Music for the heart of winter: Cathie Ryan

Christmas, and season of Advent which comes before it, are times that invite both celebration and reflection. These cold days of winter when dark comes early invite quiet solitude and well as gathering and sharing in community. Winter and its holidays and holy days have inspired musicians to explore all these things in many ways: through classic songs of the season which have been handed down, through their own ways of interpreting familiar songs, and through creation of their own seasonal stories.

Cathie Ryan is one such musician. The award winning Irish American singer and songwriter tours internationally through the year and has been a guest on winter season programs of other top artists. This is the first year, though, that she will be offering a series of holiday concerts of her own design. It is to be called The Winter’s Heart.

“I love Christmas! The sharing of meals, of gifts, of song, of together time is a blessing,” Ryan says. “We all slow down to be with our family, our community. No matter how stressed we are, Christmas seems to take the edge off, people are more patient and kind. I wanted to bring the band together to make some beautiful Christmas music that we could all share. And to sing to those who may not have anyone to celebrate the holiday with - to ameliorate the loneliness. Music does that. One of my most favorite things about Christmas,” she adds, “is that we celebrate the holiday with song.”

That recognition of connection and community goes deep for Ryan. She grew up in Michigan, the child of parents who had emigrated from Ireland. They’d spend time in summer with family back in Kerry and in Tipperary. In Detroit, her parents loved not only Irish music but country singers such as Johnny Cash and Loretta Lynn, and Ryan also heard music of Motown and of Appalachia. As an adult Ryan has spent time living in both the US and in Ireland. All of this has had influence on how she understands music. She’s chosen the subtitle of the Winter’s Heart series to be An Irish American Christmas.

That duality was one of the things which guided Ryan’s choices of music for the shows. “I love Christmas songs and the impulse was to do lots of songs we all know already, but I’d like to highlight our Irish American traditions through song so that will mean new songs!” she says. “There are some beloved songs that are musts, like Silent Night, and we will be singing those. My guitarist, Patsy O’Brien, and I have written a song called The Winter’s Heart that we’ll do. There are also some lovely Christmas songs sung in Ireland in Irish and in English that aren’t so well known in America, and I look forward to sharing those.”

The spiritual aspects of the season also go deep for Ryan. “The way we open our hearts at Christmas inspired the show’s title. The Winter’s Heart seems to encapsulate everything I believe Christmas is about, including Christ being born at Christmas and all of the heart centered teachings of Christianity. It is beautiful that in this time of cold and barrenness, a time when most of us go inside, we open our hearts, our homes, to new hope, new life and to each other. It raises us up.

“We have a big, beautiful shared songbook, we all join in the music,” Cathie Ryan says. “It is a reminder that we are all connected at the core. I love that.”

Tour dates for The Winter’s Heart: An Irish American Christmas

On this tour, Ryan will be accompanied by Patsy O’Brien from Cork on guitar and vocals, Patrick Mangan from New York on fiddle, and Kieran O’Hare from Chicago on uillean pipes, Irish flute, and tin whistle. Among them the three men have appeared with a roster of top artists including Eileen Ivers, Don Henley, and the Milwaukee Symphony, and have appeared on stages with shows from from Riverdance to Broadway theater.

Tour graphic courtesy of Cathie Ryan; photos of Ireland in winter and Cathie Ryan with bodhran by Kerry Dexter. Thank you for respecting copyright.

You may also wish to see
Cathie Ryan’s most recent recording Through Wind and Rain.
Cherish the Ladies: storytellers in song
Listening to Christmas
First week in Advent: candle in the window

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Cathie Ryan: The Winter's Heart Tour

Dark comes early in winter in Ireland, and sunrise comes late. It’s a time for turning inward, for reflection, for seeking grace, for seeking home. It’s a time as well for celebration of home and hearth, of winter’s beauty in the landscape, in the gifts of friendship and family, and music.

Musician Cathie Ryan knows these things well. First generation Irish American, she has lived out these traditions growing up in the United States and as an adult, living in both the US and Ireland.

Candles in the window to light loved ones home, hunting the wren on Saint Stephen’s Day, telling and retelling of well loved stories and singing of well loved songs, and honoring the winter solstice and the turning of the seasons as well as the time of Advent and Christmas: these are a few of the traditions of Ireland Ryan has received from and shared in her own family. This season, she’s decided to create a series of concerts to bring these things to her audiences. On 30 November Ryan will begin a run of concerts in the US to be called The Winter’s Heart: An Irish American Christmas.

