All Posts By

Lori Lander Murphy

Arts, Music, People

From Máirtín de Cógáin With Love

Máirtín de Cógáin is launching his new CD "From Cork With Love"

Those of us in the know are already well aware that the best tea comes from Cork, and goes by the name “Barry’s,” but Máirtín de Cógáin has discovered during his travels around the U.S. that it’s not always easy to get a proper cuppa. So, he has determinedly set his sights on remedying that by “educating as much of America” as he can with a little story he calls “How to make proper tea!” and wisely including it on his new CD, The Máirtín de Cógáin Project’s “From Cork with Love.”

If anyone can pull off a feat of such cross-cultural magnitude, it’s this two time All Ireland Storytelling Champion.

A true Renaissance man of the arts, Máirtín de Cógáin takes the concept of the triple threat a few threats further: in addition to dancing, acting and singing, he is also a playwright, a songwriter, a bodhrán player and a master seanachie. And with just the slightest of omissions (he‘s saving the dancing for the next CD), those talents are exuberantly displayed on “From Cork with Love.”

The album, recorded live at The Celtic Junction in St. Paul, Minnesota, last April, is a listen with an extremely high addiction factor. There’s no use in even pretending otherwise; from the songs, to the tunes, to the stories—which were all chosen to reflect an aspect of the heart & soul to be found in County Cork—the CD should come with its own repeat button.

The Cork native, who relocated to Minnesota several years ago with his American wife, explained that the album is both a love letter to Cork, and an expression of the love that is to be found there. “It’s the way it is with immigrants, you lose a lot when you leave home. This is my tribute to songs that have been lost, as well as to songs that haven’t been lost.”

“There is a lot of coyness and romance about Cork. I met my wife Mitra there. She’s from Los Angeles, and had come to do a wee year abroad in a foreign land…and you couldn’t be more foreign from Los Angeles than when you’re in Cork.

“I won her heart with a brush dance. After that, she was putty in my hands. And, most importantly, she had all the ingredients for a proper cup of tea, including the Barry’s tea bags.”

Some signs are not meant to be ignored.

“I grew up in a house where there was always a pot of tea brewing. There would be 4, 5, 6 or 10 people drinking from it. Lots of tea leaves. I don’t branch out much from Barry’s, but Lyons isn’t too bad. And then you have PG Tips and Red Lion, as well.”

But it’s not always about tea. After graduation from university, de Cógáin traveled around the world. “I was totally defunct of ideas about my future…like most of my fellow graduates. I always stuck in everything in college.”

It was while in New Zealand that de Cógáin did his first paying gig, and from there it was on to Australia. Upon his return to Ireland, de Cógáin found work for his multifarious talents in acting (the film “The Wind That Shakes the Barley” for which he also sang the theme song), playwriting (“De Bogman” in which he also stars, performing 20 characters in under an hour) and performing (he was a founding, and existing, member of The Fuschsia Band and also formed Captain Mackey’s Goatskin & String Band with Jimmy Crowley).

And de Cógáin the storyteller was also honing his skills as a seanachie, a talent that comes from his father, “a great storyteller himself. I really love telling stories when you hit the mark. I do try to have a story or two wherever we go that’s suitable. I was never amazing at school, but my short term memory is amazing. If I hear a story, and retell it the next day, I’ll remember it. I’m kind of like a mockingbird that way. It also helps in acting.”

Now there is the launch of The Máirtín de Cógáin Project and its CD, where he is joined by fellow Minnesotans Brian Miller and Norah Rendell, as well as special guest, fiddle player Nathan Gourley.

“I first met Brian when I was in college, and he came over to study in Ireland. We played together over there, and then on my very first day in Minnesota, I went into Kieran’s Pub in Minneapolis, and Brian was playing there.

“I’ve been chasing Brian for years to perform with him, and I finally caught him. And along with Brian came Norah. They have such a fierce love of Irish music, and they understand the intricacies of how things work. Both of them are very dedicated, and great to work with.”

And, no surprise here: it was in Cork that the now-married Brian and Norah met and fell in love.

