Paul Brady has been gearing up for the release of his new album, Hooba Dooba (see interview page this issue). He's also been re-vamping his website. Already on Facebook, Twitter and Bebo, he has embraced the web with open arms and the new website will be featuring the 'Brady blog', where he’ll be posting from the road and from home. The downside is that, if you were a newsletter subscriber on his site before, you’ll have to go back now and sign up again. However, he’s taking the sting out of it by offering a free download to anyone who makes the effort.

He releases Hooba Dooba March 12 in Ireland and March 15 everywhere else. If you choose to download it you’ll get a bonus track: a version of ‘Steel Claw’ with a new vocal if you buy from Amazon and ‘Finally It’s The Right Time’ if you buy from iTunes.
Sometimes a band’s self image – or at least how it talks about itself – can be way off the mark. For instane, BLVD Park describe themselves as a "spaghetti western folk band". Before I heard them I had expected some second-hand, if not second-rate, Ennio Morricone schtick with some lonesome prairie whistles and a bit of whip-cracking.
The music they make is something entirely different. The songs appear to be laid down as close to live in the studio as is possible. There’s none of the gloss or studio trickery we’ve now come to expect from a modern recording. This LP could have been made 30 years ago and would have sounded exactly the same. The songs have a looseness that speaks to a love of old school southern rock, absorbed through a filter of alt-country.
It’s almost as if Crazy Horse and Richmond Fontaine had got it on one night and this was the result. The playing has that easy, muscular shrug. Even in the more hesitant passages, there’s an assured feel to proceedings. Brian Ballentine’s gruff voice rasps over the top of the bustling guitars. And then, as if they’ve been parachuted in from a Mamas and Papas record, Elise Suttie and Tekla Waterfield-Austin appear, with backing vocals almost too angelic for words.
The Seamus Ennis Centre in Naul is well established as a venue for music. However, it is still capable of throwing the odd curveball. In fact one of the most interesting events coming up there in the near future is not strictly speaking a musical affair. Friday March 19 finds writer Joseph O’Connor and musician, broadcaster and lateral thinker Philip King gracing the stage to discuss the place of traditional music in contemporary culture.
Not that the venue has turned its back on trad. Noel Shine and Mary Greene play there on Saturday March 13.The next day the space is thrown open for a session, with the same to follow on St. Patrick’s Day. The venue also runs instrument tuition through the year and helps keep the fire alive by not only teaching but by providing a performance outlet too. Major touring acts like Crooked Still, who perform at the venue on Saturday March 20 are, well aware that in terms of a dedicated audience in a venue where the quality of the sound is a paramount concern there are few venues that can equal it. That same attention to detail is no less apparent though when the venue hosts concerts by a local performer like Gerry O’Connor, who plays there Friday March 26 or an emerging artist like James Vincent McMorrow, who plays the following evening.
As it gears up to host this year’s Fleadh Ceoil, Co. Cavan is also celebrating its own distinctive musical heritage with the NYAH Festival. In its seventh year, it runs at venues all across the county from Wednesday March 10 to Sunday March 28, with concerts in the Farnham Arms in Cavan town, the Ramor Theatre in Virginia, the Widows Bar in Belturbet and Kilnaleck hall.
One of the highlights of the event is the launch of a four disc retrospective of the work of harmonica player Eamonn ‘Eddie’ Clarke, a master of Traditional Irish Music on the Chromatic Harmonica who was active from the mid 1960s up to the late 1980s, and who died in 2004. To mark the launch, there will be a concert in the Ramor Theatre on Friday March 19, featuring harmonica players Sean Walshe, Noel Battle and Aoife Geoghegan with support from several other players.
Chief amongst the other highlights of this year’s festival will be a performance from button accordion legend Joe Burke, who heads a Gala Concert at the Farnham Hotel on Saturday 13th March. Featuring a host of talented performers, many of whom are at the start of their careers, this concert, compered by Kieran Hanrahan of RTE’s Ceili House, will celebrate the election of Cavan’s champion lilter Seamus Fay as All-Ireland Fleadh President 2010.
Musiclee have announced a clutch of concerts over the next couple of months in Whelan’s, the Button Factory and the Cherrytree in Walkinstown, their normal base of operations. First off is Crooked Still who will be playing a city centre show at Whelans on Tuesday March 16. Scullion will be making one of their occasional outing at the Button Factory on Sunday March 21. Homegrown legends Mick Hanly and Arty McGlynn will be performing together at the Cherrytree on Saturday April 24 while Scottish legend Dick Gaughan will be performing in Whelan’s on Monday April 26.