Ellery Klein & Ryan Lacey: Kick into the Beat

Kick Into the Beat: modern Irish dance music, volume 2.


Loads of irish music is, or was originally, written for dancing. Today, there is a whole Irish dance music scene, with its own competitions, awards, magazines, and festivals. People doing a range of Irish dance styles often take part in less formal sessions and gigs around the world, too. There are also the immensely popular stage shows, Riverdance and Lord of the Dance.

With these things in mind, fiddle player Ellery Klein and percussionist Ryan Lacey have come out with Kick to the Beat, their second collection of material designed for Irish dancers, a selection of mainly original tunes in the proper style and beat for competition Irish dance. While the dancers among you will be delighted with new music with which to practice and prepare programs, in the main it’s just as good a listen for those who don’t dance at all. If you enjoy the music as a player, this crisp and clear recording, which focuses on fiddle and percussion with just a touch of backing from bass and guitar, could be a creative practice and learning situation for you as well --and especially so if you play for dancers. For listening, the performance set Step Into Christmas, is a lot of fun, with among other things, a JUngle Bell Polka. The Bloomin’ Hornpipes set and The Starry Slip Jigs are also especially nice for listening -- but watch out. Klein and Lacey, who met when they were both in the band Gaelic Storm (think the steerage band in the movie Titanic) may have you trying out dance steps yourself.


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ceol chairlinn: sharing music in winter

Through the varied political history of Ireland, people have always found ways to connect. One of those ways has been through music. Mary Black, whose father was from the north and whose mother grew up in the republic, thinks that ”When it comes to religion or difference in political belief it doesn’t matter-- if somebody likes a song, it doesn’t matter what your background is, it makes you equal to the other person who likes it. I think it’s a healing thing as well,” says Black, who among other things sang during the peace process negotiations in northern Ireland.

Music, and the connections formed through the teaching, learning, and sharing of it, was the subject of things at Ceol Chairlinn, the winter music school that just finished its fourth year of lighting up early February in north county Louth. Louth sits on the border of northern Ireland, facing County Down across Carlingford Lough. Both counties have their place in legend and in more recent history, facts which were part of the inspiration that led artistic director Gerry O’Connor and others to collaborate on the festival and school, which has grown over the years. Part of the idea behind the weekend is to allow adults and children who live in the different traditions around the area to get to know each other over sharing music .This year, there were taster concerts to allow children in nearby schools to meet the musicians who’d be offering classes, instruction across two days in flute, fiddle, tin whistle, banjo, accordion, singing, highland pipes, uillean pipes, and dance, a concert by all the tutors, and a range of sessions in pubs around the Carlingford area.

The tutors were a mix of local musicians and world renown talent. Every aspect of the weekend showed them working together with fun and enjoyment of the music and their students. The students enjoyed things as well. Two women who’d taken fiddle classes joked that they’d definitely had a full weekend “Our heads are just stuffed full of notes and tunes,” said one. “We’ve learnt so much we don’t even know how much we’ve learnt,” added her friend, laughing. Fiddle classes were taught by O’Connor and by Tommy Peoples, legendary tune smith and player with the Bothy Band among others. A man who’d taken the singing class showed the sheaf of lyrics for the songs he’d been introduced to, and when asked which one he’d liked the best, said he couldn’t choose. “They were all so brilliant to learn,” he said. “The teaching was just brilliant, so welcoming and encouraging.” The singing tutor was Cathie Ryan, well known in America and Europe for her solo career as a singer and songwriter. Cathal McConnell, of Boys of the Lough, taught flute and kept listeners engaged with his lively stories at the concert. Highland piping was taught by James Hanratty, Aine McGeeney taught tin whistle, Emmett Gill was the instructor for uillean pipes, Gary McKeown taught banjo, Elaine O’Sullivan taught accordion, and Micheal and Kathleen McGlynn taught sean nos dancing -- and received the festival’s lifetime achievement award on the concert evening as well.

A celebration and a sharing of music and the friendships and connections it allows, Ceol Chairlinn adds light and warmth to the winter season. This year -- perhaps the coldest winter Ireland has felt for some long time -- the area was blanketed with snow, but the unusally cold weather only made the three days of music, connection, friendship, learning, and laughter burn the brighter.




























































If you'd like to know about next year’s Ceol Chairlinn, information will be posted here. There are other winter music schools, in Ireland and in America. One of the best known is the Frankie Kennedy Winter School, in Donegal, started by the members of Altan and held usually around the new year. Workshops for both beginners and intermediate players are also part of Celtic Connections in Glasgow, a festival about which you’ve heard before here along the music road.