The song that set “From Cork With Love” in motion, “Away Down the Marina,” was one that de Cógáin got from his musical partner and fellow Corkman, Jimmy Crowley. A love song with “verve and excitement,” it tells the story of a couple who courted along a walkway called The Marina on the River Lee. It’s a trysting spot not much used today, but perhaps with the release of the album, it will be rediscovered by a new generation of lovers. And, as a tribute to his wife, de Cógáin very sweetly changed a line in the first verse from “My pretty Irish queen” to “My pretty Persian queen.”

It’s these little stories behind the songs that add to the winning appeal of “From Cork With Love.” The oldest song on the CD is “The Star of Sunday’s Well,” which was composed by Cork writer (and lawyer) William B. Guiney and dates to the 1870’s. Introduced to the recording of Donal Maguire’s version by Brian Miller, de Cógáin also counts Jimmy Crowley’s influence in his learning of it. “It’s great to get the old songs,” he enthused.

Among the newer compositions is one that I count among my own personal favorites: “Bridie and the Pole.” A song that de Cógáin heard sung at a wedding in 2009, “it’s very topical at the moment. It’s a social documentary of what’s going on now” in the aftermath of Ireland’s Celtic Tiger. And a rollicking good song, with a Polish polka worked into the instrumental interlude.

With songs from Jimmy Crowley, one from John Spillane, the song “Timahoe” that he got from his father (who got it in 1960 from Peter Thompson who got it in 1957 at the Lisdoonvarna Matchmaking Festival), it’s no wonder that de Cógáin expresses his “great joy in putting together the album and getting it out there.”

“I’m looking forward to touring the album shortly…it’s a moveable feast,” de Cógáin said. “Full reflections, songs, stories, tunes, love songs.”

A moveable feast, and a satisfying banquet.

For more information on Máirtín de Cógáin, or “From Cork With Love,” check out his website: http://www.mairtinmusic.com/

February 25, 2011 by Lori Lander Murphy

People

Kathy McGee Burns: Blazing Her Own Parade Route

Kathy McGee Burns, receiving the Inspirational Irish Women award.

On Sunday, March 13, when Kathy McGee Burns officially presides over the Philadelphia St. Patrick’s Day Parade, as only the second female president since its 1771 debut, she is going to have some very special guests marching with her.

The little girl who grew up in the Philly suburbs with no knowledge of her Irish roots is now the woman leading the parade. And joining her will be her McGee cousins from Donegal.

That moment has been a lifetime in the making. Because the same father who instilled in McGee Burns the belief that she could be anything she wanted, do anything she put her mind to, was the equal to anyone … was the same father who, like so many of his generation, denied his own Irish-ness.

“It’s incredible to me,” McGee Burns marveled. “I see my whole life as a journey. I don’t know how I got here, but I did.

“I always had this draw to being Irish …. Wondering, where was I from, where could I claim as my heritage? But my father, Timothy McGee, never talked about his family.

“He grew up very poor. His father, Hugh McGee, was the black sheep of the family. He was an alcoholic who left the family. My grandmother, Mary Jo Callahan, raised my father and his brother with the help of her mother and sisters. She cleaned houses to put food on the table.

“My father was a very well-known high school athlete, but he couldn’t pursue any of the offers he got along those lines. He had to take care of his mother and her sisters. So, he started as a clerk in the Acme. He prided himself that you could come to his counter, and he would add up all the prices in his head–this was before there were machines to do it.

“He started making bouquets of flowers to sell in the store. And from that, he built up a business as a wholesaler florist. He became a successful businessman, and created a life for his own family that was far different from the one he grew up with. He had a house at the shore, was a member of country clubs. We were very comfortable.

But he wouldn’t talk about his Irish roots.

It wasn’t until he was on his deathbed that McGee Burns was able to get a tiny clue from him about how to go about finding her family. He told her that all the relatives lived in Bridgeport: “Kathleen, every McGee in Bridgeport is related to you.”

By this time, McGee Burns was married and raising nine children of her own. And her nagging desire to acknowledge and embrace her own Irish-ness had been heightened during the dark days of the 1981 hunger strikes.

“There I was, watching Bobby Sands starve to death while my own son, Tony, who was the same age, was going to college in Chicago. I kept thinking about Mrs. Sands, how heartbroken she must have been…and how my own son was just starting his life.”

“My country, the country of my ancestors, still wasn’t free.”

McGee Burns began her journey. And her first step was to get out the phonebook and look up every McGee in Bridgeport. She sent a letter to each one of them. And she got the response she was looking for.

