Releases > July 2011 releases

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BROCK McGUIRE BAND with Ricky Skaggs

Green Grass Blue Grass
Roots Muisc from Irealnd and America
15 Tracks, running time 52 minutes and 21 seconds
Paulman Music PMCD001
www.brockmcguireband.com
There are many who would consider the Brock McGuire band as the best all-instrumental band in Irish music. We would not disagree. So, it was hardly with a sense of objectivity that we came to the band’s new album, Green Grass Blue Grass. Superb. The regular reader would well know the Brock McGuire band. Paul Brock on button box, Manus McGuire on fiddle, Enda Scahill playing banjo and Denis Carey on keyboards comprise the best of the best. The band has won virtually every award available. Enough said. So, what are we to do when they are joined by the iconic multi-instrumentalist Ricky Skaggs, and five-time International Bluegrass Music Association Guitarist of the Year, Bryan Sutton? Then toss in the wonderful Aubrey Haynie on fiddle, and the answer to the question of what to do becomes obvious. Buy the album.
The album was recorded at the Skaggs Studio in Nashville and the Irish Chamber Orchestra Building in the University of Limerick. There is a distinctly traditional feel to all of the album, with nine of the 15 tracks sharing both bluegrass and Irish musicians. Three or four of the tracks display the combination perfectly, none better than Fish on a Snag/Wheel Hoss/Ships are Sailing. Another highlight of the album must be the fabulous set of French Canadian reels. Oh, this is great stuff! We know the Instrumental Album of the Year when we hear it. We hear it. The album is available through the Brock McGuire Band website. You know the drill. Google. This is a masterpiece.
Bill Margeson

GUIDEWIRES - II
Own Label GWMCD002
13 tracks, 52 minutes
www.guidewiresmusic.com
Padraig Rynne and Tola Custy on concertina and fiddle team up with Breton fluter fantastic, Sylvain Barou to provide the frontline of this young Irish band. Belfast guitarist, Paul McSherry and Doolin bouzouki boy wonder, Karol Lynch fill the backline. There was a live album in 2010, which was very well received, certainly by me. Now the boys have been in the studio, Triona Ní Dhomhnaill popped in for a couple of songs, and album number two presents more of the Guidewires hallmark mix: original tunes, a few compositions by modern composers from all over Europe, and some pure traditional material.
The lion’s share of composing credits goes to Padraig, with six new pieces, but all five core members have tunes here. Sylvain stresses the Breton aspect with Toonagh Ridée, and adds his high Breton bagpipes to the band’s sound. King of the Scals shows Paul’s composing talents on an offbeat slow reel and a typically Irish minurka (something between a minuet and a mazurka). Two of my favourite tracks are P’s Led Balloon, which combines compositions by everyone except Padraig, and Eff Reels which is straight Irish trad: Garret Barry’s, Hanley’s Tweed, and John Brennan’s.
Triona’s two songs are a long slow version of the Scottish song The Selkie of Sule Skerry, and a sultry take on the Clannad favourite Mo Mhaire. The arrangements are gentle, sympathetic, with Triona’s distinctive vocals to the fore. On the instrumental side, Guidewires can slow the pace too: Tola’s tune Buoy M5 is a charming air, and Karol’s waltz Caoimhín sits in the soulful space between Celtic and Old Time. Padraig provides a cracking finale with his jaunty reel Mercury Falling.
All in all, this album lives up to the promise of Guidewires debut: here is a band who can follow the likes of Lúnasa and At First Light, who can keep the rad in trad, and take Irish music with them around the world.
Alex Monaghan

