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Review: Celtic Fiddle Festival’s “Equinoxe”

We’re not even two months into the new year, but I think we already have a serious contender for best Celtic music CD of 2008.

It’s “Equinoxe,” the latest incarnation of Celtic Fiddle Festival—featuring the phenomenal Kevin Burke, Christian Lemaitre and André Brunet. Guitarist Ged Foley, Burke’s Patrick Street partner, accompanies the fiddlers throughout. (He also gets a chance to shine on the solo “Sydney Smith’s March,” which has a lush Baroque feel to it.)

Released on Burke’s Loftus label—on February 19, technically, though it’s already up on Amazon—“Equinoxe” is 11 solid tracks highlighting the various Celtic musical contributions of Ireland, Brittany and Quebec. So you’ll hear tunes as diverse as “Jig de Valcartier” and House of Hammill,” by Philly’s own master tune plumber Ed Reavy. At times, as on the opening track—“Twilight in Portroe,” “Austin Tierney’s” and the aforementioned “Hammill”— the boys play together. At still other times, a single fiddler is accompanied only by Foley.

It’s all masterfully presented, but for my money, the tracks that just cry out to be jacked up to 10 on your car stereo (and you’ll probably hit “RPT,” too) are those in which the three fiddlers and Foley play together. My personal favorite is the seventh track, a set consisting of “Reel de Napoleon,” ”Reel en Sol” and “Guy Thomas.”

(And I want to take this opportunity to apologize to the poor lady in the car next to mine at a red light on Route 1 in Plainsboro, N.J. I didn’t mean to “whoop” that loud. I’ll pay for the Depends, I promise.)

And lucky us—we get to hear Celtic Fiddle Festival Sunday, February 24, at 7:30 p.m., at the Sellersville Theater. It will be the band’s only area appearance.

February 14, 2008 by
People

Still Inflammable: Stiff Little Fingers

Two days have gone by, and my ears are still ringing.

Stiff Little Fingers, the pioneering punk band from Belfast, played to a hugely enthusastic audience Monday night at World Cafe, many of them leather-clad, studded, and pierced in places I’d rather not think about. And me, fresh from the office in a tweed sportcoat and khakis, a symphony in corporate browns and tans. (I felt like a salesman at an Amway convention who’d blundered into Sid and Nancy’s wedding reception.)

I’ll admit from the outset that, yes, I probably have lived under a rock for the past 56 years. Until a few weeks ago, I’d never heard of Stiff Little Fingers. But I followed the links to the “artist’s MySpace site” from the World Café Web page, and listened to a few of their tunes, and right away, I thought: Interesting. To my ears (still intact at the time), SLF sounded very unlike what I expected to hear. That is to say, they sounded … musical. 

What I heard were great, snarling yarns of anger and general pissed-offness, and yet nothing about SLF’s songs seems cliché. It all rings true. The guitarwork (by Jake Burns, who is also the group’s lead singer) is easily on a par with anything I’ve ever heard Pete Townshend play. The energy level of the band is far in excess of what one would expect from a bunch of guys who started playing together 30 years ago—and who look a lot like your average, paunchy guys-next-door, the type you’d not be surprised to see on a Saturday morning, queuing up at Sears to buy cans of semi-gloss wall paint.

Naturally, I had to go.

Unfortunately, I did not have time to swing by the house and pick up my ear plugs, so I decided to risk it. How bad could it be?

It was bad. And, oh, it was good. It’s safe to say that one SLF concert probably did more damage to my hearing than 10 years of playing drums in a bagpipe band. I won’t tell you that it was worth it. (Believe me, if you want to keep hearing and playing music, it is never worth it.) But it might have been an acceptable sacrifice.

To celebrate their 30 years in the business, the band performed tunes from “Inflammable Material,” their 1979 debut album. (“Like CDs, but bigger, and made of vinyl, and you could play both sides,” Burns informed the younger crowd.)
 
As with most punk bands, alienation is SLF’s stock in trade. But I think you could argue that kids coming of age in Belfast 30 years ago would have had a unique worldview.

Take for example, these lyrics from “Wasted Life:”

I could be a hero
Live and die for their ‘important’ cause
A united nation
Or an independent state with laws
And rules and regulations
That merely cause disturbances and wars
That is what I’ve got now
All thanks to the freedom-seeking hordes

Or these, from “Barbed Wire Love:”

I met you in No Man’s Land
Across the wire we were holding hands
Hearts a-bubble in the rubble
It was love at bomb site

Alrighty, then.