Though she has at times appeared as a guest on holiday concerts with other Irish artists, this will be the first time Ryan is creating a winter themed run of performances of her own. Known for her compelling voice, inspired songwriting, and thoughtful selection of songs from the tradition and from contemporary writers, Ryan is also loved by her audiences for her lively storytelling and fine wit. All of these will be in play for The Winter’s Heart.

Joining Ryan for the tour will be award winning guitarist Patsy O’Brien. He has brought his soulful playing to work with Eileen Ivers and Paddy Keenan, among others. Patrick Mangan will handle fiddle playing for the tour, as he’s well qualified to do, having twice won All-Ireland fiddle championships and recently toured as a featured soloist with Riverdance. Keiran O’Hare will bring his pipes, flute, and tin whistle into the mix. He’s an internationally renown performer who has appeared with Mick Moloney, Liz Carroll, Josh Groban and Don Henley.

It is Ryan’s voice and vision which will center each evening’s performance, however. She has been at the forefront of Irish and Irish American music for more than two decades, bringing clarity of voice and the creativity of imagination to creating music which draws on legend and history as well as present day, which intertwines worlds of nature and myth, and which holds elements of both sides of her heritage. All this, Christmas, and flashes of humor as well -- these are bound to be evenings to remember.

Tour schedule and information for The Winter’s Heart

Photograph of Cathie Ryan in Santa hat by Kerry Dexter. Thank you for respecting copyright.

You may also wish to see
Cathie Ryan: Through Wind and Rain
An Evening in Belfast
Cathie Ryan: teaching tradition
Cathie Ryan: The Farthest Wave
Narada Presents the Best of Celtic Christmas, a two disc set for which Ryan sings the opening track, It Came Upon a Midnight Clear. Other artists on the recording include Dordan, Frankie Gavin, Natalie MacMaster, Kathy Mattea, and Altan.

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Beyond the Bog Road: Eileen Ivers

Walk On is the track Eileen Ivers chose to open her recording Beyond the Bog Road. The fiddle and banjo introduction intertwines a bit of Irish melody and riff within other lines which evoke Cajun, old time, and a shade of blues; Tim Shelton’s singing adds in bluegrass, gospel, and old time ideas. Ivers wrote the piece and in addition to the fiddle plays banjo and mandolin on this track. It is a piece that sets the scene and opens up the ideas she explores across the music on the album among them the experiences of emigration and immigration of Irish people to North America and the connections their music and community found with other communities on the new shores.

One aspect of the lives of those immigrant travelers that Ivers was thinking about was resilience. “There’s heart wrenching stuff but also joyous celebration that can come out of their journey -- even when life dragged them down they just kept moving on in such a positive way. That inspired Walk On, which became a sort of Cajuny Irishy sort of journey. You keep going and you keep the faith, basically, is the spirit of that song,” she says.

That is a lot of ground to cover and a lot of scene to set in the space of a touch more than four minutes. Ivers and her colleagues -- in addition to Shelton they include Buddy Connolly on button accordion, Leo Traversa on bass, Ben Wittman on percussion, and Greg Anderson on guitar -- do a fine job of it, creating a song that both stands in its own right and works as introduction of what’s to come.

What’s to come is an exploration of threads that tie and bind and weave in an out of the music of Irish immigrants in North America, the joy and sorrow that lives in Irish music and connects across time and reaches back to those bog roads in Ireland and out to Cajun, African American, Cape Breton and other communities of people building lives in a new country as well.

That is a theme Ivers has been exploring in her live concerts for several years, and for far longer than that in her life and in her music.

“It’s been a lifelong thing, for so many years, trying to put all this together,” Ivers says. “and for so many reasons, from as personal as my parents coming from these bog roads, these little back roads in the west of Ireland and as a kid going to Ireland with the family and my sister and I having our summers there running around on those bog roads and not knowing that was different from any other kind of American kid experience to playing in all these different configurations and with chatting with all these different folks over the years and hearing their stories and music.”

The daughter of parents who came from County Mayo in the west of Ireland to New York, Ivers grew up in the Bronx. She was drawn to the fiddle “and I sort of bothered my mother to rent me one, though she really wanted me to play piano,” Ivers says. She began learning from Martin Mulvihill “who was a brilliant teacher, and such a gentleman, you just wanted to please him,” she says. While still in her teens Ivers won the first of nine All Ireland championships in the fiddle. After a time studying for a degree and doing postgraduate work in mathematics she went into music full tilt, becoming a founding member of Cherish the Ladies and a featured cast member of Riverdance, playing with rock stars, world music ensembles, and symphony orchestra and pairing her Celtic based fiddle in a trio with a classical violinist and another whose specialty was jazz.