JEAN BANWARTH
Irish Fingerpicking Guitar
Book and CD
18 Tunes, MTD 1037
ISBN 978-2-9509470-9-3
www.musictradem.com
Jean Banwarth is based in Grenoble in France and has been playing guitar for the past 30 years. Like many he began with standard tuning and discovered DADGAD late in his learning curve by which time he had to relearn the guitar all over again.
His website explains this journey in some detail, it also has a number of videos of his excellent playing. The CD is best experienced on a computer where you can watch even more clips of his finger-style and break down just exactly what he is doing.
The slim book is very well produced with the text in English and French. The tunes are typeset in a clear if somewhat small font. This is because he offers both the regular staff notation and a running TAB line underneath, which means some tunes, Rodney’s Glory for example run to two pages. Many of the tunes are session standards (The Blackbird, Cregg’s Pipes, Out On The Ocean) no bad thing when it comes to a tutorial package, you’d want to be learning material you can use down the pub on a Thursday night.
Not all the pieces are Irish, there’s a lovely French Mazurka and even a Klezmer tune (which explains where Lúnasa got their melody Frailoch from). Each tune has a short paragraph explaining particular techniques and pointing to landmark recordings, Jean also is generous in his praise for other guitarists, with a deep admiration for the playing of Tony McManus.
The book, the CD and the website are highly recommended to guitarists who are looking to develop a solo finger-picking style, whether it be in standard or DADGAD, and he makes the argument against too much DADGAD very persuasively indeed. If you can master this book you will have gained some powerful tools in your musical armoury.
Do visit his website, he is besotted by his instrument and Irish music. An hour in his musical company will not be one minute wasted, as he’s already travelled the route you are now taking, he’s a good guide, like they used to say of the Golden pages, let your fingers do the walking.
Seán Laffey

JIM O’DONNELL
In a Garden Walking
JOD2011 2011
www.jimodonnellmusic.com
Opening with Bohemian Dreams this album plunges straight into the story songs evoking places of dreams. In this instance in a lovely waltz time tune. It darts throughout the planet and peoples despite the wonderful laid back rendition by O’Donnell.
It’s back to Scotland for a simple arrangement of Lizzie Lindsay before popping over the sea to Ireland for a voice only rendition of The Galway Shawl, a song that has often suffered from over singing. Boyle is a much lesser known song. Again we get just the voice of Jim O’Donnell telling a sad story with heartfelt power. Bonnie Dundee is another beautifully performed story song so well suited to the singer.
We are again treated to vocal alone on The Green Linnet. Erin’s Lovely Lee is noted on the insert as a Cork standard. Not being from the second city it proved new to me and as such it was a lovely surprise. Over the thirteen tracks on offer on this CD we get a lovely mixture of the rousing and the plaintive. O’Donnell has a voice that makes even his unaccompanied pieces sound as melodious as though backed by a full band.
Many of the songs on offer will be new to the listeners but they will reward that extra effort that is often required when we explore the talents of a new performer - well new to us at least, O’Donnell has a pedigree in Folk stretching back four or more decades.
Check it out, listen carefully and enjoy to the full.
Nicky Rossiter

FULLSET

Notes at Liberty
10 tracks
www.fullsetmusic.com
Fullset are a bunch of young traditional bucks full of ideas and some great music. This is their first album and Notes at Liberty is as well a thought out and executed a debut as one could wish for. However, before launching into ecstasy about their abilities one point has to be raised. That is, while many young and not so young traditional bands can have brilliant musicianship and devise knockout tunes selections, the same imagination is often lacking when it comes to finding songs and working on their arrangements. Often the same old songs emerge or variants of same old same old with nothing new or exciting to add to the equation. Not so here.
Fullset’s song choice shows thought and consideration, take the English song Boys of Bedlam (the tune of the song from Thomas d’Urfey’s 1720 publication Pills to Purge Melancholy was famously composed in the back of a mini by Nick Jones, Fullset take it a very gentle pace – Ed.) Then there is the Seven Gypsies and Pete O’Hanon’s narrative ballad Half Hanged Mc Naghten, all three hardly everyday fare. Another track which develops the sonic space with a sparse yet studied baroque arrangement is Jimmy mo Mhile Stor. The song arrangements almost equal the instrumental sets by measure; Teresa Horgan’s forthright singing employs a nice throaty growl emerging betimes. Musically they kick powerfully too, box, fiddle and pipes out-front reminding slightly of Altan and Danú on The Oak Tree and swaying nicely on Corofin Nights before going AWOL.
The blazing energy they possess is matched with confident instrumental skill and imaginative outcome. You will have gathered from this that Fullset is a thoughtful creative and imaginative outfit – they are but there’s enough spit and vinegar in their music to balance the studied atmospherics. Notes at Liberty breaks the debutant the ice well in its 10 tracks, enough potential to set out their stall and whet the appetite and guarantee satisfaction and excitement. It’s a powerfully confident debut from a band to definitely watch.
John O’Regan