It might all seem silly and trite, I suppose, except that Burns spits out those now ancient lyrics with such conviction, and backs them up with guitar hacks of such volume and ferocity, it’s as if he’s shoving all of that pent-up angst through a musical wood chipper.

At the same time, I can only stand back in breathless admiration of Ali McMordie, who wields his bass like a battle sword; guitarist and backup vocalist Ian McCallum, with his daring leaps; and drummer Steve Grantley, who pounded sticks into kindling the whole night long. It’s reassuring to see guys my age who can still dish it out. They can hold their own with any band on the planet, regardless of age.

All that, and you’ll probably never hear “Barbed Wire Love” used to peddle Cadillac Escalades. And Jake Burns will never perform a duet with Cher.

Thank God.

November 14, 2007 by
Music

CD Review: “Four Cups of Coffee” by Seamus Kelleher

Seamus Kelleher at Blackthorn's Wildwood bash.

Seamus Kelleher at Blackthorn's Wildwood bash.

Seamus Kelleher’s first solo CD is tailor-made for my demographic: the baby boomer with eclectic musical tastes.  Before he went off to record it in Nashville a few months ago, a friend advised him, “Be yourself,” and Kelleher says he was. Clearly, he’s a baby boomer with eclectic musical tastes.

Because of that, “Four Cups of Coffee” defies pigeonholing. Though Kelleher comes from Galway, it’s not entirely Celtic. Though he plays a mean rock guitar, it’s not entirely rock. Though it was recorded in the birthplace of country music, it’s not country. Not entirely. But because he decided it would reflect who he is, it is entirely Seamus Kelleher, which makes listening to “Four Cups of Coffee” a strangely intimate experience. It’s not unusual for performers to reveal some hidden part of their personal lives in their work, but “Four Cups of Coffee” is like an autobiography set to music.

On this CD, you’ll quickly pick up on Kelleher’s own musical influences. He does a rocking blues cover of “What’s Going On” by the late Donegal songwriter and guitarist, Rory Gallagher,  whom Kelleher met once, at the age of 15, as Gallagher was coming out of a concert hall. The brief encounter–Gallagher talked to the teen musician for about 20 minutes–led him to consider himself “somewhat keeper of the flame with Rory,” Kelleher told me a few weeks ago. “It was a kindness I’ll never forget–he was probably dying for a drink.” In 2005, Kelleher helped organize a tribute to Gallagher in New York. A film of the event was released on DVD.

On “Dust My Blues,” he channels a black blues guitarist from Mississippi, Elmore James, known as “king of the slide guitar” who was dead by the time Kelleher was nine but who nevertheless still exerts his influence on guitarists everywhere–like Rory Gallagher–who admire the way he electrified the moaning Delta blues sound. Kelleher came to James through an even older musician, Robert Johnson, who recorded “Dust My Blues” in 1936.

 “Missing My Hometown” could have been written during any of the waves of the Irish diaspora–or by anyone of a certain age whose thoughts turn to years gone by and the people loved and left behind. An instrumental reprise at the end of the CD reveals a tune that’s just as poignant without lyrics. Kelleher also remembers two long-lost friends, one with a tune he wrote to memorialize a 35-year friendship (“My Friend Ben”) and the other, “Madame,” by his friend Kevin Garvey, which he and Garvey had recorded 30 years before in his apartment. 

“September Skies,” which also appears on Blackthorn’s “Push and Pull” CD, is poignant to the point of painful. It’s a song Kelleher wrote after 9/11 about the effect of the tragedy on his town, Cranford, NJ, which lost six people that day. Kelleher, who was teaching at NYU at the time, found himself more a counselor than a teacher because so many of his students lived in dorms across from the World Trade Center. “This is definitely my story,” he says. “My wife and I worked in the World Trade Center back in the late ‘90s and we knew every inch of the towers. We knew some of the people who were killed there, six from our town. My neighbor across the street just got out of the towers before they fell. He said to me, ‘Seamus, I’ve seen things today no man should.’”

It’s the CD’s title tune, “Four Cups of Coffee”– a raunchy bluesy riff on personal demons, including but not limited to caffeine–that’s been getting the most requests at Blackthorn gigs. It’s funny, catchy, and feels uncomfortably like Kelleher’s stab at true confession. (He admits it is.)