“Once I had enough information to trace my roots back to Donegal, I decided to join the Donegal Society. The first time I went to a meeting, I literally walked in as a stranger. They asked me who my sponsor was,” McGee Burns laughed. “I didn’t even know I needed a sponsor!”

But from that inauspicious beginning, she went on to become the first female president of the Donegal Society. And she continued on her path to discover exactly where she came from.

On a trip to Donegal about 10 or 12 years ago, a friend had a surprise for her. He told her, “I found someone who can help you find your roots. We have an appointment with him at Gallagher’s Hotel in Letterkenny at 1:00.”

Kathy won’t forget that moment: “A man came walking towards me. He looked just like my brother. He said, ‘Hi, my name is Hughie McGee. Does that name sound familiar to you?’ Well, my brother, my uncle, my nephew, my grandfather and my great-grandfather were all Hughie McGees. We sat down and did a study of our families. We both had a great-great grandfather named Cornelius McGee. His Cornelius McGee married a Kate Cannon; mine married a Kate Brogan. We had all these similarities, but couldn’t pinpoint where our families intersected.”

It wasn’t until this past summer that DNA was able to accomplish what a paper trail had failed to do: prove beyond a doubt that these two McGee families are closely related. The McGees from Gweedore, County Donegal, donated their DNA for comparison with McGee Burns’ own brother Hughie, and with the results, a once lost heritage was reclaimed.

The circle will be made complete on March 13, when Hughie McGee, his brother Paul McGee and wife Noreen, and nephew Paul McCool and wife Roisin join Kathy McGee Burns and her family, including her brother Hughie, in the St. Patrick’s Day Parade.

“Someone has been directing this from somewhere–either from up above, or down below,” McGee Burns laughed. “But the feeling I will have as I march up that aisle to address the congregation at St. Patrick’s Church for the parade Mass will be for every McGee and every Callahan that came before me.

“I represent a culmination of all their dreams, hopes and wishes. We are all going to be in that Church together. And I’ll be saying ‘thank you’ to all my Donegal ancestors.”

January 28, 2011 by Lori Lander Murphy

News

“Little Christmas” Lunch at the Irish Center

Jane and Barney

January 6, The Feast of the Epiphany, is a miraculous holiday in Irish circles. Also known as “Nollaig na mBan” or “Little Women’s Christmas, the best part of the miracle is that tradition commands the male of the species to take over the housework for the day. And the women get to kick back and relax.

So with great epiphanous thought, The Irish Center’s Sean McMenamin invited The Immigration Center’s lovely-ladies-who-lunch to observe their weekly tradition chez Commodore Barry Club for their Little Women’s Christmas.

With a fire roaring, Vince Gallagher’s band playing and food aplenty, over 40 people packed the house for the afternoon. Guests new and returning enjoyed themselves while not lifting a finger in servitude.

“I used to come out to The Irish Center all the time, but I haven’t been here in about 10 years,” Maureen Baker disclosed. “And when I got the email from The Immigration Center, I thought it would be a great event to come to.”

The Immigration Center’s Director, Siobhan Lyons, is planning more of these affairs: “We’re going to be partnering up with The Irish Center to run events up here monthly. Anyone who would like to be added to our mailing list, please visit our Web site at http://www.icphila.org/.”

Sean McMenamin had a nostalgic surprise on hand at the luncheon as well: old photos and ephemera from the early days of The Irish Center. Pictures of the 1965 Miss Mayo contestants and a 1941 All Ireland Ball program were just a few of the items on display. With the newly renovated library set for a grand opening on St. Patrick’s Day, there are plenty more materials like those waiting to be viewed. And if anyone has any old photos to share, particularly from the period 1946-1966, please contact Sean.

All in all, a pleasing official end to the Christmas season. Check out our photos…and as a special bonus, we have a video of harpist Grainne Hambly playing two tunes she dedicated to Nollaig na mBan during Teada’s recent concert.

January 7, 2011 by Lori Lander Murphy

Music

Mangan & McGiver: Just a Catching Fire

Patrick Mangan and Ryan McGiver

In case you missed it: last Saturday night, a packed house was treated to the Philadelphia Ceili Group’s presentation of the Pat Mangan and Ryan McGiver concert.