For Beyond the Bog Road Ivers felt called to return to her Irish roots, but with a bit of a different perspective than she’d had when exploring Ireland’s connections to other world musics in the past. It was that idea of the lasting faith and community and the changes and connections people from Ireland encountered in North America which guided her research and thinking as she prepared for Beyond the Bog Road concerts and for the album which would come from them. “I’m not like a typical traditional Irish player -- I love learning tunes but I wouldn’t be content just to keep learning more and more Irish tunes and playing them in sessions. I love that but I’ve always loved learning about other cultures,” she says.

Learning about the ways these other cultures met up with the music Irish people brought with them to North America informed her choices for the music on Beyond the Bog Road, both the pieces she wrote herself and those she chose from the tradition. From the Irish/Cajun/faith/bluegrass mix that makes the bones of Walk On, Ivers pairs Kitty’s Wedding from Ireland’s tradition with the American old time tune Smith’s Delight, making a set of tunes which showcases the lively aspects of her playing and reminds that dance rhythm makes a vital part of music making in both communities.

Dance formed a part of the inspiration for Crossroads, too, although in a different way and to a different musical result. In Ireland a few years back, Ivers and her husband Brian Mulligan helped organize a gathering in the village her father had come from. People met at the crossroads “and life was again celebrated through music and dance,” Ivers says. She was struck by a comment from one of the people there that he couldn’t bear to think of the hardships people who had emigrated from Ireland went through. That insight about people who stayed and people who left led Ivers to compose this quietly lyrical piece which readily invites reflection about travels and journeys of all sorts.

The Green Fields of America, sung by Niamh Parsons, is an emigration song which mixes regret and hope, while Linin’ Track is a lively set which pairs two songs of working on the railways at the turn of the nineteenth century, the bluesy Linin’ Track which railroad workers used to help keep the rhythm of their work going on and and the Irish jig Paddy on the Railway. It marks another joining of cultures through music.

Perhaps the least expected piece on the album is one with music composed by Louis Armstrong. It’s a little known -- until now -- piece of his work, celebrating, as Ivers explains in her notes, the dance off traditions which often featured African American and Irish tap dancers and played here with more than a hint of New Orleans in style.

On other songs and tunes Ivers ventures to the music of Quebec, to Galicia, to Cape Breton, and other aspects of her family experience in Ireland and Irish in America. The set which begins with Mackerel Sky pairs an idea from her mother’s home place in County Mayo in Ireland with a Cape Breton idea of strathspey, while the other tunes in the set, all written by Ivers, come from other aspects of her family life.

What began as project about music of the Irish diaspore and connections with other communities in North America took on several different hues as the process unfolded. Ivers was “floored by the amount of stuff I was learning --I probably came out a different player after realizing some of this stuff, “ she says. Life events took hold too. During the course of making the album Ivers and her husband welcomed their son Aidan home, and not long after “our family lost my father John, father in law Barney and mother in law Alice. Just before these sad losses we all welcomed our son home. They all waited and welcomed him with joy.

“I had this big roadmap of the record and the history points I wanted to hit,” she says. “Then these tender life events took hold, and because this record came up from my lifetime, all these things began coming out in what I was writing and how I was playing.”

Circling back in a way to the affirmation of faith found in Walk On, Ivers closes the album with the quietly reflective original tune Waiting for Aidan.

Photograph of bog road by Pamela Norrington; photograph of Eileen Ivers by Kerry Dexter. Thank you for respecting copyright.

You may also wish to see
Cherish the Ladies: storytellers in music
al look back at Eileen Ivers: Christmas tour and album
Cathie Ryan: Through Wind and Rain

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Ireland and Irish America: twenty years of Solas and music

Twenty years ago. Think back a moment to where you were and what you were doing -- and how the past two decades have unfolded. Changes will be a constant, no doubt, whatever area of life draws your attention with these thoughts.

That has been true for the band Solas, too. When flute and banjo player Seamus Egan, guitarist John Doyle, fiddle player Winifred Horan and singer Karan Casey brought their varied backgrounds of in Irish music together in New York City in the mid 1990s, they were each working on other projects. They knew they liked the sound they were creating together, though, a sound which, both lyrically and melodically, drew on their experiences in both Ireland and North America. They knew they wanted to share what they were creating with wider audiences, too -- what they did not know is that they were at the start of becoming one of the most celebrated and influential groups in working in the music of Ireland and Irish America.