ANGUS NICOLSON TRIO
Lasses That Baffle Us
Fire on the Shore FOTS2
11 tracks, 49 minutes
www.myspace.com/angusnicolsontrio
This CD has many moments where you think, “How did they do that?”, and one or two where you think “Why did they do that?” It’s a mixture of styles, from classic pipe band to contemporary free piping. The first track provides a taster of the more adventurous side: two Irish tunes, with Gordon Duncan’s great jig The Soup Dragon sandwiched in between. This arrangement starts with African percussion deep down behind the pipes for The Flowers of Spring, then gently vamping accordion, adding keyboards in layers, before a more rocky Latin beat signals the change into the reel Cregg’s Pipes - played in two parts, since the third part is beyond the highland pipe compass - then magically reaching that third part despite the impossibility of such a feat. I’ll leave you to work out how it’s done.
Track 2 takes three competition tunes and puts them through their paces in a more modern setting: Willie Murray’s Reel is a cracker, with more of that African percussion from Andrew MacPherson. Fiddler, Allan Henderson joins the trio for the slow air Miss MacLellan, a beautiful melody where Angus plays pipes and low whistle. Guitarist, Murdo Cameron comes into his own on Ivan’s, a medley starting with Angus’ jig Ivan MacDonald and finishing with a great Hebridean reel which I know as Ho Ro Na Piseagan getting the Cajun ceilidh treatment. Next comes one of my “Why did they do that?” moments - two great bagpipe marches with the addition of oddly dissonant guitar and then euphonium, most peculiar.
After a tempo-bending march with two-part whistle harmonies behind the pipes, it’s time for the title track - a traditional jig preceded by the great 6/8 march The Ross Battery slowed down for maximum impact. Even slower is Mull of the Mountains, one of those beautiful sad Hebridean songs which fit perfectly on the low whistle, wistfully arranged. A march and a pair of well-known reels follow, with that euphonium rearing its head again to better effect this time, before the final frantic medley of reels: Peter McKinnon, Bean a’Tigh, and Allan MacDonald’s great tribute to Fermanagh fluter, Cathal McConnell.
After all that energy, a warm-down is required in the form of the pibroch melody MacKintosh’s Lament. The trio of Nicholson, Cameron and MacPherson come across as a tight and talented unit, despite some distracting accompaniment, and if you like your piping pepped up this is an album worth checking out. It should be popular in Germany too.
Alex Monaghan

NUA
Both Sides
11 Tracks – Self Published
www.nuamusic.de
Four regions of Germany combine their musical prowess on this the debut offering from Nua entitled Both Sides. An amalgamation of vibrant tunes interspersed with the dulcet tones of bodhrán player and vocalist Michaela Gruss from Hamburg. Michaela is joined by Mich Neumaier from Dusseldorf on fiddle, Steffan Gabriel on flute and whistle from Munster and Tobias King on ten string bouzouki hails from Hamm.
The band, as so many do, formed after playing regularly at sessions together. They bring a mix of Scottish and Irish traditional and interpret these styles with a modern twist. There are also a few original compositions thrown into the eleven tracks and I was particularly taken by the fluently played jig The Different One written by Mich which traverses into Tom King’s Latte named for a lovely latte sampled on the morning after the night before.
Nua invite you to appraise a variety of flavours ranging from the forlorn sombreness of Gabriel’s flute in An Buachaillin Bán to the surreptitiously foot - tapping combination of instrumentals on The Horsepipe Set which culminates in a whirlwind version of The Foxhunter (played in G) that lifts the roof.
The instrumentals are held to a rhythmic drive by Michaela’s melodic bodhrán and that melody is paralleled in her tender vocals. The song choices for the album suit perfectly with a sweet sounding William and Davy taken from the singing of the fabulous Kate Rusby. Michaela uses inflection and timing to get the best from the song and this is also apparent in the resonant Jamie, a lament by Robert Burns from 1793 that sounds as fresh and riveting in the current times as it must have done back then.
For a debut album there is a freshness and maturity that captures the imagination. Both Sides reveals all sides of the talent exhibited and Nua certainly deliver.
Eileen McCabe