Mangan, the fiddle player who joined the Riverdance troupe at the tender age of 16, and McGiver, who plays regularly with singer-songwriter Susan McKeown, met three years ago at the summer traditional music mecca otherwise known as The Catskills Irish Arts Week.

“I saw Pat playing, and I asked ‘Who is that guy? He’s good.’ Even though we both had played around New York, our paths had never crossed before,” McGiver explained. But to see the two of them now, you’d think they’d been musical partners all their lives. “We have a lot of fun playing together, it’s really good energy. We’d been playing together in sessions in New York, and we realized that it just works. So we thought, why not do a tour.”

Why not, indeed? With both musicians working on upcoming solo CD releases (Mangan already has an album titled “Farewell to Ireland” and McGiver can currently be heard on McKeown’s brilliant “Singing in the Dark” cd), there will hopefully be more tours by this duo in the near future.

But for those who missed out last Saturday, we have some videos to introduce you to these two.

December 24, 2010 by Lori Lander Murphy

Music

Slide Returns to Philadelphia with Another Great Show of “Daireobics”

Slide

The crowd at The Annenberg Center was treated to a tuneful Christmas concert by innovative Irish group Slide on December 11, 2010. Onstage this tour were Daire Bracken on fiddle; Eamonn de Barra on flute, whistle, keyboards and bodhran; Mick Broderick on bouzouki; Colm Delaney on concertina; and Dave Curley on guitar, bodhran and providing some beautiful vocals.

Bracken’s energetic fiddling style (the “daireobics” of the evening) is always worth a special mention, and his performance at The Annenberg Center was no less than its usual dazzling ball of fire. Broderick’s bouzouki playing and Delaney’s head banging concertina style were an integral part of the consistently high energy of the evening, but Dave Curley, a more recent addition to the band, subtly seduced the audience with his “velvety vocals.”

And de Barra, in between switching from one incredibly played instrument to another, gave a special shout-out to his local connection in the audience: his brother Fionan is married to Philly girl Shannon Lambert-Ryan. Along with Cheryl Prashker, and occasionally Isaac Alderson, Fionan and Shannon are part of the up and coming band Runa.

We have some videos from the evening; make sure to catch Dave Curley’s solo rendition of The Pogues’ Christmas classic “Fairytale of New York.”

December 21, 2010 by Lori Lander Murphy

Music

Susan McKeown: Singing in the Dark and Radiating Light

Irish singer-songwriter Susan McKeown

“Oh yes I am broken, But my limp is the best part of me.” ~ Welsh poet Gwyneth Lewis from “Angel of Depression”

Creativity and depression. Two states of being that often are inextricably etched in our collective minds when we think of artists and writers; the term “Byronic hero” immediately conjures up an image of the late great poet, brooding and melancholic, as he pens his immortal verse.

But for all that, there is still a stigma surrounding the topic of mental illness. Susan McKeown’s new CD, “Singing in the Dark” is bringing the subject into the light in a brilliant and innovative way.

It’s a project that has been nearly 10 years in the making; the Dublin-born Grammy Award-winning singer and songwriter has the gift of being able to work on multiple projects simultaneously while never losing sight of her creative goals.

“Seven years ago, my marriage had just ended, my father passed away, and my musical partner [Johnny Cunningham] died. What I do at times like those is to go to poetry, particularly early Irish poetry. I get so much solace from what the monks of that time wrote. And from what women poets have written,” McKeown explained to me over lunch in New York a few weeks ago.

“I originally had an idea for an album of dark songs, because listening to dark songs has helped me go into my own world … you get something from music like that.”

“And then one day I was hanging out with Natalie Merchant, our daughters were having a playdate,” McKeown laughed. “And we were talking about my idea, and a light bulb went off. An album like this would be the perfect place to explore darkness in very human terms, and the link between creativity and that darkness.”

“Depression, and manic depression, these are not something that people talk about. People are afraid to associate themselves with it, or speak about it. When I recognized this, I realized it was time to start singing about it.”

It was Merchant who introduced McKeown to the writing of Kay Redfield Jamison, whose book “Touched with Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and The Artistic Temperament” became part of McKeown’s inspiration as she began work on her album.

