Other roads: stories from Perceptive Travel

Music, landscape. legend, connection, heritage, history: each of those things comes into the music I share with you here along the music road.

Landscape and journey are more often the focus of what I write over at Perceptive Travel, where I am one of six writers. As we mark the ninth anniversary of Perceptive Travel this week, I thought you who read here at Music Road might enjoy seeing some of the ways I have included perspectives from music and musicians in stories I have done for that publication.

In Rathlin Island: history, landscape, legend meet I invite you to a place off the coast of County Antrim in Northern Ireland. You have met Cathie Ryan and Mary Black here along the music road several times; they both have connections to Rathlin. Their comments and music are included in the story

There’s mention of some of the fine musicians who call Caithness, Sutherland, Wester Ross, Easter Ross and the Black Isle home in this journey through Scotland’s North.

Though she handled things with her usual understated grace in music and flashes of humor along with it at her concert it was still quite something to be there on The Falls Road as Cathie Ryan spent An Evening in Belfast a few years back.

Seasons are on the turn as I write this, which has me remembering this short piece -- and yes, it has links to music too-- with reflections on traveling in spring and in Donegal in Ireland’s far northwest stopping by Wildflowers and a Wall.

When you go over to Perceptive Travel to read these, I invite you to stay a while and look around. You will find stories from Singapore, India, Israel, Texas, Istanbul, Boston, Edinburgh, Louisville, Nova Scotia, North Uist, and many other places, and much more to explore.

You may also wish to see
Altan: The Widening Gyre
Canada's Music: Natalie MacMaster and Donnell Leahy: One
Ireland's music: Matt and Shannon Heaton: Tell You In Earnest

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Beoga: How to Tune a Fish

How do you tune a fish? The wry and coming coming at things from and angle perspective that question implies infuses the music offered by the five members of the band Beoga on their album How to Tune a Fish. A like titled set opens the music, and it draws you right in, just as though you were hearing them at a session in their based in County Antrim, Northern Ireland. Interesting choice of instruments they bring to the music, too: two accordions, piano, fiddle, and bodhran.

The second set, Sticky Bun Slides (the title comes from a conversation bodhran player Eamon Murray had with an Italian friend) keeps things dancing right along , and moves into the song Home cookin’ from American songwriter Rick Danko, with fiddler Niamh Dunne stepping up to sing, adding a bit of an Irish edge to the country blues in the piece. Ballymacaldrick is a lovely slow tune from accordion player Damian McKee, inspired by his home place in Antrim.

Seán Óg Graham handles the other accordion, and on occasion guitar as well. He also composed a number of the tunes, including that one about fish tuning. Liam Bradley , whose background includes world wide composing and arranging for Irish dance, is on keyboards for the group.

It’s a lively mix of tradition and innovation they bring here -- in fact How to Tune a Fish seems to lean a bit more toward a trad focus than several of the band’s earlier albums. Not to say they don’t bring in other things as well, including the country take on Home cookin’ and a vaudeville song called Come Out of the Rain, which they clearly have a fine time doing. Songs and tunes both, it is apparent that these five really enjoy each other’s music, and really are listening to each other, as well. through all the twelve tracks.

That’s an aspect interwoven into the music which makes things all the better for those who listen. The word beoga means lively in irish, and Bradley, Dunne, McKee, Murray and Graham deliver on that. Not lively for the sake of fast played tunes though, but rather because that’s at the heart and energy of the music they offer, Irish music moving forward with a crisp northern edge.


About that fish -- care to offer an answer to the question?

you may also wish to see
Music Road: Grada: Natural Angle
Music Road: malinky: flower & iron
Music Road: music of Donegal: Altan