IAN WALSH AND KEVIN BUCKLEY
Keeping it Reel
Ten Tracks – Mountain Rose Records
www.buckleyandwalsh.com
Intersperse the Irish traditional with American Old Time and Bluegrass and the result is the culmination of twenty years of musicality in the form of Keeping it Reel by Ian Walsh and Kevin Buckley. The multi-instrumentalists hail from St Louis where they have taken on the influences of their Irish heritage and combined it with grassroots American vintage.
Take the first set which introduces Mayor Harrison’s Fedora, a reel which establishes the pace in driving style and also showcases the treble beats of the bodhrán initiated by Chris Weddle. The fiddle and guitar settle into the reel with comfortable ease and the popular Paddy Fahy’s completes the set. The familiarity of musicianship between Buckley and Walsh is evident in all genres as mandolin and fiddle fuse in the catchy old time tune Done Gone and saunter jauntily into the French Canadian Reel Beatrice familiar from the recording of it by Liz Carroll. The Appalachian song Say Darling Say is full of an American Country vibe unusually assisted by the uilleann pipes which are sprightly rendered by Tommy Martin of Téada fame. The vocal versatility of Buckley is evident in the fact that he is equally at home with his rendition of The Minstrel Boy as he is with the old time idiom.
Sometimes the mix of genres can get complex as the lads hop from one tradition to another but that’s the excitement of Keeping it Reel as the duo are doing exactly what they say in the album title. They keep true to their fusion of musical heritage and, using both aptitude and experience, have delivered quality entertainment in the form of Keeping it Reel.
Eileen McCabe

BRENDAN BEGLEY & CAOIMHÍN O RAGHALLAIGH

A Moment of Madness
The music of this duo is joyous indeed, sparkling with energy and life. A feeling of exuberance and spontaneity drips from this recording, its subtle strokes and inventive turns a true testament to these musicians’ characters.
The beauty is in the small touches, the sounds that are not often allowed to enter into studio-recorded traditional music; the clattering of accordion keys, the tapping foot, the wheezing of the bellows, the squawk of strings tested to their limits, the momentary lull, dip and suspense as we slip into the world of the next tune. It is these small liberties that make the recording truly captivating, drawing us into the magic of the tunes, illustrating a wild imploding core where all melodic possibilities reside.
The voices of fiddle and accordion blend seamlessly and it is sometimes hard to distinguish which sounds emanate from whom. Each player has their moments at the fore that feel like spontaneous and selfless outbursts, rather than passages of measured arrangement. As the duo strike this rare and tentative balance I am reminded of the intertwining and mutually supportive fiddles of Padraig O’Keefe, Denis Murphy and Julia Clifford’s Kerry Fiddles.
The groove is often relentless, especially in the polkas so distinctive of Begley’s West Kerry style. Between every rock solid beat there is a whorl of shifting melodic ornamentation, a line of perfectly tangential phrasing - a quality best exemplified by the tearaway ride of The Green Cottage/Glin Cottage set and Christy Leahy’s P & O Polka.
Caoimhín’s occasional use of the Norwegian Hardanger fiddle adds new and welcome shades to a number of tunes, notably his solo rendition of Tá Dhá Gabhairín Buí Agam/The Glen Cottage. Its extra layer of sympathetically resonating strings create a rainbow of acoustic effects that give modal depth without adding extraneous harmony.
This is a rare record that truly manages to stretch the inventiveness of the tradition with sensitivity. While still allowing the tunes to speak their part, Brendan and Caoimhín explore new spectrums of timbre, ornamentation and feeling, creating big worlds from their little wooden boxes.
Fíacha O’ Dubhda