Jamison herself became an important part of the project, and she writes in the introduction to “Singing in the Dark” of how McKeown “gives beautiful voice to those who have written of their suffering … has chosen the works of writers who describe their melancholy vividly, unforgettably.”

There are inclusions from the likes of Anne Sexton whose poem, “A Woman Like That” has been turned into a powerful anthem; Gwendolyn Brooks with the haunting lyrics “I shall not sing a May song, A May song should be gay, I’ll wait until November, And sing a song of gray” from “The Crazy Woman;” and Lord Byron himself appears with the melodic “So We’ll Go No More A-Roving.”

Because she’s never one to make things easy on herself, McKeown decided that her album would consist primarily, though not completely, of poems that had never been put to music before. And then she set about writing the music to five of those poems herself. I know because I counted them, and when I pointed this out to her, she seemed surprised and then laughed that she’d never consciously realized that.

“I’ve always written poetry, and music. When I was twelve, I entered a school contest and came in second with my song ’The Music Box;’ I was very influenced by Joni Mitchell.

“I think of music as poetry, so I start out writing them as poems. The challenge with writing the music for this CD was to find the music that each of the poems was looking for to make them singable. I just wrote as things would come; it’s completely subjective. What’s singable to me wouldn’t be for everyone … everyone has their own index.

“The music for James Clarence Mangan’s ‘The Nameless One,’ I woke up with the chorus in my head. When something comes like that, you feel like you’ve been given such a gift.”

The poems themselves were inspired from all sorts of different sources; researching the material was a huge part of the project.

“I got the idea for the poems from all kinds of places…’Good Old World Blues,’ I was given that one from a man I was on a second date with. There wasn’t a third date, but I got a really great song from it!”

The poem, “Mad Sweeney,” which was found as a manuscript in the 1670s, is believed to date back to the 10th century if not earlier, and McKeown received permission from Seamus Heaney to include his line ‘I need woods for consolation’ in the lyrics. But other than that, “the words are translated as they were originally written. It’s just human. And timeless. It could have been written about a homeless person today…and that’s what I wanted to get across.”

“I spent the last two years recording, we began in 2008 with John Dowland’s ‘In Darkness Let Me Dwell;’ this was always my favorite Dowland song. That one was recorded on Achill Island in Mayo with Steve Cooney. He had actually played Dowland’s music 20 years prior.”

With so much great material, and so many years of blood and sweat, how did McKeown know when it was complete? “When it’s hanging together well, and the glue is sticking, and the taste is good, then it’s done,” she laughed.

McKeown launched her CD at the end of October at Symphony Space in New York with an eleven piece backing band, following a daylong symposium at NYU’s Glucksman Ireland House. McKeown partnered with them to present the event, titled “Singing in the Dark: Irishness, Creativity, Madness.“

“I went to Ireland House because I have a relationship with them. It’s like drinking from a well … I’ve performed there many times. And it was such a great place to explore the topic in a scholarly fashion. Everyone who spoke there was so enthusiastic. I hope it’s just the first year; I would love to sponsor an annual festival to acknowledge our dark moods and how to use creativity to move out of them.”

Because there is no getting away from the link between Ireland and depression. Among the speakers were Patrick Tracey, author of “Stalking Irish Madness: Searching for the Roots of My Family’s Schizophrenia,” and Angela Bourke, who wrote “Maeve Brennan: Homesick at The New Yorker.”

And McKeown admits that, “yes, there are elements of what’s been going on in my own family … I discovered that there are three generations of men who all carried strains of manic depression, and interestingly, all three men married musical women.”

“People who are given these extra challenges as well as gifts are just trying to balance them, and learning that takes a lifetime … it’s how it is, there are high rates of creativity going along with depression. So I felt this is a wonderful way for me to speak out about it from the creative side.”

McKeown has begun touring for the CD, with dates scheduled in March 2011 for Germany, some in Ireland, and many more U.S. venues to be added in the next year. You can keep up with her plans on her Web site http://www.susanmckeown.com/live.html

Though she won’t be taking the 11-piece orchestra around the world with her, she has her trusted team traveling with her. “The two musicians that I’m taking on tour with me are Jason Sypher and Eamon O’Leary. I met them when I started going to a session that Eamon runs at The Brass Monkey in The West Village. It’s on Sunday nights from 5-8, and it’s great because I can bring my daughter there.”

The whole process has been one she’s cherished.

