Green Fields of America

The Green Fields of America

A kitchen session with five very talented friends is the the feeling you get from this recording, but it was in fact getting such sessions out of the kitchen and onto the concert stage that was the beginning of Green Fields of America more than thirty years ago. Musician and musicologist Mick Moloney had the idea, and today with Irish music groups appearing on almost very stage in America, it might not seem so unusual, but in 1978 it was new and refreshing and let wider audiences in on what Irish musicians and their friends have long known: the best music is made among friends and is never quite played the same way twice.

There are fourteen sets on this recording, comprising reels, slides, jigs, slip jigs, barn dances, and songs. Over the years, the line up of Green Fields has seen many a superstar of Celtic music come and go: the group assembled for this recording and for recent tours is no less outstanding than those who’ve come before. Moloney is on hand, lending his voice to songs and playing banjo, mandolin, and guitar; Billy McComiskey plays accordion, Robbie O’Connell sings and plays guitar, Athena Tergis is the fiddle player, and John Doyle sings and plays guitar and bouzouki. Among them, they’ve lists of awards, band credits, and projects that stretch from American fields to Ireland and back, including nationally syndicated series on American television, work on Ireland’s Irish language network, TG 4, All Ireland championships, playing with the Clancy Brothers, Joan Baez, Sharon Shannon, Cathie Ryan, Liz Carroll, Riverdance, Lord of the Dance, and the Clancy Legacy.

To listen to them play here, though, you wouldn’t know they’d ever done anything else but play music together. It’s a varied program, some lively sparkling new stuff, some takes on tradition, all done in the spirit of sharing and sharing ‘round. Even if you've heard some of the music before, you’ll want to hear it this way, and, if the chance arises, go see these players, together and in their separate careers as well. Outstanding tracks include the songs Across the Western Ocean and The Bonny Irish Boy, and the Jackie Riordan’s/Money in Both Pockets/The Dungannon Reel set.


--> note: Green Fields of America have been announced as a headline act at the National Folk Festival in Nashville, Tennessee, USA, 2-4 September 2011.

you may also wish to see

Billy McComiskey: Outside the Box
Athena Tergis: Letter Home
Irish music, Irish landscape
John Doyle: Wayward Son

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now playing: Athena Tergis

A Letter Home

Fiddler Athena Tergis has lived in San Francisco, New York, and points between, in Belfast, Galway, London, and points between, and she’s now based in the Tuscan region of northwest Italy. When she decided to call her first solo recording A Letter Home, she was considering all that. Her background also includes playing in Riverdance on Broadway, touring with Sharon Shannon, and backing up many world renown musicians while at TG4, the national Irish language television channel in Ireland. A Letter Home is a collection of Celtic based tunes which are true to the traditions from which they arise but which also allow the listener to hear Tergis’ own instrumental flair and line of thought quite clearly. The music includes a lively set of barn dances and a Scottish tinged strathspey, after opening at a fiery pace with a set of Irish reels. In all there are fourteen tracks : jigs, reels, highlands, set dance tunes, flings, and slow airs, tunes with origins in Galway, Cork, Antrim, and Donegal as well as in the Scottish Highlands, the Irish community of Chicago, and the heart of Cape Breton in Nova Scotia.


John Doyle, whose music you’ve encountered before on this site, produced the collection, and there’s really collaborative ensemble work from Sharon Shannon and Billy McComiskey on accordions, cellist Natalie Haas, Ben Wittman on percussion, and fiddler Liz Carroll.