They decided to call themselves Solas, which means light in Irish. That’s been a true name, one that ties into the energy with which they present their music and the discoveries they make in it and share with their listeners. Miles and miles and decades of world tours, band members coming and going, gigs in world class venues, awards, recognitions, road songs and road stories by the thousands learned and told, and it turns out they have been at sharing this music for twenty years. How to mark that milestone with a recording?

Founding members Horan and Egan, longtime cohorts Eamon McElholm on guitar and piano and Mick McAuley on accordion, and most recent member singer Moira Smiley didn’t want to do a retrospective, exactly. They did want to honor and include past band members as well as give the nod to the continuing and evolving nature of the sound they create now.

All These Years is the result. It is a sixteen track journey that moves from high energy jigs and reels to graceful slower pieces, from songs that come from the tradition to newer songs from writers including Martha Scanlon and Patty Griffin, and music written by members of the band as well.

Song and tune alike, there’s connection and creation evident between the players and the singers, and stories told as thoughtfully through tune as through song. Past members of the band were able to join in, too, adding and recalling their own distinct contributions to sound and story. Doyle and Casey are part of the project, as are former band members Donal Clancy, Johnny B. Connolly, John Williams, Mairead Phelan, Deirdre Scanlon, Noriana Kennedy, and Niamh Varian-Berry. Long time collaborators Chico Huff, Trevor Hutchinson, and John Anthony sit in too.

If you have been walking the music road with me for a time, many of those names and the music they make will be well known to you. Whether or not that is the case, what they have gathered to create with All These Years is indeed music which looks both back and forward, honoring the band’s past while standing brightly in the present and looking toward the future.

Each of the tracks is well worth your time, and well worth more than one listening. It is also a project that will benefit from being heard in the order in which the artists have designed it for you. Especially take note of Wandering Aengus, with Noriana Kennedy as the singer and a really interesting musical framework for her singing, Winifred Horan’s quiet composition, a waltz called Lost in Quimper, Moira Smiley’s take on the traditional song As I Went out Walking, Niamh Varian-Berry and Karan casey leading things on two rather different songs from the tradition, Willie Moore and Sixteen Come Next Sunday respectively, and Horan on fiddle and Egan on piano on the closer, Egan’s title track All These Years. In fact, if you’ve only time for one track, listen to that last one -- and then you will want to hear all the others, too.

At Celtic Connections in Glasgow this winter, there was a CD release concert at the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall. All the musicians on the recording got to be there, as well as several other unexpected guests. I was fortunate to be there, and that is where most of these photographs were made.

Band photograph courtesy of the artists. Performance photographs of Seamus Egan, Moira Smiley, Winifred Horan (with Moira Smiley in the background), and Karan Casey with Donal Clancy by Kerry Dexter, made at Celtic Connections with permission of the festival, the artists, and the venue involved. Thank you for respecting copyright.

You may also wish to see
Solas:Shamrock City
Exiles Return: Karan Casey and John Doyle
Ireland's music: Danu: Buan

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unexpected Irish music, part one

If you're open to Irish music which honors tradition and is yet a bit beyond the usual, take a look back and take a listen to

Wayward Son Guitarist and singer John Doyle plays seventeenth century songs with such energy and insight that they might well have been composed yesterday.

Standout tracks: Expect the Unexpected, Wild Colonial Boy

Somewhere along the Road Cathie Ryan delves deep into Irish history and landscape, and remembers the American side of her history as well. Songs in both English and Irish, with spare production by Ryan and John McCusker, and some outstanding guitar work by (see above) John Doyle.

notable cuts: the title track is a knockout, both for the song and the singing. also Rathlin Island -- 1847, an insightful emigration song which connects to the present day, and the joyous romp Carrick--a-- rede which opens the disc.

Far From the Hills of Donegal
Oisin McAuley, fiddle player from top rated tradtional irish band Danu, makes his solo debut with a fine selection of covers and originals. McAuley grew up in those hills of Donegal, and left them to take degree in classical music in Belfast, lived in Brittany to study that music, and now is based in Boston. Though you may have heard him in the band for years, you'll certainly want to give a listen to what he has to say on his own.

outstanding cuts: Tune for Gillian, Lover's Ghost/Maud Miller, Quebec Reels

Reunion: A Decade of Solas Irish American Band Solas was Irish when Irish wasn't Riverdance. Energy, connection, fun, reflection, and all kinds of great musicians from past and current band configurations.

outstanding cuts: Pastures of Plenty, The Newry Highwayman, Lament for Frankie

you may also wish to see
Ireland's music: Dervish
Cathie Ryan: Through Wind and Rain
Shamrock City

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Shamrock City

It began a with an invitation about eight years ago...and it began with a journey a bit more than a hundred years ago.

