Folk That: Food For Thought

Monday, by and large, isn’t a great gig-going night. Sometimes, though, you shrug off that jaded feeling and decide to give something a shot. What else, realistically, can a Monday night offer?

If you happen to be in the neighbourhood of Dublin’s Wexford Street on the evening of Monday, March 3 and hoping for a blinding light to lift the shackles from your eyes, get yourself inside Whelan's to behold the wondrous entity that is Enter The Haggis (pictured).
Anyone with more than a passing acquaintance with my meanderings will know I hate - with a capital H, and capitals A, T and E thrown in for good measure - jokey band names. Paul Woodfull can do it. You guys can’t. OK? End of! For this shower of Toronto miscreants, though, I’ll make an exception. The name suits them.
They don’t take themselves too seriously, though they’re seriously good musicians. Onstage they pull off an almost unthinkable blend of trad, agitfolk, bluegrass, rock, latino and half a dozen other genres without ever getting gimmicky. And when you take stock of the lyrics, you can see that their sense of humour is laced with a passionate concern about the state of the world. Hometown heroes since the late ’90s, they’ve been building a monster following across North America, and although they made it as far as their spiritual homeland of Scotland a couple of years back, they are pitifully under-appreciated on this side of the pond...
It’s hard to believe – I mean the ice was a half-inch thick on my windscreen this morning – but we’re almost back into festival season already, this year’s crop kicking off with the Corofin Traditional Festival on Sunday, February 24. The festival looks at an interesting phenomenon in Irish music with a series of concerts entitled ‘The Family That Plays Together...’. The McNamara and Costello families from Tulla kick the series off on Monday, February 25 while the MacCarthy family from London grace the stage of Teach Ceoil the following evening. The Cotter and Boyd families from Ennis showcase their talents on Wednesday. The early part of the week also features sessions with players of the calibre of Siobhán Peoples, John Greene and Ciarán O Maonaigh as well as concerts by At The Racket (Thursday, Feb 28) and an all-star affair on Friday, 29 featuring Mike and Kieran Hanrahan and Tim Collins among others.
There's a series of masterclasses on the Saturday as well as an evening concert with Sean Keane of Chieftains fame, Liam O’Flynn, Don Stiffe and friends, John Wynne and John and Jacinta McEvoy. The festival wraps up on Sunday with an afternoon of sessions...
Cavan’s mighty NYAH Festival rolls out over a couple of weekends in March. Driven by the indomitable energy of Martin Donohoe, this year’s festival is a vast, sprawling affair with events in eleven towns and villages across Cavan, featuring the talents of upwards of 300 performers from over 18 countries, including Italy, Africa, Scotland, England, America and Canada.
The main events take place in the Riverfront Hotel and Ramor Theatre in Virginia from Friday, March 7 to Sunday, March 9 with the 2008 ‘Jig Of Life’ concert taking place in the Ramor Theatre on March 8. This features the winners of this year's NYAH awards for contributions to the traditional arts – Cork man Sean O’Sé; my old mate Gerry O’Connor from the border lands of Louth; Josephine Keegan from Armagh; Clare’s Séamus McMathuna; Danny Meehan from Donegal; Charlie McGettigan, who both Donegal and Leitrim might lay claim to, and John Kennedy from Antrim.
Although the festival continues through the intervening week, it really gets going again the following weekend when the focus shifts from Virginia to the Widow’s Bar Folk Club in Belturbet and Don Smith’s Lounge in Cootehill. With such a vast number of performers it’s difficult to keep on top of what is going to happen where, but with a line-up that includes Cran, At First Light, Karen Tweed, Kieran Hanrahan, Robbie Hannan, Dermot McLaughlin, Len Graham, Mary McPartlan, Seamus Fay, Gary Shannon, Cathal Hayden, Fintan McManus, Antoin MacGabhann and Mick Conneely, you could probably jump out of a moving car anywhere in the county and catch something worth taking a look at...
When it appeared in 2004, Mary McPartlan’s The Holland Handkerchief was regarded as one of the freshest folk albums for some time. In the intervening four years, she has been working with many of the country's finest musicians – but her new album Petticoats Loose is a collaboration with poet and broadcaster Vincent Woods. The songs are steeped in McPartlan and Woods’ shared Leitrim background and there are also two tracks which formed part of the area's traditional heritage, having been collected by a researcher in the 1950s who was archiving the last remaining fragments of Irish in the area...
The album will be launched in Dublin’s Liberty Hall on February 21 with a concert under the banner ‘The Cream Of Folk’, which features the talents of Seamie O’Dowd, Máirtín O’Connor, Cathal Hayden, Dave Carty, Ruth Dillon and Bernie O’Mahoney. Michael D. Higgins will be there to pay tribute to Chilean composer and political activist Victor Jara, whose life is also commemorated in song on the album...
With only a month to count down to Green Beer Day, here's an antidote. On March 13 Vicar Street presents a special ‘Sult’ showcase in conjunction with the St. Patrick’s festival. Headlining the concert will be John Spillane, with Slide and Prison Love also performing. It's a pretty eclectic mix, with the high octane bluegrass of Prison Love throwing the more mainstream trad of Slide into relief. John Spillane, you would have to surmise, will float sublimely above it all, as he always does. At €17.45 a ticket, the taxi home could easily cost you more...