“This became something I had to accomplish in this life. It has been so satisfying to research it, so rewarding and such a pleasurable experience to record, and to do the tour … I’m just on a high. Because it’s got such meaning, and meaning for me is everything.

“I love all my albums, but this was something a bit different because it was a stretch and required a little effort.

“I like to explore and to challenge myself. I’m starting to look forward to challenges … I want to do something where people will say ‘Oh, that’s different!’ But in a pleasant way. These are songs that won’t be on your local jukebox, but that’s what makes it interesting.”

December 4, 2010 by Lori Lander Murphy

Arts

Two Buzz-Worthy Irish Flicks Featured in Festival

"The Brothers" of Paul Fraser's film playing at The Philadelphia Film Festival.

The 19th Philadelphia Film Festival is officially under way. The 10-day movie extravaganza, which features two superb Irish films, kicked off Thursday night with the screening of “The Black Swan.” (The festival runs from October 14 to 24.) Not set to be officially released until next December, the film starring Natalie Portman is already garnering the kind of buzz that foreshadows major awards.

That’s exactly the kind of excitement that the Philadelphia Film Society (PFS) is proud to generate.

“This year is the best line-up we’ve ever had. Of course, I said that last year,” laughed PFS Executive Director J. Andrew Greenblatt. “You want to top yourself every year, not in size, but in terms of quality.”

As of Wednesday, there were 112 films on the schedule.

“When we put together the first program guide, we had 107, but we’ve been continuing to add them. There are so many great films that we couldn’t stop; we couldn’t say no. And we never say ‘never’; there’s a chance 1 or 2 more could come in.”

A good portion of those 112 films don’t have distribution deals yet, Greenblatt said. “You many never see them anywhere again.”

Among the feast of films on offer this year are two acclaimed Irish films that have already played at other festivals, where the buzz on them began building.

The first of these is “My Brothers,“ by first-time director Paul Fraser. Filmed in Kerry, it’s a coming-of-age story (think, “Stand By Me”) that’s set over Halloween weekend in 1987. Oldest brother Noel takes his dying father’s treasured watch (a cheap digital one that was won at an arcade in Ballybunion) and when it breaks during a fight (along with his wrist), Noel decides he has to replace it. Unable to drive the bread van he “borrowed” without permission because of his injured wrist, Noel enlists his two younger brothers, 11-year-old Paudie and 7-year-old Scwally, to travel with him to Ballybunion to share in the driving. By turns both comic and heart-wrenching, the film follows the three brothers as they experience a journey that changes them forever.

“The Brothers” is showing on Sunday, October 17, at 1 p.m. at The Bryn Mawr Film Institute, and then again on Saturday, October 23, at 12 noon at The Ritz Five E.

The second movie, “Outcast,” directed by Colm McCarthy, is quite a bit different. Greenblatt described it as “a lot darker, and a little twisted. It takes you into a subculture that hasn’t been explored on film before. I recommend it for anyone with ‘a tolerance.’ It’s pretty gripping.”

The subculture that Greenblatt is referring to is the world of the sidhe (pronounced shee). Tied to the fairy folklore of Ireland, the sidhe are a people of the mounds, able to shift shapes and in possession of great and dark power.

The Scottish director was raised on his Cork-born father’s dark tales of Celtic myth and legend, and based his film around the idea of how those stories would play out in the gloomy urban setting of Edinburgh and its castle estates.

On the run from a disturbing beast-like pursuer (James Nesbitt), mother Mary (Kate Dickie) and teen-age son Feargal (Niall Bruton) are Irish travelers caught up in their own world of dark ritual. Fergeal is also involved in a palpably ill-fated romance with Petronella (Hanna Stanbridge), a girl of Scottish-Romany descent.

The movie’s trailer, which can be viewed here, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9Jx1Xj5sgk&translated=1, gives a glimpse into the atmospheric darkness of “Outcast.”

“Outcast” is showing on Saturday, October 16 at 10:15 p.m. at The Ritz Five E, and again on Saturday, October 23, at 5:30 p.m. at The Ritz Five D.

“The Irish film industry is producing so many original movies these days. Just from what I’ve seen, things look good. There seems to be a big upswing. People should come out and see these films. If they like edgy, “Outcast” is for them. If they want something lighter, that’s still intriguing, captivating and fun, then they have to see “Two Brothers.”

