Folk column: Poppy power

he first incarnation of the Tall Poppy Club in Dundalk’s Spirit Store saw the venue’s intimate back parlour stuffed to overflowing, with sweat breaks needed between the sets. Local Dundalk singer Fergal Heaney was the first poppy to sway, and with material as strong as his, he could afford to ease off on the self-effacement a little. Making the trip up from Drogheda S.J. McArdle was in great form too, despite confessing that the intimate surroundings had him feeling more nervous onstage than he had ever been before. Kevin May from the Guggenheim Grotto wrapped up the evening with a set that featured an hours-old new song alongside more tried and tested live favourites. Interesting indeed to hear these tunes in the raw, as it were, stripped of the full band arrangements.
This month Annette Buckley will be making the long trek up from Cork to top the bill at the Tall Poppy Club, while local songwriter Andrew McCaffrey will be keeping up the local involvement.
Upstairs the venue is boasting a very strong line-up this month with a visit from At First Light, featuring Donal O’Connor and John McSherry on Thursday 21. Currently counted amongst the most highly tipped of new traditional acts, they combine rhythmic firepower with instrumental virtuosity to breathe life into the tunes. Over the weekend of Friday 22 and Saturday 23, Spirit Store favourite Juliet Turnerwill be exercising those inimitable vocal chords and charming the crowds with her between-song banter. Another Spirit Store favourite, Ann Scott will be playing there as part of her launch tour for the We’re Smiling album on Thursday 28. Ably assisting her on the night will be Joe Chester, whose own Murder Of Crows album was one of the high points of the last year.
Damien Dempsey has announced a Vicar Street date for December 13, and I imagine it would be a fairly safe bet that a second date will have to be added as the Donaghmede man continues to go from strength to strength. His Shots album has now been picked up for US release by UFO Music, and some intensive gigging in the States will no doubt be the order of the day, as the label intends to anchor him in the consciousness of the Irish-American and ex-pat community before attempting to cross him over to a more mainstream audience. It would be great to see him become an overnight success in the big country.
A kind of proto-Damien Dempsey, Billy Bragg established himself with a brace of abrasive agit-pop records in the early 1980s, but Cooking Vinyl’s forthcoming release of a second Billy Bragg box-set, this time covering the four albums he made between 1988 and 2002, should serve to remind us all of his ability to write a cracking pop song encoded with a strong social message. These later albums saw Bragg come to terms with personal relationships, family and fatherhood, although his staunchly anti-racist values were once again in evidence on the final album of this set England-Half English. These themes are also in evident in The Progressive Patriot: A Search For Belonging, Bragg’s first book, which will be published by Bantam Press on Monday 9 October, the same day Billy Bragg Volume 2 is released. The Progressive Patriot is touted as part autobiography and part polemic on the meaning of national identity in modern Britain. And if anyone feels the urge to be generous, this will be featuring on my Santa list this year.
Already boasting a roster the envy of most major labels, New West president Cameron Strang must be grinning from ear to ear as he announces that Steve Earle will be joining Dwight Yoakam, Delbert McClinton, John Hiatt, Kris Kristofferson, The Flatlanders, Tim Easton, Vic Chesnutt, Drive-By Truckers, Randall Bramblett, Chuck Prophet, Stephen Bruton, the Old 97’s, Ben Lee, Buddy & Julie Miller and Sarah Lee Guthrie & Johnny Irion on the Austin, TX and Los Angeles based label. Already involved in the influential Austin City Limits series, New West will now be sponsoring Steve Earle’s radio show on Air America, and the label is gearing up for the arrival sometime early next spring of his next studio album, his first since 2004’s The Revolution Starts... Now. Not that he’s been twiddling his thumbs in the interim, having produced an album for his wife Alison Moorer, overseen the New York debut of his play Karla, as well as writing a novel and hosting a radio show. Earle will be hitting the studio this autumn to begin recording.
Booked at the last minute to bolster the line-up at the World Fleadh, Rua’s Gloria Mulhall must be glad they said yes, as she walked away with the accolade of ‘World Fleadh Music Writing Champion of 2006’ with a composition for solo violin and orchestra entitled ‘Red Alert’. Pitted against some pretty big international names at this first World Fleadh, Gloria has every reason to feel chuffed.
The Garden Sessions in Birr are now becoming a fixture of the summer gigging calendar, and this year there is also a Garden Session double CD that sets out to raise funds for Hospice care. Musicians features on the CD include Roesy, Mundy, Clive Barnes, Joe Chester, Ultan Conlon, Tadgh Cooke, Cornerstone, Sabrina Dinan, Dana Donnelly, Fred, Mark Geary, Gavin Glass, Guggenheim Grotto, Alice Jago, The Maladies, Noellie McDonnell, Neosupervital, Brendan O’Shea, The Pale,  Ann Scott, Eoghan Scott, Stanley Super 800, Carol Keogh & Donal O’Mahoney, Freddie White, Ian Whitty, Q, Kieron Black and Ger Wolfe. From September 18 to the 22 there will be a series of free lunchtime concerts on the bandstand in St. Stephen’s Green in Dublin (near the Harcourt Street gate) run with the assistance of the OPW and featuring many of the performers on the CD. The gigs run from 12.30 to 2.00, and you couldn’t find a better way to pass a Dublin lunch hour, now could you?
The end of the silly season is in sight, and there are some great Whelan’s shows coming up in September. Monday 11 sees the arrival of Kieran Kane and Kevin Welsh (those of you with long memories might remember them as the Dead Reckoners) aided and abetted by Fats Kaplin. Two of the best songwriters ever to come out of Nashville, these guys can mix style, humour and drop dead gorgeous melodies without breaking a sweat. If Midlands runs again next year these guys might bag an early slot. Patrick Street grace the venue on Friday 15 and on Wednesday 27 Crooked Still come to town. Currently one of those bands that other musicians like to hold onto as a trade secret, they will doubtlessly be keen to win a more mainstream audience.b