Keeping The Home Fires Burning

Drop down to the Harcourt Hotel in Dublin of a Monday night, shoulder your way through the crowd to the area just in front of the stage, and check out the demographics.
Monday night is traditional music night here, but you won t see many old fogeys in Aran jumpers. Instead, packed around the tables is an assortment of gimlet-eyed adolescents, more often than not accompanied by their parents.
They re mad into the music, and sooner or later they want to be up on that stage themselves. Preferably sooner.
The past year or so has seen the emergence of a plethora of young trad bands Lia Luachra, Cian, Calico, Danu, Turas and more. Equipped with flawlessly produced debut CDs, glossy photos and sleek PR packets, they may be barely past the Leaving Cert but they ve already got more music industry savvy than the veterans of a generation ago.
Meanwhile, at the top of the ranks, big-ticket bands like Altan and Solas are globetrotting themselves into exhaustion. The Riverdance juggernaut currently has three full companies simultaneously touring various parts of the world, and there s talk of a fourth being added.
There s hardly a country in Europe that doesn t host an Irish music festival. In the USA, trad festivals and venues are so plentiful that American-born musicians who ve never set foot on Irish soil can make a fine living playing jigs and reels.
Back at home, the trendy new club Vicar St. makes a regular feature of solidly traditional acts such as Dolores Keane, De Danann, Sean Keane and the piper Liam O Flynn. Among the other venues that support traditional artists are Whelan s, the Olympia, the Temple Bar Music Centre and the Cobblestones in Smithfield.
This week saw the opening of Ceol, a traditional music centre in Smithfield with two dedicated performance spaces (see sidebar). There are plans in the pipeline for Clasac, a Fairview-based centre that will include a 250-seat theatre, teaching, recording, rehearsal and practice facilities, studios for instrument makers and a National Archive of Music, Song and Dance.
A couple of months back, the Oireachtas published its first-ever report on traditional music, managing to ruffle rather a lot of feathers in the process. The report was authored by Labhras S Murchz, Director General of Comhaltas Ceoltsirm Iireann and a Fianna Fail Senator, and a number of important institutions on the academic side of trad didn t hesitate to make public their disappointment at not having been asked to contribute among them the UCD Department of Folklore, the UCC traditional music unit, and Micheal S Suilleabhain s World Music Centre at the University of Limerick.
Ah well, a little controversy is always a good sign. One thing is certain - traditional music has become serious business, money-making business, and a business to which an increasing number of talented young people are planning to devote their lives and careers. So don t dismiss it as so much diddley-eye - and keep an eye on those kids in the Harcourt.
Irish Traditional Music has never been so hip and popular, but it s exponents are still to be mostly found in noisy, tourist-filled pubs where being heard above the din is a constant struggle and subtlety in the music is often lost at the expense of volume.
There are exceptions of course, but performing your craft in one of the better known live venues in the country to a relatively small but appreciative audience is much more desirable. It creates a buzz that any musician welcomes and, of course, with the audiences usually more attentive the performances can often be enhanced.
One such place is the Lobby Bar in Cork City. It has everything you could ask for in a small intimate venue, from both the artist s and audience s perspective: a good vantage point no matter where you happen to be seated, a reasonable cover charge, a roster of sound engineers who are interested and sympathetic, and above all, a proprietor in Pat Conway who is very supportive of his artists and has lots of understanding of what makes a gig a real success.
The fine traditional band Nomos, managed by Pat, are regular performers in the venue as are local bands Calico and Sliabh Notes. The walls, festooned with photographs of previous performers over the years, reads like a who s who of the Irish Traditional scene.
Bobby Blackwell of DeBarras in Clonakilty has also created a special venue in the back-room of a very interestingly decorated bar. The memorabilia which covers the walls of the front bar were certainly not purchased from a design your own Irish Pub catalogue, as Bobby himself is an avid collector. Some of the more eye catching items are a Jimi Hendrix Platinum disc, donated to Bobby by Noel Redding, an original member of The Jimi Hendrix Experience, who lives in the area and is known to do the odd gig in the pub himself; a rare Gibson Bluebird guitar, and a plethora of ancient and vintage musical instruments which lead the visitor through to a venue which has been recently fitted out with a new balcony and has an excellent house P.A. DeBarras has hosted many of the country s top traditional musicians. Christy Moore has often played there as has Sharon Shannon and her Band. Altan s accordionist Dermot Byrne recorded a number of tracks for his solo album in this most unique of small venues.