For more information on the Philadelphia Film Festival, including a full list of the movies showing and their schedules, go to: http://www.filmadelphia.org/

October 15, 2010 by Lori Lander Murphy

Music, People

Luka Bloom Debuts His Latest CD in the US Next Week

Irish folk-rocker Luka Bloom will appear at the Sellersville Theatre.

Luka Bloom has a pretty good plan for his current east coast tour of the U.S. He’s timed it to coincide with the turning of the leaves from summer’s green to their full burst of autumnal glory. The Irish singer-songwriter, who spent a good number of years living in New York, knows his fall foliage.

The man who was born Kevin Barry Moore, and re-purposed himself as Luka Bloom when he launched his career in the States in 1987, was en route from Maine to Vermont when we talked on the phone about his tour (it’s a brief two and a half weeks), his latest CD (“Dreams in America”)and his nephew Donnacha Rynne’s recently published book (it was his idea).

Although a short one, his tour includes a stop at The Sellersville Theatre on October 7. “I’ve always had great shows in the Philadelphia area,” he said. “I’ve played at The World Café, The Tin Angel, The Chestnut Cabaret. I’m really looking forward to this one.”

He’s bringing with him some old songs that have been reinvented for his latest CD, “Dreams in America.”

“It’s really a celebration of twenty years of writing songs and recording them. I’m not a huge fan of nostalgia,” Bloom acknowledged. “I think it’s highly overrated. But it’s okay to take a look back and reflect. It’s like hitting the pause button.”

The songs on the album, eleven of them including the new incarnations of “The Acoustic Motorbike,” “Bridge of Sorrow” and “Don’t Be So Hard On Yourself,” represent Bloom’s determination to “live in the nowness of life,” a thought borrowed from his wheelchair-bound nephew.

“This gave me the chance to go back and revisit where I was when I originally wrote the songs. I didn’t necessarily want to re-record the ones that became popular. In some cases, I loved the song but not the original recording. They’re more stripped down, raw versions on this album. I recorded it in my living room in Ireland last December.”

And Bloom felt it was time to include a song new for him as well: the traditional “Lord Franklin.” A very beautiful, simple interpretation, he sings it as a tribute to a late friend of his, Micheal O’Domhnaill, whose rendition he considers “the definitive one.”

Two live tracks, “I Hear Her, Like Lorelei” and “Love is a Monsoon,” recorded in the National Concert Hall in Dublin in August 2009, round out the CD that Bloom ultimately wants to be a thank you to “the places and people who opened their hearts and minds to the songs of a Kildareman…The period of 1987 to 1991 was an unbelievably exciting one. Things took off for me in America, particularly in New York. It’s a very nice exercise to reflect back on that time and be grateful.”

There’s another current project that is close to Bloom’s heart: the publication of his nephew’s book “Being Donnacha” (read the story in this week’s irishphiladelphia). Donnacha, born with cerebral palsy, and later diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, is a source of inspiration to Bloom. In fact, he wrote a song, “Doing the Best I Can” for him (the lyrics are included in the book).

“It’s a very important book, there are so many levels to it. It will be beneficial to so many people to hear his voice; he gives a voice to people who haven’t been heard. People who are themselves disabled, their families and their carers will all find it meaningful.”

“Donnacha lives constantly in the nowness of life. He gives a voice to living with a disability that needs to be heard. He has tough days but his strengths have always been very apparent. And something about writing this book has given him fresh strength to go on.”

“There’s something very poignant in seeing the first American article about Donnacha’s book published in Philadelphia. A very dear friend of the family, Lester Conner, lived most of his life in Philadelphia. He died about five years ago. He was a professor at Chestnut Hill College for a number of years, a great literary giant and highly academic man who was an expert on W.B. Yeats. He published “A Yeats Dictionary.” My sister Anne met him back in 1967 when he lectured at Trinity College, and he became godfather to her oldest son. He would visit every year, and Donnacha was very important to him. He would have loved to have seen Donnacha’s book.”

“It’s an important bit of serendipity.”

Visit Luka’s website for more information on his CD and his upcoming concerts: http://www.lukabloom.com/

October 2, 2010 by Lori Lander Murphy

Older Posts

Newer Posts