 But where I keep hitting the back button are on Kelleher’s instrumentals. “Spanish Lady,” which he wrote, is his first attempt at “finger-picking, Chet Atkins style.” I can’t get enough of it. He admits that he had to “stretch” for this one, and took a major risk putting a finger-picking piece on an album produced by a US finger-picking champion, Peter Huttlinger. It could have been a humbling experience–and in many ways, Kelleher says, it was. But if he wasn’t going to take some risks at this point in the game, when was he? It’s a great piece. It will be the track that wears out first on my CD. 

“Aran,” is another, an evocative, very Celtic piece that calls to mind the limestone cliffs and crumbled ruins of the islands Kelleher could see from his native Galway. “Corinna” is the only song which seems to absorbed the Nashville influence: It’s a little bit Celtic, a little bit country, very jaunty and lyrical. It’s named for his nephew’s girlfriend who liked the tune. Alas, that romance is no more, but a lovely little song lives on.

 And “Nashville Ceili Band?” Imagine a bunch of top musicians who are used to backing the likes of Garth Brooks and The Dixie Chicks sitting in the pub, nursing frothy Guinnesses, playing a string of Irish trad tunes (which aren’t trad at all–Kelleher wrote them, and they’re the most Irish of all the tracks on the CD). You’ll be hitting the back button too.

To order the CD or download a track, go to www.seamuskelleher.com

October 23, 2007 by
Music

Anúna’s Lush Harmonies Come to Annenberg

The superb Irish choral group Anúna.

The superb Irish choral group Anúna.

Picture long, flowing robes and long, flowing pre-Raphaelite hair. (Except for the guys.) Envision silken-voiced sopranos hitting notes so high, dogs two states away stop dead in their tracks and say, “Hey, what the heck was that?”

Yup. That’s Anúna.

Even though the group has been around 20 years—exactly the same age as its youngest member—it only just made its Philadelphia debut on Friday at Penn’s Annenberg Center.

It was not a full house (unfortunately), but director John McGlynn and his band of singers made the best of it.

Anúna is currently flacking a new CD and DVD, “Celtic Origins,” and PBS stations all over the country are promoting the heck out of that performance for fund-raising purposes. No complaints there. Anything that gets the local PBS programmers off the odious André Reieu can only be a good thing.

Anúna’s live performance turns out to as thrilling as what you see on the PBS special. It’s better, actually. In live performance, Anúna takes full advantage of the whole theatre. At the show’s beginning, voices come at the audience out of the dark from all directions, rising and falling, filling the hall with superb, complex harmonies. Eventually, after a bit of mystical meandering, all the singers do wind up on stage, and pretty much remain there for the duration of the show.

In Philadelphia, the group performed several cuts form the new CD and DVD, including “Greensleeves,” “Scarborough Fair” and “I Dreamt I Dwelt in Marble Halls,” the latter performed beautifully by the smoky alto Miriam Blennerhassett, the group’s choral mistress and a founding member of Anúna.

There were also some tunes from previous CDs, including the wonder “Winter Fire and Snow,” “Dúlamán,” “Riu Riu,” “Siuil A Ruin” and the haunting “Piè Jesu.”

Small though the audience was, it was hugely appreciative, rewarding the group with a standing ovation. Anúna returned the gesture with a blazing performance of the tongue-twisting “Fionnghuala.” (If you think saying it is hard, try singing it.) If you have no idea what “Fionnghuala” is or what it sounds like, head on over to our YouTube channel for a video I recorded (not a very good one, I’m afraid) during the group’s summer promotional tour at the Center City Borders.

And, if and when Anúna shows up in your neck of the woods again, catch this very polished and memorable act.

October 16, 2007 by
Music

The House I Was Reared In – Christy McNamara

By Frank Dalton

Christy McNamara’s new CD, “The House I Was Reared In,” took me by surprise. I’d known of his evocative photography since reading “The Living Note: the Heartbeat of Irish Music.” This 1996 book was a fictional narrative of a young traditional musician and his family. Accompanying and complementing the text by Peter Woods, your man Christy’s striking black-and-white images captured and displayed the essence of what Irish traditional music is all about—in session at the pub, at weddings and wakes, and in sundry other real-life circumstances. It’s great stuff and you should read the book if you can.

But I wasn’t hip to McNamara’s considerable prowess on the button accordion. Yes, Christy’s a musician, too. In the sleeve notes we read that “It’s always the music … sometimes it seems as if life happens between the notes of tunes”. Well, yeah, that’s true for you, Christy, I’m sure! Hailing from the parish of Crusheen in County Clare, as a kid he heard his grandfather Jim play the concertina. His father Joe and uncle Paddy played the accordion, while another uncle was the great fiddler P.J. Hayes, a founding member of the legendary and long-lived Tulla Ceili Band.