Further west in Baltimore is McCarthy s Bar. Gigs are run there by the enterprising and always innovative Declan McCarthy. The yearly Fiddle Fare in May is a treat for trad fans and Declan always manages to entice the top names to participate. I remember last year meeting Kevin Burke who had come to Baltimore to participate in the week long festivities when logistically it made no sense to his busy touring schedule to be in Ireland at all, never mind West Cork! This year s line up includes Seamus Creagh, Fiddlesticks, and members of Four Men And A Dog.
Galway has no shortage of top quality informal sessions, but John Mannion of The Rsismn Dubh still brings the best of traditional bands to gig in his atmospheric setting. Solas, Lunasa, and the up and coming Lia Luachra have all played there recently, and although performing on the big festival stages of the continent can be more financially rewarding, the bands know that playing a gig to a sophisticated audience
in an ideally intimate setting produces a high that s hard to match.
Matt Molloy s pub in Westport is a mecca for traditional musicians who spend any time in the West. Even if the great man himself is away with his fellow musical ambassadors, a regular session always takes place, often augmented by a quality gig in a small but bright venue at the rear of the pub.
In Dublin, The Harcourt Hotel s name is synonymous with top quality Irish Music, and rightly so, as anyone who ventures down on a Monday night can hear the best doing what they do best. The Hotel s Manager, Mary Cashin, is to be commended for her genuine interest in the nurturing of up and coming young bands and instrumentalists. This was illustrated recently with the Young Traditional Musician of the Year competition, which was won by the Manchester fiddler, Dezi Donnelly, and as someone who
saw most of the Dublin heats, the semi-finals, and the final itself, I can say that a lot of the performances by these under 25 year olds were truly awesome!
A new venue to watch out for is upstairs in the Cobblestone Bar in North King Street. Owned by Tom Mulligan, himself a member of a well known Dublin traditional musical family, the downstairs bar has been a great session
spot for a number of years now, but some refurbishment has taken place on the first floor and an excellent live room with a capacity for about a 130 people is the result. Gigs,
run by the capable Paul Lee, take place there on Friday nights.
West Wicklow is an area close to my own heart and anytime a concert takes place in St Kevin s Heritage Centre in Hollywood
I know a special treat is in store for fans of traditional music. Eric Greaves and Larry Roddy, who run the gigs, have the knack of knowing who is best suited to the venue. It s also that rarest of animals in traditional circles; a dry
gig, although plenty of liquid nourishment is
available to all in either of the two village pubs after the concerts with a good chance of an informal session taking place featuring that evening s artists.
The Centre is in fact a 15th century church built on a Pre-Christian monastic site and the near perfect acoustics are partly due to the unique corbeled roof construction.Siniad O Connor, Anzna, and the Voice Squad
have all recorded in the centre. Recent performers include Steve Cooney, Dermot Byrne and the aforementioned Dezi Donnelly. The Music Under The Mountains Festival is held there every year in September with Altan headlining this Autumn.
This run down of Irish Traditional Music venues is by no means complete but it does help illustrate that a more formal stage offering is just as popular as the ubiquitous pub session. I m sure that both will continue to flourish side by side for a good while yet.n There are two times of the year when it s especially pleasurable to listen to live Irish traditional music. The first is when the nights are dark and long and a nice cosy pub allows you to curl up and wallow in the blissful surroundings, the company, the craic, the ceol and the sl. The second time is when the days are long and there s a myriad gigs and festivals and so much music all over the place you re virtually tripping over it in the streets and even in the fields.
But thanks to the advantages of the modern recording age we can also listen to Irish trad all day and all of the night, all year round, high days and holy days included, in the privacy and comfort of our own homes. Changes in modern technology have transferred the making and releasing of music back into the hands of the musicians themselves. That development, coupled with a growth in small recording companies willing to put their money and their energies where their passion is, has created the apparently endless stream of fine Irish music now available in pristine recordings on CD and tape.
One example of a band who ve been turning out classy performances and recordings of the highest quality since the days when recordings came on big, black shiny things in cardboard sleeves are Shaskeen, formed in London as far back as 1970 with a plan to offer the music world a unique amalgam of musical influences from Clare and Galway. That s three decades of sheer wizardry with no frills attached, folks.
Throughout those 30 years the five-piece Shaskeen have poured their undoubted artistry onto a string of top-notch albums from their self-titled debut in 1973 right up to their nineties offerings The Mouse Behind The Dresser, their 25th Silver Jubilee Album from 1995 and their captivating hour-long video Shaskeen Live In Concert At Johnny Foxes from 1996. Along the way they ve also produced four albums of set dancing music for the growing population of set dancers and would-be Riverdancers.