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Eddi Reader sings more of the songs of Robert Burns

Eddi Reader Sings the Songs of Robert Burns, expanded edition




Several years back, singer and songwriter Eddi Reader fell under the spell of Robert Burns. As a native Scot, she’d known of him from her school days, and as a singer and songwriter by trade she knew his work too and was often asked to sing a Burns song or two at celebrations. And so she did, and the work of the eighteenth century ploughman poet fell in with reader’s interest in history, music, and imagination. When she was asked to do a program of Burns songs with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, she said yes. Working with arranger Kevin McCrae from the RSNO and fiddler and producer John McCusker from the folk music world, she created setting for the songs that were anything but the staid sort of thing one might think of when the word “I want it to be that you get to feel that you’re experiencing the songs as though they’d just been written,” Reader says. “If I can get the orchestra smiling, and singing along with Charlie is My Darling or Willie Stewart -- they had never heard Burns music played like that. They were falling in love with it and the arrangements are so bonnie.” And Reader is a really creative and natural song interpreter, too, one of the best going.

Those arrangements are the core of Eddi Reader Sings the Songs of Robert Burns, first released several years ago. In honor of the 250th anniversary of Burns birth this year, and in honor of Homecoming Scotland, which is being celebrated all year across Scotland, Reader decided to gather up seven more tracks, several from her album Peacetime and others unreleased, and add them to the original batch of songs. It makes for a set that’s even more engaging than the original. The first group of eleven songs includes Charlie is My darling, Willie Stewart, John Anderson My Jo, and Auld Lang Syne, as well as a touch of others’ work. The instrumental Molly Rankin balances with Willie Stewart, and the contemporary piece Wild Mountainside is a present day love song which in some ways forms the anchor to the disc. The seven added cuts really do add to the picture both of Burns writing and Reader’s singing. They include Leezie Lindsay, Green Grow the Rashes, Aye Waukin O, and Comin Through the Rye, which is paired with Mairearad Green's modern day instrumental, Dram Behind the Curtain. Even if, maybe especially if, you already have the first edition of this project, you’ll want to add this one too. If you’ve not yet heard either of them, the year of homecoming Scotland would be a fine time to take a listen.

Reader has a new album set for release on April 13th, and a UK tour based around that date. The album is called Love Is the Way.

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Kathy Mattea sings John Martyn

This is from the Transatlantic Sessions concert at Royal Glasgow Concert Hall during Celtic Connections. It’s a fine and thought provoking song, and Kathy Mattea has a pretty stellar backing band too -- Jerry Douglas, Eddi Reader, John Doyle, Bill Cooley -- who else can you spot? and take a second listen to that chorus.

thinking about sessions

What is there in other sorts of music, or in other sorts of communities, that offers the same atmosphere as a really good session? I’m thinking about Irish and Scottish and Cape Breton ones, but I’ve also been to good sessions in bluegrass, and when songwriters get together. Both of those have been a bit different from the sort of community and sharing that goes on at a really good kitchen party or pub session though. When it’s really good, there's welcome for music new and familiar, recognition and connection when somebody else joins in and adds a part to what you are doing. Everybody is welcome to share a song, a tune, a story, a dance, or just to listen, and to change their minds about how they’ll participate at any moment. Like a good conversation, I suppose...which is why I’ve chosen to suggest the two recordings below to go along with this idea. They don’t have to to with sessions, but have a lot to do with conversation. Both are from Carrie Newcomer.



Betty's Diner

Regulars & Refugees


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music in winter, continued

Singing: Natural, Purposeful, Fun from Shannon Heaton's blog Leap Little Frog

Celtic Connections 2009: images, continued

Glasgow, January and February, 2009.


















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Music Road: Songs of Homecoming, to Scotland and other places

music in winter, continued

One of the fine things about music is that it bridges the spaces between solitary work and creating in community. There’s nothing quite like the immediacy of music played live -- unless it might be good conversation among friends. At a good session, both go hand in hand and both are part of the connections made. That is also true of more formal stage performances, especially of the sort of music we talk about here. Music and conversation are things to remember, to enjoy, the celebrate, and to look for more opportunities to share in this winter season and beyond. Give yourself and others the gift of hearing and playing music -- and the gift of conversation, too.

The photograph which goes along with this is from a session which was part of Ceol Chairlinn in County Louth last week. Stay with us here along the music road for more about that winter music weekend, which just finished its fourth year.

to go along with these ideas

Matt & Shannon Heaton: Fine Winter's Night concert

Boston Celtic Music Festival on the way

ten songs

Celtic Connections 2009: images

Favorite Love Songs: Tuning Up for Valentine's Day

As it’s coming up on Valentine’s Day, that has me thinking about love songs. My favorite ones include






from Kathy Mattea
Goin' Gone

Untold Stories
Asking Us to Dance


from Cathie Ryan
The Farthest Wave

What's Closest to the Heart

from Carrie Newcomer
Tornado Alley

Only One Shoe

Hold On

From Tish Hinojosa
Amanacer
Everything You Wish

from Eddi Reader
Wild Mountainside


from Danu
Follow On

from Emmylou Harris
Someone Like You

from Maura O’Connell
Blessing



What they have in common, I think, is recognition that deep true love includes the hard stuff as well as the joy, and that part of the gift of love is helping us live with and through the humanness of all that. I’m not sure the artists who wrote or who sing all of these necessarily thought of them as love songs, either, but for me they work that way. See what you think, and please share some of your favorites by leaving a comment if you’d like.