Ten years on and they’re finally rising to a gallop. Cherish The Ladies are the kind of band who’ve been used to garnering applause, while letting louder mouths hog the headlines. Long schooled in the fine art of ensemble playing, Joanie Madden and her all-female quintet have ploughed a particularly neat and fulsome furrow all of their own for the past decade. Comfortable in the knowledge that the music could talk for itself, they didn’t need any verbose decorations to bolster its selling power.

It’s not that Cherish The Ladies haven’t been cherished, but simply that they’ve been too busy plucking their bows and pumping their squeeze boxes to really bother with the whole media thing. Then again, that’s not to say that Joanie Madden is a shrinking violet. Like the rest of the band, she’s first generation Irish American, schooled in the finer points of accordion, flute, and tin whistle, with a pair of ear drums that’d corner a flea in a swimming pool. Her excitement at the band’s recent move to the major label, RCA (here, BMG) for the release of their latest opus, Threads Of Time, is palpable, and boy is she basking delightedly in the sun . . . at long last.

“It is great to be where we are right now”, she admits with a grin as wide as Brooklyn Bridge. “We’re in the right spot at the right time. You just couldn’t pick a better time to be playing Irish music. It’s just so popular.”