better.
Irish country dancers are going to love Kelleher’s take on “Galway Bay,” while Eric Burdon is going to be wondering why he didn’t record “The House of the Rising Sun” in the soulful way Kelleher does it.
Where Kelleher shines—and always has—are the instrumentals. “Guitar Dreams” and “Huttlinger’s Rag” will be the first places where my CD is eventually going to start skipping. The things are plastic. There’s just so many times you can hit that back button.
