It’s a band named after the Celtic goddess of war, strife and fertility. (Or war, fate and death—your pick. Except for the fertility bit, she’s not a cheery chick, in any case.)
Of course, there’s so much more to The Morrigan, a circle of Irish musical friends, now anchoring the Molly Maguires traditional music session in Phoenixville. How about passion—and maybe throw in a bit of fun and occasional mischief?
Members include fiddler Mary Malone; uilleann piper, flutist and whistle whiz Den Vykopal; John LaValley on guitar, mandolin and concertina; bouzouki and button accordion player Bud Burroughs. They’re all Philly-area traditional Irish music session veterans.
Like many traditional Irish musicians, they came to the music sometimes by circuitous routes—but somehow or other, they came just the same.
We asked them to tell us a bit about themselves. Here’s what they had to say.
Q. You all seem to have come to Irish music by different routes. One or two of you have family ties. As for the rest, it seems a happy accident that you somehow found Irish music and were hooked. It also looks like, for some of you with musical inclinations, you were acquainted with some other form of music first. What drew you to Irish music? What keeps you?
Mary: I played mostly classical music until my friend and fellow Philadelphia Ceili Group member Susan Cavanaugh, a fine Irish dancer, persuaded me to take ceili, then set dancing classes. I was (am) a miserable dancer, but I loved the music, and, coming from a classical background where you learn tunes by reading music, I was intrigued when I would see the musicians in the sessions playing for hours at a time—and with no music. How do they do that???
I was advised to start going to the sessions at The Mermaid Inn (Chestnut Hill) where I met a lot of people from the Philly Irish community who helped me make the transition from classical violin to traditional Irish fiddle – Chris Brennan-Hagy, Kitty Kelly and Johnny Brennan got me started, then I started being coached by Den Vykopal—in the unique way that only a Slavic-Germanic, Irish-trad purist, musical savant can coach you. And I became immersed in the music. My son Dave Palan, who is a professional musician often, hints that I am obsessed, and should diversify.
I stay, in part because it is great music, I am obsessed (there is always another tune to learn) and because of the people and the community—that extends around the world. No matter where you are there is likely to be a session, and you have instant friends. I was traveling on my job in Oslo, Norway, and happened upon The Oslo Irish Festival and the sessions there. It also happened to occur during the week of 9/11/2001 when I watched the planes fly into the world trade center from a European cable TV lab I was working in at the time. The musicians I met in the session there kept me sane during that crazy time when I was away from my family and friends and country. They saved seats at the concerts for me, played tunes with me, and they loved me—as I was part of the community of Irish trad musicians. And the Irish traditional music community is even better when you are at home with the people you have been playing tunes with for years. My mood can be off for an entire week if I don’t get out to play a tune with Kevin McGillian (what a great human being) at The Shanachie, for example.
Bud: I got into Irish music gradually. I heard a lot of bluegrass as a kid, then had classical piano and organ training, and then became a rock guitarist. A lot of the music I liked was influenced by Irish and English folk music (Jethro Tull, Fairport Convention, etc.). Sometime in my late 20s, I decided to get a mandolin, just to have something different to play. I started poking around on the internet for tunes to play and discovered that there were thousands of Irish tunes available, and they made a great learning resource. Eventually, I met Mary at work and she introduced me to Irish sessions. I started going, and learning more tunes, and eventually moved on to playing bouzouki and button accordion, and never stopped learning more tunes.
John: My musical memory came from my Irish and Irish-American parents and grandparents, some of them immigrants, coal miners, outlaws, policemen or the less savory sort who enjoyed the stories in country music and the romanticism embodied in popular and classical music. It reminded them of who they were.
I moved away from enjoying rock music in the early ‘70s and began to be drawn toward folk music—first the blues, then bluegrass, and finally Celtic music, which provided for me that same sense of cultural connection.
Q. Den, it seems like you came the longest, most roundabout route to Irish music. But given your background with Czech bagpipes, maybe it was not so much of a stretch. Was it? And I’m really curious to know how you first made that connection.
Den: Actually it wasn’t my piping that took me to Irish music. It was my flute playing. People forget that I was “just” a flute player not too long ago. I started on the pipes only about nine years ago.