This collection of 17 reels, jigs, waltzes, and slow airs showcases these and many other musical influences. Joined by fiddler Martin Hayes (also a cousin), guitarist Denis Cahill, flute player Eamonn Cotter, and fiddlers Liam Lewis and Peadar O’Loughlin, Christy expertly renders a selection of familiar tunes like the reels “My Love is in America,” “The Copperplates” and “Toss the Feathers,” and jigs like “Scatter the Mud,” “The Kesh” and “Old Man Dillon.” A few less familiar pieces stand out: “I Ne’er Shall Win Her” is a lovely jig I’d never heard before, from Mrs. Murphy of Ballydesmond in County Kerry; “John Naughton’s Reel” is from a Kilclaran concertina player (sure it’s about halfway between Gortnamearacaun and Cloonusker); while “John McHugh’s” was learned from that tune’s namesake who learned it from his grandfather in County Mayo. Christy also treats us to a pair of his own compositions, the waltz “Tae Pot Wood” and a reel, “The Maid’s Lake.”

I forgot to mention that as well as knowing his way around the two-row button accordion Christy is a fine concertina player too (on “The Bunch of Roses,” and “Molly Put The Kettle On”). To top it all off, he sings on the slow air “May Morning Dew,” a moving song of emigration, sorrow and loss.

The CD comes in one of those environmentally conscious ‘digi-packs’ (no plastic jewel box to drop and break and toss into the trash) and contains a 24 page booklet filled mostly with some lovely photographs from the McNamara family archives and some of Christy’s own shots of other musicians, young and old. This is a very worthwhile addition to your collection, especially if you have a fondness for the lovely and unhurried music of County Clare, as I myself do.

Frank Dalton is the organizer of the Coatesville Traditional Irish Music Series.

September 8, 2007 by
Music

“Michael Black” (Compass)

To start with, Michael Black’s eponymous first CD is produced by the supremely gifted Celtic guitarist John Doyle. Doyle also plays on several tracks.

Add to Doyle, this supporting cast: Seamus Egan of Solas, Philadelphia bassist and veteran setman Chico Huff, fiddle master Liz Carroll, Kentucky Celtic fiddler Liz Knowles, Solas alum and accordion virtuoso John Williams, and Appalachian fiddler (think “Cold Mountain”) Dirk Powell. Oh, yes, and throw in a few members of the unnaturally gifted Black family, with backing vocals by Mary, Frances, Shay and Martin. Additional backing vocals are by Eoghan Scott, and Danny and Roisin O’Reilly.

So how is the album? Ummmm, OK, I guess … you know, if you like genius and an overabundance of talent and things of that sort.

At the center of it all, of course, is Michael Black. During a week in which we noted the passing of Tom Makem, I found myself listening to this CD and thinking that the tradition truly lives on in the form of so many younger traditional artists—but it is clearly alive and well on Black’s work on this album.

Black’s vocal style compares favorably to that of Makem and the Clancys. (There are times, too, when he sounds vaguely like Harry Chapin.) In any event, Black’s story-songs, a couple with anti-war undercurrents— “The Deserter,” and “When the Boys Are on Parade”—would have fit right in at the old Newport Folk Festival.

It’s not all serious, though. Take, for example, the loopy “My Father Loves Nikita Kruschev,” a tune performed by Makem himself on an old Polydor album, “In the Dark Green Woods.” “Billy O’Shea” is a great sing-along song—and I guarantee that you will sing along to this one in the car.

“Michael Black” might be the best ‘60s Irish folk album released in the early part of the 21st century. Tommy Makem can rest easy. The tradition is in able hands.

August 10, 2007 by
Music

“A Letter Home” – Athena Tergis (Compass)

Fiddler Athena Tergis approaches her task with the ease and delicacy of a glassblower.

It’s probably because of Tergis’s deceptively light style of play that, at first, I was not over the moon about her debut CD on the Compass label, “A Letter Home.”

Tergis, a San Francisco kid, was on track to become a classical violinist when, she says, she was “tricked” into attending Alasdair Fraser’s Valley of the Moon fiddle camp. One of the teachers that summer was Altan’s Mairead Ni Mhaonaigh. She went on to study with Ni Mhaonaigh, Alasdair Fraser and Cape Breton master fiddler Buddy MacMaster. She was the Junior National Scottish Fiddling champ three years running.