The Irish American band Solas was invited to play a festival in Butte, Montana. Seamus Egan, one of the founders of the band, had a connection with the town: he knew his grand uncle, Michael Conway, had come there from County Mayo in 1910, but little else was known about him. As Egan began to look into Conway’s life. the band members became intrigued with what life was like in Butte at the height of its copper mining boom town times. Rough and tumble still at the turn of the golden age, a western American town that saw hard working folks and mine owners facing off over wages, people raising their families and making their livings in the midst of all these things, and a town that was at one time the most Irish town in America, a place where emigrants from Ireland, often unwelcome elsewhere, could find a job in the mines -- a town that came to be known as Shamrock City.

Shamrock City is the name Solas chose for the album which came from this. With original music and tunes from the Irish tradition, the members of Solas have created music which gives a unique and original portrait of what the Butte Montana that Michael Conway might have known was like. It’s no surprise that they could do this: ever since Solas came on the music scene, they been known for highly original interpretations of the music of Ireland and Irish America which respect tradition while carrying it forward. Current members Egan, Winifred Horan, Mick McAuley, Eamon McElholm, and Niamh Varian-Barry are joined by a fine crew of guests as they explore this history, and yet it is the vigor and focus of the band members’ musicianship which anchors the music.

Far Americay finds Varian-Barry treating a haunting song of emigration and immigrants which understated grace in her singing. Winifred Horan does the same with her fiddle playing a tune she composed called Welcome to the Unknown. Tell God and the Devil calls in the sprits of hardworking miners and the boom town energy that work required, while Lay Your Money Down (with guest vocalist Rhiannon Giddens) gives a picture of how that energy played out elsewhere in the town. at times there’s tasteful use of sound which helps set the scene, including the singing of A stor mo chroí in Irish, a distant voices from Ireland which lead into Far Americay, to the clank of metal upon metal heading up the mining songs to the sound of children at play which lead into a song from the point of view of a miner’s child. These are short, subtle bits which bridge the music and move the stories along. reminding that real people lived through these times.

That’s a point also made in the three songs which bring Shamrock City to a close. Dick Gaughan guests to sing Labour Song, a piece which, though the details and amounts of money have changed, could find a place today as well. Am I Born to Die? is a reflective treatment of a spiritual with an eternal question about finding a way through hard times. No Forgotten Man, which was written by McAuley and Egan, draws together the threads of history and life in Shamrock City, the stories told shading into what comes next and what lives on today. Shamrock City is a place you’ll not forget.

I was fortunate to be present as Solas performed the music of Shamrock City live at Celtic Connections in Glasgow, at the Old Fruitmarket. That's where these photographs were made. They were made with the kind permission of the festival, the artists, and the venue, and are copyrighted. Thank you for respecting the copyright.

This video was also made at that concert in Glasgow, filmed for a program on BBC Alba

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Shadow and Light: Irish Music from John Doyle

A tale of an Irish American regiment during the American Civil War, an emigration from Ireland to America that never quite happened, a quiet reflection on the love of a child, the way a lost love drove a man into the American west: you could think all these songs come from Irish tradition, and in a way, they do: each is a song John Doyle composed for his latest album Shadow & Light.

John Doyle is a Irishman long resident in America, a creative guitarist and composer who has worked with artists including Alison Brown, Michael Black, Tim O’Brien, Joan Baez, John McCusker, and Cathie Ryan, to mention just a few. He is a founding member of the landmark Irish American group Solas, worked with Susan McKeown in the band Chanting House and released a duo album with Karan Casey. So the man stays busy enough.

Though he’s written and co written songs for other artists, on his earlier solo albums Doyle has focused mainly on songs from the tradition, with deft and original guitar playing and arrangement which make them sound as fresh as though they’d been newly written. Here, he reverses the choices he made on his earlier projects: there’s one song from the tradition, Bound for Botany Bay, and nine originals, seven of them songs and two tunes in which his guitar work comes especially to the fore.