As a classical flute player I was a huge fan of James Galway whom I consider the greatest soloist who ever lived. I never heard Paganini in person but I’d bet anyone Galway far surpassed him. The man is simply incredible. And since James Galway did two stints with the Chieftains I got to know Matt Molloy’s playing and I got hooked on the simple system wooden flute.
To me, playing Irish music is like playing anything. You have to have musical heart, ear and rhythm. In my life I played all kinds of music on the sax, flute, clarinet and guitar. I played on Norwegian cruise liners and in German clubs around Philly and the last fifteen years I’ve mostly frequented Irish bars where Irish trad is played. I’ll keep playing Irish and Celtic trad because I’ve become addicted to it.
Q. How did you decide to get together as a group? I know that you’ve all played together for some time.
Mary: We met playing at The Mermaid Inn. I gravitated towards John and Den and their playing. They had been playing together at the session for a couple of years by the time I met them, and they had such a great sound. John played guitar almost exclusively back then (1997) and it was before Den picked up the pipes, so he was playing flute mostly and sometimes whistle.
Den would give me transcriptions for tunes, and I would come back the next week and play the tunes with them. He gave me a Jerry Holland set of tunes to learn, and somehow, I ended up playing them at the Celtic Classic Fiddle Competition in Bethlehem with John accompanying me. And soon after that we started playing tunes at Den’s house.
Around the same time, I had recently started working with Bud Burroughs, and invited him to come to the session at The Mermaid – and it turned out that Buddy is a musical savant, then he started playing with Den, John and I.
Over the next year or so, I met Dave Hanson, another extremely talented musician, when he started coming out to the sessions with his kids—and his bodhran. Wow! And I asked Dave to join us—whenever we have a paying gig, he is the first guy we call.
Over the years we have played with various people—life gets crazy and people get pulled in different directions—but even if only sporadically, we have continued to play together. And other people have joined us, most recently, Judy Brennan.
Bud: Playing together happened gradually. All of us played at The Mermaid Inn and other sessions around the area and started getting together socially and to play music. Eventually, I think it was Mary who found us a gig somewhere, and we realized that people liked what we were playing, so we kept doing it!
Q. And why? Was there a sense that you could play things together as a group that you wouldn’t ordinarily be able to do as musicians in an Irish music session?
John: When you play in a session with like-minded friends, you always feel as thiough you are part of something greater, not playing music so much as participating in intangible emotions. That is the “mystic” that Van Morrison might cite if he were here. (He’s not!)
Mary: When you play in a band, especially if you are really proficient, it is much more satisfying in that you can choose what to play, get really good at some tunes and sets, arrange sets, play more difficult and challenging tunes—and you can also control the level of playing by the level of talent.
In a session, you don’t necessarily have to be proficient on an instrument in order to play. A lot of people come to learn, not just tunes, but instruments—because part of keeping the tradition alive is to have new people learn the tradition, the tunes and the traditional instruments. So as long as you know “Out on the Ocean,” and can scratch it out on your fiddle, and keep the beat—then you are in.
And I need to do it, because, as Den likes to point out (with respect, I might add) that I have my standards. (Hey, if Den gives you a compliment, you take it.)
Bud: By playing together as a group, we get to experiment with arrangements, and approaching things in a more disciplined way than the typical session free-for-all. Playing in a session and performing for an audience are both fun, but are completely different experiences.
Q. Does playing the session at Molly Maguires in Phoenixville seem like a good way for you guys to stay sharp as a group? Or to work on material? Or is that really a different kind of musical outlet for you?
Mary: Playing at Molly Maguire’s together once a month is about the only way we are able to keep playing together at this time in our lives—and my playing is at its very, very best when I am playing with these guys. Bud is playing with Boris Garcia and touring and doing gigs like the Philly Folk Fest and Sellersville Theatre on November 28, where they are releasing a phenomenally arranged and produced CD. (Den plays on it too.) Den and I both have new jobs that are taking up a lot of our time. And we love having Judy play with us, and the piano backup provides Bud and John the opportunity to both play melody instruments (concertina, pipes, button accordion, and banjo.)
Bud: Molly Maguires gives us a good excuse to get together and play on a regular basis. We can work on new tunes and practice the stuff we’ve played for years. Plus, it’s a lot of fun!