When it came time to attend college—she was slated to attend Berklee—she decided instead to live in Ireland for three years and soak up the music.

I can only imagine that there were some interesting conversations in the Tergis household at the time. Turning your back on Berklee? Yikes. But judging by her performance on “A Letter Home,” she made the right choice. It was time well spent.

The CD is produced by the gifted guitarist John Doyle, who also plays guitar and bouzouki on several tracks. Tergis is also accompanied by Liz Carroll on fiddle, the ubiquitous Chico Huff on bass, Natalie Haas on cello, Billy McComiskey and Sharon Shannon on accordion, and Ben Wittman on percussion.

My tastes generally run to the so-called “supergroups” like Solas, Flook and Lunasa. Performances by those bands are muscular, even a little macho. It eventually dawned on me that I was listening to Athena Tergis’s performance with the wrong ears. If Solas is Celtic stadium rock, Athena Tergis is cool jazz. Comparing Athena Tergis to Seamus Egan would be like comparing Diana Krall to Roger Daltrey.

There are no trombones or soprano saxophones on “A Letter Home.” No conga drums or timbales. Instead, there is Haas’s lush and luscious cello and some slick, whispery brushwork by Wittman. The accompaniment here never threatens to overwhelm or dominate. Instead, it gently, unobtrusively frames Tergis’s polished performance on a wide variety of traditional tunes, from “Johnny McGreevy’s” (a reel) to “Bi Falbh O’n Uinneig” (“Be Gone from the Window,” a slow air).

I particularly liked (as determined by the number of times I left my car CD player setting on “Repeat”) “In Memory of Coleman/Paddy Fahy’s)”, a lovely set of reels – not pounded out at the usual breakneck tempo but instead played at a leisurely pace. Tergis seems to be not so much playing the tunes as savoring them. (You will, too.) “Coleman” was written by Philly’s own Ed Reavy. (One other local tie: Many of the tracks were recorded at Morning Star Studios in Springhouse, outside of Philadelphia.)

I also gave the “Repeat” button a workout on another set, which began with a strathspey, “Miss Lyall”—I love the jerky percussiveness of strathspeys—which smoothly morphed into a set of reels, including “Paddy Ryan’s Dream,” “Con Cassidy’s Highland” and an unknown Donegal reel.

The concluding slow air, “Be Gone from the Window” is heartbreakingly lovely.

 I suspect “A Letter Home” will earn your own stamp of approval.

August 10, 2007 by
Music

The Kane Sisters in Concert at the Philadelphia Irish Center

The sisters share a laugh.

The sisters share a laugh.

The first time somebody told me the Kane Sisters were coming to the Irish Center, my 56-year-old hearing failed me.

“You mean the Haynes Sisters, from ‘White Christmas?’ The ones with the brother known as ‘Freckle-Faced Haynes, the Dog-Faced Boy?”

I was incredulous. (I didn’t believe it, either.)

It didn’t take me long to sort things out. OK, maybe a day or two. And of course, I went to their recent concert at the Philadelphia Irish Center.  Why? Let’s just say I did it for an old friend in the Army.

Seriously? I went because Liz and Yvonne Kane are outstanding practitioners of the light, ornamented South Sligo style, and they were all but guaranteed to put on a superb show. I wasn’t disappointed.

Drummer that I am, I couldn’t help but love the light-speed reels. But I was more or less equally entranced by just about everything else they played.

What’s most notable about a Kane Sisters performance, though, is the smooth and seamless synchronicity of their playing. They race through complex triplets and rolls, bows sawing up and down the strings in precise, virtually identical patterns. One is the virtual mirror image of the other. To have one fiddler who plays so masterfully is one thing; to have two, side by side, so evenly matched in every respect, can be breath-taking.

The traditional music fans who weren’t down the Shore on the night of the show also received a pretty cool bonus. Jon and Nathan Pilatzke, the crazy-legged Ottawa Valley step dancers who have toured with the Chieftains, among others, made an unexpected guest appearance.

The concert took place in the Irish Center’s Fireside Room. There’s no stage there, as such, and therefore, no off-stage. So when it was time for them to make their appearance, the boys popped out of the nearby ladies room. They wasted no time or effort in pounding what I imagine were huge dents in the floor, drawing whoops and hollers from the appreciative fans in the room and at the bar.

If you didn’t make it, check out our photos.

July 29, 2007 by