It’s all good stuff, strong material with stories well told, melodies creatively played, and words sung in a voice that well fits both. Doyle’s arrangements balance his voice and guitar just as they need to be to serve the stories and the music. Alison Brown on banjo, Stuart Duncan on fiddle, Todd Phillips on bass, and Kenny Malone on percussion are among the artists who sit in with Doyle on the project, which he produced himself. It’s all well worth your listening. Several cuts to take especial note of, though, are Little Sparrow, which Doyle wrote for his daughter, Liberty’s Sweet Shore, inspired by the Irish emigration experience at Grosse Ile in Quebec, and and the instrumental Killorgan’s Church/Swedishish.


you may also wish to see

Music Road: exiles return: karan casey & john doyle
Music Road: John Doyle: Wayward Son
Music Road: Liz Carroll & John Doyle: Double Play

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Judy Collins

Each year the magazine Irish America names a list of one hundred top Irish Americans. Cathie Ryan and Joanie Madden are among those you’ve met here along the music road who have been honoured in this list. This year, one of those chosen is Judy Collins.

For more than five decades, Collins has been making a life in music, learning classical music and appearing with the Denver Symphony as a young woman, taking up the guitar in her late teens and becoming a leading light in the folk music revival of the 1960s, and by the 1970s forging a musical path which includes folk music of the British Isles and Ireland, music from singers and songwriters such as Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan, Ian Tyson, and Joni Mitchell, and adding in popular and classical music as well as eclectic selections from the likes of Jacques Brel and Steven Sondheim, along with her own songs on subjects including love, family, landscape, and politics. Collins has also worked in theater, written several books, and in recent years started her own record company, Wildflower Records.

One thread connecting all her musical work is love for a good song, and an adventurous spirit in seeking out just those songs to which she feels best able to give voice. Her second album, Golden Apples of the Sun, was named from the words of a poem by WB Yeats to which Collins gives a haunting traveler's journey. On Farewell to Tarwathie she pairs a traditional whaling song with actual whale songs from nature. Bob Dylan’s vivd images of love, grief, and longing in Tomorrow Is a Long Time are illuminated with understated grace while his rather different perspective on the same emotions in Daddy You’ve been on My Mind are equally well served in a paring which finds them side by side on Collins’ Fifth Album
Collins has often been early to record the work of little known artists who went on to wider recognition. Cohen, Mitchell, Randy Newman, Eric Andersen, and Billy Edd Wheeler are among these musicians. The breadth and depth of Collins gifts as a singer and as a chooser of song are indicated by the range of three of her best known radio hits: the pop song Send In the Clowns, folk songwriter Joni Mitchell’s Both Sides Now, and the traditional hymn Amazing Grace.

Most of Collins’ early work has been reissued in recent years, and is readily available. Judy Collins 3 & 4
Forever Anthology
and Very Best of Judy Collins
in addition to those albums linked above, are especially worth your attention.

aside: I’ve been fortunate enough to interview Judy Collins and to see her live in concert at several points in her career. If you have the chance to go to a Judy Collins concert, take it.

you may also wish to see
Music Road: Joanie Madden: Galway Afternoon
Music Road: Cathie Ryan: Songwriter
Music Road: Reflections with Mary Black

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Galway Afternoon

Joe and Joanie Madden’s album A Galway Afternoon will have you smiling straight away.

Through the magic they create with flute and whistle and accordion, and the love between father and daughter, they have you in a sunny -- or maybe not so sunny -- Galway afternoon, right from the opening set of jigs. They kick things off with The Greenfields of Woodford / The Hole in the Hedge/Seamus Cooley's and travel on through a well spent hour of more jigs, many reels, a hornpipe or two, an air, and a set of waltzes.

You’ll have met Joanie here along the music road before, in her role as founding member of the top notch band Cherish the Ladies, her work with the Pride of New York group, and her generous ways of lending her flute and whistle skills to support other musicians. Joe, her dad, was born in east Galway, and emigrated to New York, where Joanie was born and raised. In New York, Joe had a band which turned into a thirteen piece orchestra and lasted for three decades. Though Joanie points out that he was a bit hard on her while she was learning her music, it was, she says, because he knew she had gift of the music in her.

The pair were in Galway one June a few years back. Joanie convinced her dad to go into the recording studio and lay down some tunes. Studio work was never Joe’s favorite thing to do, but it’s clear from the music here that he got into the spirit of things and let the music lead him on to give his own gifts of energy and passion. You hear that clearly on The Little Thatched Cabin / The Coal Miner / The Ormond Sound set of reels, and all through the tunes, really.

Joanie’s solo on The Boys of the Lough is a fine showcase for her talents, which are also apparent through all the tunes. Her brother John adds energy with drums, well shown on the tunes in that set and on other tracks as well. Charlie Lennon and Gabriel Donohue also join in, on piano and guitar.