GEORGE MURPHY
Still in One Piece
Back Lane Records BLANECD002 2011
www.georgemurphyofficial.com
This CD is a bit like a social history set to music. Through a combination of humorous and rather more serious songs Murphy takes us on a beautiful nostalgic trip to earlier times. Those times are not always pleasant but in our memories, which he is adept at evoking, they are our Nirvana.
His opening song The Mountainy Farmer reminds us of a breed of men essential to a country but who so often suffered for their tradition and livelihood. Paddy and the Barrow is probably more familiar as The Sick Note and while very funny it does remind us of the real dangers suffered by labourers on the building sites of the world.
An Eric Bogle song must fetch up some-where on every good folk album released in the last twenty years and the offering here is a fantastic portrayal of redundancy and unemployment, especially for those who literally “gave the best years of their lives” loyally to a single employer. We all know someone who suffered the fate of the man in No Use For Him.
Lifting the spirits after that rather sad song is the wonderful When I Grow Up. Every folk group with a bodhrán player must feature this in their set. It is the very funny tale of a goat whose ambition is stardom as a bodhrán “with Celtic link design tattooed on my behind”.
The Home Place may not bear too many repeat listens but it is a beautiful spoken evocation of an old Ireland long subsumed by radio, television, computer and I-pod. He brings us on another very Irish fanciful journey with Mary Jane and the Fiddle. The listener can just visualise this story unfolding and understand the weaving of McCafferty’s mind as he waits. Fincairn Flax evokes a time and a craft now gone, to great effect.
Buy, listen, learn but most of all enjoy George Murphy telling it as it once was.
Nicky Rossiter

FIL CAMPBELL

Farewell to Cold Winter
12 Tracks
Glenshee Music GSR002
www.filcampbell.com
Northern singer, Fil Campbell accidentally hit on a niche with her Songbirds CD and TV series some years ago. A chronicle of the influence on Irish music of female singers like Margaret Barry, Bridie Gallagher, Mary ‘O Hara etc it could be viewed as historical document or good entertainment, but either way she found a board game as yet un-invented. The Songbirds series and album opened doors for Campbell as then in mainstream quarters an unknown quantity – however the Fermanagh born singer had been honing her craft as an interpreter and occasional songwriter on the Folk Scene for years previously.
Now some four years on from Songbirds comes Farewell to Cold Winter subtitled Songbirds Part Two she returns to the core material of her biggest success. Wisely she has downplayed the songbirds tag on Farewell to Cold Winter so the CD can be judged on its own merits as an album instead of just a sequel. It’s a quietly restrained yet vibrant collection where the song material, arrangements and voice blend harmoniously.
Campbell’s own performances show a comfort with her abilities and source material previously unheard. Moments like The Bonny Boy and Lowlands of Holland stand out as definitive performances and she returns a missing joie de vivre to Let Him Go Let Him Tarry and Old Maid in the Garret. Farewell to Cold Winter is more than just a sequel to an illustrious predecessor.
It is a very compelling collection and as such it should help further Fil Campbell’s cause considerably on the national stage.
John O’Regan

GER WOLFE

Freamh:Root
Raggedy Records RAGCD 008
16 tracks
www.gerwolfe.com
Since his 1998 debut Word and Rhyme, Cork born singer/songwriter Ger Wolfe has issued a series of albums that have proven themselves. One of Ireland’s most distinctive folk songwriters his use of a trade mark pastoral bucolic and nature inspired imagery have provided an engrossing and continuing catalogue of compositions. Delivered with a lilting voice and stripped down almost simplistic approach Ger Wolfe has created a niche that is his own. Now comes Freamh: Root a collection of songs in English and Irish with source ideas gleaned from elderly people in the West Cork area of Muskerry.
The project O Bheal guth Beal had Wolfe acting as a conduit and translator for outside audiences the thoughts and musings of this small yet vibrant community. This is more than just a project album, Wolfe himself seems invigorated by this process and his assimilation of its nuances and notions into his repertoire adds a new layer of sophistication. Using a band of himself on guitar with musicians who come in on, fiddle, accordion and double bass the musical palate is livelier than before and resonates of the place and its cultural shade. Richard Lucey’s accordion and Edel Sullivan’s fiddle make Polca ns gclathacha a Sliabh Luachra set par excellence while Wolfe’s Three Girls Dancing is suitably poignant and uplifting and Seothin is also suitably relaxed. Fairday in Macroom in the 50’s is a potentially classic unaccompanied ballad and Dagenham an emigration ballad in Irish is suitably reflective and wistful. With Freamh: Root Ger Wolfe has taken a side turn down his artistic path but the result is wholesomely evocative and powerfully real.
Freamh:Root salutes a living community with sincerity, pride and love.
John O’Regan