Shaskeen are Tom Cussen (banjo, he also makes the highly-regarded Clareen banjos), Benny O Connor (percussion), Eamon Cotter (flute, tin whistle), Pat Costello (singer and multi-instrumentalist) and Patsy McDonagh (accordion). For bookings contact Tom Cussen at 091-795931. They are also one of the few top trad acts to have their own website (http://homepage.tinet.ie/-tomcushen/).
One of the unsung heroes of the Irish record label scene is Eastern European-born Peter Pandula who runs the excellent Magnetic Music. Originally based in Germany, they now have an office in Dublin from where they also run an agency. As if to prove the point that sometimes people from overseas have a greater appreciation of Irish culture than many of our own music industry heads, Pandula and Magnetic have been enthusiastically furthering the cause of Irish music for over 15 years. They now wish to help Irish artists infiltrate markets in the USA, Canada, Australia and the Far East, but it should be stressed that in some countries, especially Germany, where they still have an office in Reutlinger, Magnetic Music is seen to be in the vanguard of the Celtic music recording scene.
Having first visited these shores in 1975 as a busker, Pandula found himself living on Micho Russell s farm and there he learned to play the tin whistle with such proficiency that he wrote the first German language tutor for the instrument before turning to the uillean pipes and becoming the first uillean piper of note in that country.
Pandula believes that by having an office in Dublin he will be better able to develop close relations with the artists he works with, thus preventing other labels snapping them up and reaping the benefits of his ground-breaking work.
The Magnetic operation began as a tour promotion company booking acts into over 300 venues in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, and specialised in touring festival concepts. It was only later that the company grew to encompass the record label and a publishing company.
One of Pandula s latest enthusiasms is for the Cork based North Cregg who are about to unleash their debut album . . . and they danced all night. North Cregg combine elements of the Sliabh Luachra style with hints of swing and bluegrass, driven by Christy Leahy s frantic button-accordion playing.
Apart from the forthcoming and much-anticipated debut album, the charms of North Cregg can also be sampled on their forthcoming tour which sees them dancing all night at Guinness House, Cork (April 21st), University Of Limerick (22nd), McCarthy s of Baltimore (23rd), Wallis , Midleton (25th), Harcourt Hotel, Dublin (26th), Lobby, Cork (28th), John Murphy s, Carrick-On-Bannow (30th), Mooneys, Ring, Co Waterford (May 1st), Pearse Og GAA Club, Armagh (7th), CBPPU, Antrim Road, Belfast (8th), Bantry Mussel Fair (9th), Glomel, Brittany (12th-16th), Michael Dwyer Festival, Ardgroon, Cork (6th).
A stalwart of the Dublin traditional music scene for more than a decade, fiddle player Kevin O Connor has now joined forces with some of his best-known peers to create From The Chest, a brand-new album on the innovative Malgamu label that has previously brought us fine cds by Paul Kelly, Lia Luachra and Sean Whelan.
Kelly, along with Tony McManus, Emer Maycock, Breda Maycock, Robert Harris and Trevor Hutchinson, all turn up on From The Chest an album which, in keeping with the established Malgamu trend, sees Kevin O Connor supplement its Irish music content with music from Brittany and the Asturius region of northern Spain a place Kevin has played many times.
Watford-born but schooled in the real thing by London-based Clare fiddler Brendan Mulcare, Kevin O Connor is a man who brings a well-travelled perspective to his music. Discerning music fans in Dublin can hear for themselves when Kevin, and many of the musicians featured on From The Chest, play Whelans of Wexford Street on Tuesday April 20th.
Of course, making great music like Shaskeen, North Cregg and Kevin O Connor is one thing, and building up an enviable catalogue like Magnetic Music is another, but getting your record distributed so that the public can readily exchange it for punts and pence is another day s work entirely.
Fortunately, Ireland has no shortage of highly proficient distribution channels, with Intersound Distribution in County Monaghan one of the latest such companies to make serious inroads into a very crucial part of the artist-to-public process.
Intersound own the labels Summit, Tulip and 321 and they also distribute Tring, Hazel, Dara, Lunar, Apollo and Strictly Rhythm. So if you have a new album on the boil and you haven t yet tied up a distribution deal for it, give Darren or John Mallon a call at 047-4785490.
Jackie Hayden