As life plays out, back home in New York Joe Madden took a fall not long after that afternoon in Galway, a fall that was to bring his life to close. In her liner notes, Joanie writes that he was happy his legacy would go on, and glad that they had taken that afternoon in Ireland to put their sharing of the gift music down for others to hear. It is a record filled with the joy of music, and of sharing family and friendship through music. Real stuff, real Irish, straight up, and just your right companion for a sunny afternoon or a rainy evening.

you may also wish to see

Music Road: Cherish The Ladies: A Star in the East
Music Road: pride of new york
Music Road: Music road trip New York City: Irish Musicians

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Irish and American

Irish and American: that can be a challenge, as much as it is a connection. That’s often especially true when it comes to music.

It is challenge we explore often along the music road and that I explore elsewhere as I write about Ireland and Irish music, as well. As we are now well into Patrick season, that time of year when shamrocks pop up in the oddest place and both beer and rivers sometimes turn green. here’s the first of several articles with a look at musicians we’ve met along the road who follow this path.

Liz Carroll grew up in Chicago, taking classical violin lessons and absorbing Irish music from family and friends. She won her first all Ireland championship on the fiddle when she was eighteen. It is as a composer she’s made her strongest mark, writing tunes that are played in sessions and passed along around the world.

Eileen Ivers is a fiddle player too. Her specialties include exploring the edges and margins where Irish rhythms meet the sounds of other lands, and tracing the interconnections of immigrant communities as heard in their music, always with Irish music at the heart of it. She saw those connections early, growing up in the Bronx, in New York, and traveling back to Mayo in Ireland to spend summers with her grandparents.


There’s more ahead about Irish and Irish American artists just around the corner -- have you a favourite?

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Music Road: exiles return: karan casey & john doyle
Music Road: Road Trip Music visits Pennsylvania

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Eileen Ivers: Christmas tour & album

Eileen Ivers has long been interested in places where music and culture intersect, how the beats and rhythms of the world’s many musics connect and combine and relate to the Irish traditional music that is the center of her work. When it comes to Christmas time, it is to that center she returns. “My parents grew up in Mayo, in the west of Ireland,” she says, “ and we used to go back there , and just hang out with the grandparents . We were so blessed to have that sort of childhood, that connection.” Ivers grew up in the Bronx, in New York, where she started playing the fiddle at age eight, and has followed that interest across the world. She was a founding member of the internationally renown band Cherish the Ladies and a star of Riverdance, as well as performing with rock stars and symphony orchestras. Those experiences of other musics have both deepened and broadened her interests and abilities in Irish music. That’s a line of thought she brings to her Christmas shows, and to her holiday recording, An Nollaig. "There is so much joy in the season. I wanted to bring that out to welcome listeners in," Ivers says. "Just like ornaments on a Christmas tree, some of the tunes in An Nollaig have been lovingly passed down through the generations, and some are new." That’s a combination which engages both musicians and listeners during the holiday shows. “I love it when they begin to sing along, or to clap and stamp in the fast pieces,” she says. “ There’s just such a great cycle going between us on the stage and the audience when that happens.” That’s sure to happen at the gigs as Ivers and her musical compatriots make their way across the country this holiday season. Whether or not you’ll be able to see the show (and it is an evening not to be missed), you can share in the good cheer and the music through the recording An Nollaig. On it you will find reels and jigs from the tradition, Susan McKeown singing Don Oiche Ud i MBeithill/ One Night in Bethlehem, a song from Denmark, the carol Do You hear What I Hear? and Jesu Joy of Man’s Desiring, Bach with an Irish twist. It is an album that will quickly become part of your holiday celebration as well, and all the more reason to catch the musicians on tour this holiday season. The tour dates run from Alabama to California to Colorado to Vermont through the month of December. Check for the one nearest you at Eileen Ivers' tour schedule page. you may also wish to see Music Road: Cherish The Ladies: A Star in the East Eileen Ivers: Wild Blue Music Road: autumn & Thanksgiving listening, continued

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Boston and Irish: Joe Derrane

Joe Derrane has a master’s touch and a distinctive voice through his chosen instrument, the button accordion. As the son of Irish immigrants, Irish music is and always has been his base, his source on which to draw and the river of music through which his work flows. On his latest recording, Grove Lane, you can hear that, and you can also hear other sources and other adventures. All of this, mixed and mastered through Derrane’s Irish roots, his life in Boston's Irish American community, and the rhythm of that community’s dance halls where he got his start.

