Folk Centre: Servants with a smile

The Green Room in Dublin’s Holiday Inn at Pearse Street is the venue for the latest in Scullion’s series of occasional gigs, with Messrs. King, Condell and Overson taking to the stage there on Friday April 21 to show the youngsters how it’s supposed to be done.
Support on the night will be from Al O’Donnell who is back after one of the longest career breaks ever. Having cut his teeth with Terry Woods in Sweeney’s Men at the back end of the ‘60s before releasing a pair of well received solo records, Al then took a step back from the spotlight before deciding it was time to make up for lost time.
The Back Bar at the Cobblestone also hosts a brace of interesting gigs in the next while with Realta performing on Saturday 22 and Basque band Korrontzi promising an insight into Basque traditional music on Thursday 27.
Their sound is built around the traditional Basque accordion – the trikitixa – but the line-up also features more traditional drums, guitars, mandolins and whistles.
Once again Dundalk’s Spirit Store proves its uncanny ability to attract the most vibrant acts to point their Transits and Vanettes up the M1 to the foothills of the Cooley peninsula, and with the arrival of the Willard Grant Conspiracy for a return gig on Monday, May 1 Dundalk will be the coolest place in the country, if only for a night.
Singer Robert Fisher is increasingly seen as an heir to the tradition of Cash, Cohen and Cale, bringing a gravitas to his delivery that raises the band above their peers.
Anyone who caught the band live during 2005 will have seen them virtually explode onstage – totally confusing and occasionally disturbing anyone who came along expecting an evening of acoustic based laments about death or dying.
The new album, Let It Roll, begins in a welcome WGC fashion with a track based on the famous Sullivan Ballou letter from the American Civil War, a plea for humanity written a few days before the writer’s demise at the Battle of Bull Run.
From there on in the album takes off, as far as this band is concerned, into uncharted territory.
Although their trademark folk leanings are very much in evidence, there is also a much harder, tougher edge to Let It Roll than on previous releases.
One commentator has already described them as the world’s first proto-garage-folk-rock band. You know where they’ll be. Get up there and see if he’s right.
At the other end of the spectrum entirely Anúna have committed themselves to the lightest of touring schedules this year after a hectic 2005. With a new album to promote, Michael McGlynn and cohorts are nonetheless restricting themselves to one Irish show before the Christmas period and devotees, for such they are, need to make a note in their diary for Thursday May 4 when the ensemble will be giving a performance in St Ann’s Church on Dawson Street to mark the launch of the new album.
The release of Sensation marks the end of a six year hiatus in the band’s recording career and it is said to mark a stylistic departure from Cynara, the outfit’s last recorded offering. The record will be in the shops from April 13 although, this being 2006, there are four tracks up on myspace which can be listened to on the web.
Eliza Gilkyson has a songwriting pedigree par excellence. She is the daughter of songwriting legend Terry Gilkyson, whose many credits include Walt Disney classics such as ‘The Bare Necessities’ for Jungle Book as well as songs for the TV series The Wonderful World of Disney and feature films such as Thomasina, the Aristocats and Swiss Family Robinson.
Her brother Tony was a member of cult California band X. Even though she frequently includes a few of her father’s songs in her live set, it’s as a writer and performer on her own terms that she has carved out a successful niche, joining Joe Ely, Kris Kristofferson, Lyle Lovett, Willie Nelson and Townes Van Zandt in the list of great writers inducted into the Austin Music Hall of Fame, an honour she gracefully accepted back in 2003.
Eliza plays 19 dates here and in the UK during May to promote her critically acclaimed album Paradise Hotel, her tenth full length release. Ace guitar player Robert McEntee, best known for his work with Dan Fogelberg, will accompany Eliza on this tour.
May’s tour dates include stops at Whelan's on Monday 8, the Bronte Centre, near Rathfriland on Tuesday 9, Music Station in Portstewart on Wednesday 11 and a final Irish gig in the Errigle in Belfast on Thursday 12.
The pedigree stakes get raised considerably by two more visitors to these shores who have just announced major shows here later in the year. Roseanne Cash comes to Vicar Street on June 2 as part of a world tour supporting her current release Black Cadillac.
Coming when it does this is perhaps the most compelling, and certainly the most eagerly anticipated, release of her career. She wrote the twelve-song musical memoir over roughly two years in which she lost her father Johnny Cash, her stepmother June Carter Cash, and her mother Vivian.
Though she is heir to such a rich lineage, Roseanne Cash has always been an artist of her own time, following a thoroughly independent vision from the outset of her career. Arguably, the strongest resemblance Roseanne bears to her father lies in her willingness to face complex emotional challenges head-on and her ability to translate them into universally accessible songs —a talent tested in the extreme by the circumstances underpinning Black Cadillac.
Arlo Guthrie is the eldest son of America’s most beloved singer / writer / philosopher Woody Guthrie and Marjorie Mazia Guthrie and he grew up in New York’s Coney Island, surrounded by dancers and musicians: Pete Seeger, Ronnie Gilbert, Fred Hellerman and Lee Hays, Leadbelly, Cisco Houston, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGee, all of whom were significant influences on Arlo’s musical career. Guthrie gave his first public performance at age 13 and quickly became involved in the music that was shaping the world during the ‘60s.
Arlo practically lived in the most famous venues of the “Folk Boom” era where he witnessed the transition from an earlier generation of ballad singers like Richard Dyer-Bennet and blues-men like Mississippi John Hurt, to a new era of singer-song writers such as Bob Dylan, Jim Croce, Joan Baez, and Phil Ochs. His career exploded in 1967 with the release of Alice’s Restaurant, which in many ways defined the commitment among the ‘60s generation to social consciousness and activism. Arlo went on to star in the 1969 Hollywood film version of Alice’s Restaurant, directed by Arthur Penn.
Since then Arlo has shadowed his father in an odyssey across America but has also ventured far and wide across Europe, Asia and Australia, racking up countless miles on the road in the course of his 40-odd year career.
A natural-born storyteller, whose tales and anecdotes figure prominently in his performances, you’ll be able to catch him in Vicar Street on August 18.