The Light Fantastic

Amid a traditional milie that s thriving, Solas and Dervish are two outfits whose view is panoramic rather than subterranean. Both are magnets for the best musicians and music, and both are bould enough to put their own idiosyncratic stamp on their sound.

Seamus Egan is the powerhouse behind Solas, as the band take to the road with samples from their latest studio offering, The Hour Before Dawn.
hotpress finally manages to catch up with the Solas contingent by telephone, somewhere around Indianapolis. Their hectic tour schedule has taken them all over the United States but Seamus Egan s not complaining. It s a wagon train that he thrives on, and he makes no secret of his appetite for the live gigs.
We ve been pretty much bus-bound for a while , he explains, but it s been a really enjoyable tour. Good to let the music out and see how people react to it.
Solas lineup has undergone some major changes within the last two years. Isn t it inevitable that such personnel changes will leave significant fault lines in the band?
Yeah, I don t think you can go through that many changes and not have them affect you one way or the other , Egan agrees. I think we ve weathered a fair bit of change in the last year and a half, and I think we re all looking forward to a more settled time over the next while. This tour has been great, and it s almost like starting at the beginning again, but in a good way. I think we re now beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel.
Solas have never been ones for genteel trad, preferring to add whatever sounds and instruments made sense at any particular time. Now, with their fourth album, The Hour Before Dawn, they ve stuck their collective musical neck out even further, opting for a much more percussive sound than previously.
On this tour we decided to bring out bass and percussion , Egan explains, and it really feels like the right time to do it. On the last album, The Words That Remain, we had danced around with it a little bit, and I think at the end of the day we shied away from it. It was there, but really we were just dipping our toe in the water to see how it felt. Coming round to this album, we felt that if we were going to do it, we didn t want to seem apologetic about it. And to have the calibre of musicians playing bass and percussion (Ben Wittman and Chico Huff), it certainly made sense to have it up-front and present. I think that as a band we really played with the energy that we got from bass and percussion.
Egan s modus operandi for the band was decidedly contemporary. He was particularly determined not to let the band repeat themselves across albums.
At the end of the day, he suggests, even if it s a little risky, you feel better about it yourself, having taken a certain turn. It s not always the best thing to be totally safe. I m sure some folks won t like it, but I don t think we d see much of a future for ourselves if we just kept repeating what we ve already done.
Deirdre Scanlon s arrival has certainly contributed to the fire that s burning in Solas collective belly these days. It was a betrothal destined for bright lights, with Scanlon bringing a handsome dowry of gorgeous songs. These included the spine-tingling Seamus Begley-adoptee, Bruach Na Carraige Baine and the politically charged Last Of The Great Whales . Add to that John Doyle s featherlite take on a song long-loved by Dick Gaughan, A Miner s Life , and you ve got a handful of songs that will ignite passion.
Well, with Last Of The Great Whales , Deirdre felt very strongly about that issue, and I think it comes through in her singing , Seamus says. Certainly the sentiment in the song was something that the band had no disagreement on. And with A Miner s Life , that was a song John Doyle had been singing in the live shows, and again it was a story that the band was fully behind. I think you can hear John s passion coming through in his singing of that song.
A further surprise on The Hour Before Dawn is the inclusion of I Will Remember You , a song with which Sarah McLachlan had enormous success. Many of Solas fans may be unaware that Seamus Egan provided the tune for the song, and the band reclaim it for themselves at the close of the album.
Egan laughs at the unlikely links that emerge in the music world. Sometimes you ll have a tune or a piece of music that you re not really sure where it fits in the overall scheme of things, and a lot of times, it just lays dormant for a while, and then suddenly it seems to make sense to do something with it. When the movie The Brothers MacMullen was released, that tune was included on the soundtrack and I guess Twentieth Century Fox felt it was a tune with the best potential for having lyrics added on. Sarah was top of my list of people who might be suited to the music, and luckily, it was sent to her and she loved it.
Solas thrives on the mix of playing to Irish and non-Irish audiences.
If there s a difference, for Irish audiences , Seamus suggests, there probably is a bit more of a connection and knowledge of the music, and knowledge of the past history of the music, but I think one of the appeals of Irish music is that you can enjoy it as it hits you. And that s one of the key reasons why the audience is incredibly diverse. There are lots of folks who might not have any connection with Ireland and it s just a pure reaction to the music. I think that s the hugely positive things about Irish music.

The Hour Before Dawn is available now on Shanachie Records. Solas play live in: Vicar St, Dublin (Nov 28th); City Limits, Cork (Nov 29th); Dolan s Warehouse, Limerick (Dec 1st).