That start was 1940s and 1950s (for more about that, check out Susan Gedutis Lindsay's book See You at the Hall: Boston's Golden Era of Irish Music and Dance). He made a series of popular recordings in those days. As the halls declined, he switched to other sorts of music, and other ways of making a living. Several years after he thought he’d retired from music, those early recordings were reissued, and he was invited to perform at Wolf Trap, in Virginia, for what he thought would be a one off gig celebrating his history. His music was so well received, though, that a whole new phase of his career began.

Grove Lane is a snapshot of the man well into that phase, enjoying and sharing the enjoyment of creating fresh music as he moves into his eighth decade. There’s a lively collection of reels, jigs, and hornpipes, a barn dance, a schottische, a waltz, and a tango. The music is crisp and clear and imaginative, drawing from Irish dance tradition and clearly carrying it forward as well.

Just as areas in Ireland have their own styles of music, from Donegal to west Kerry to Oriel, so do certain Irish communities in other countries. The Boston area in the United States is one such, and Joe Derrane is a musician whose music is Irish, American, and Boston. The Slate Roof set of reels, the Lost Jigs set of, yes, jigs, and Waltzing with Annie, are especially worth hearing, but odds are you’ll be drawn into listening the whole thing through (and dancing to it too, perhaps) once you start in. The recording was produced by Derrane and acoustic guitarist John McGann, who recorded the tracks over a series of sessions at Derrane’s home on Grove Lane.

side note: There will be concert in tribute to Joe Derrane on 13th November, at which he will appear along with other musicians you’ve met here along the music road including John Doyle, Billy McComiskey, Joanie Madden, and John Whelan. This will be in Fairfield, Connecticut, at the Fairfield Theatre Company, Stage One and begin at 7pm. Contact info@fairfieldtheatre.org
for ticket details. Proceeds from the concert will go to benefit the Shamrock Traditional Irish Music Society of Fairfield.

you may also wish to see
Music Road: Billy McComiskey: Outside the Box
Music Road: Shannon Heaton: The Blue Dress
Music Road: Aoife Clancy: Silvery Moon

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Music road trip New York City: Irish Musicians

New York City has been home, waystation, birthplace, and seedbed for many sorts of Irish and Irish American musicians over the years. Even when they’re playing the strictest traditional music, there is at times a bit of New York energy and edge in the music of Irish musicians steeped in the Irish communities of the Big Apple, and you'll often find them writing original music, and connecting Irish music with other traditions, too.

Celtic Cross offers a mix of Irish and rock to tell their tales of immigration and modern day. Cherish The Ladies started out in New York, and have taken the spirit of Irish music -- and Irishwomen playing music -- around the world for twenty five years now. Founding member Joanie Madden also teamed up with three New York Irish men to record the lively quartet album Pride of New York. One of her popular compositions, recorded by Cherish, is called Bonkers in Yonkers.

Dublin born singer Susan McKeown came to New York with an acting scholarship and stayed to become a part of the music community, keeping deep Irish roots and seeing their connections with the musics of Africa and with Jewish traditions. Eileen Ivers has taken her fiddle playing into collaborations with jazz musicians and orchestras as well as other Irish musicians, and has taken her New York energy into connections with Appalachia and the blues.

Though they’ve moved on to other places. several other musicians you’ve been getting to know along the Music Road also have spent time in the crossroads that is New York Irish music, among them Heidi Talbot, John Doyle, and Cathie Ryan.

During her time in New York, Ryan wrote a song called The Back Door. She was thinking about undocumented Irish who came to New York, but it is a song which goes to the heart of all who face change and hardship with courage. There’s a video of her singing it here.

Many of the artists mentioned above have played at the Irish Arts Center, a vibrant place for Irish music in New York which also has programs and classes on drama, literature, art, Irish language, and other aspects of Irish culture. It's been around since 1972, on West 51st Street in Manhattan.

This is part of The Great American Road Trip, in which I originally partnered up with A Traveler’s Library to add musical ideas to the book and film suggestions for journeys through the regions of the United States which you’d find there. The Library is closed now, but I think you will still find the journeys through music interesting. For more about the road trip (and a look at some great road songs) see Great American Road Trip: Music begins


you may also wish to see


patrick season: far from home
Potato Music
patrick season: thoughts for patrick's eve
more music from the road trip
Irish music

-->If you'd like to support my creative work at Music Road and elsewhere,
here is a way to do that, through PayPal. Note that you do not have to have a PayPal account to do this.Thank you.