Ireland's Music: Cherish the Ladies Heart of the Home

Joy and sorrow, light and shadow, tears and laughter: al these find their places in the music of Ireland. Indeed, you might say that songs and tunes and stories which bring all these in are the substance of Ireland’s music.

A fine place to hear this on the recording Heart of the Home, from Cherish the Ladies.

Heart of the Home opens with a set of tunes composed by flute player Joanie Madden to honor her father’s home town in East Galway. The Portumna Workhouse tells a tale without words of reflection on the darker side of things during the famine years, while the The Hurling Boys of Portumna takes a lively an lighter tack, It is for, Madden said “All those might men who brought tremendous glory to the town through sport.”

Singer and guitarist Kate Purcell, from Clare, steps in to join the band for the song Glenties. An image filled reflection on a small town in Donegal, it was written by musician Maurice McGroth while he was staying in the town. Purcell and the band combine for a graceful, atmospheric performance which is one of the standouts on the recording. Listen out especially for Nollaig Casey’s fiddle as the band backs Purcell on this track.

Cherish is a class act: Heart of the Home is their seventeenth album. More than than thirty years ago, Joanie Madden, who plays flutes and whistles, and Mary Coogan, whose instruments are guitar, bouzouki, and banjo, were founding members of the band. Joining them these days are Mirella Murray on accordion, Kathleen Boyle on piano, and Nollaig Casey on fiddle. In performance and on record they often invite guests to join in.

As you might suppose from the title, the idea of home and well loved places runs through the music chosen for this recording. Another highlight of Heart of the Home is Ambletown, the song of a seafaring man longing for home. That home, in the song, is in the north country, so it is fitting that the Ennis Sisters, who come from Newfoundland in Atlantic Canada, join in as the voices.

Ways of thinking about home take twists and turns. Kathleen Boyle joins a Turlough O’Carolan piece with a tune she wrote for some of her former students in The Murphy Boys set. The Letty from Cavan set includes a tune Madden wrote for her neighbors along with tune fro Ed Reavy and Martin Mulhaire, both Irish musicians who emigrated to the United States. There are several sets with tunes the women found in Irish tune books from the nineteenth century which allow them to have great times telling stories as their instruments converse with each other. Farewell to the Catskills is a lyrical tune Madden wrote about a place in New York state which has often welcomed people with ties to Ireland. Galway balladeer Don Stiffe steps in to sing Shadow of a Singer and his Song, in which songwriter Dermot Henry looks back at the changes and challenges of his early days in music, finding among hardships a sense of home in the connection between performer and audience.

There is the title track, Heart of the Home, written by Andy M. Stewart. Not long before he passed away, songwriter Stewart suggested that this would be a good piece of Cherish the Ladies to take on, and indeed they did, inviting Irish country singer Nathan Carter to sing the lyrics for the recording and the video. On tour, Purcell often sings the lead; they each add distinctive presence to the song, with the instruments from the band weaving in and out an through their singing.

When Cherish began, there were very few well known Irish women musicians. A whole band of top class women musicians? That was unheard of. Cherish the Ladies did, however, make themselves heard. Through the years they have played with top class musicians from symphony orchestras to country musicians to the best in Irish music. Time in Cherish has been part of the careers of many top class musicians as well, among them, fiddler Eileen Ivers, dancer Jean Butler, singers and songwriters Cathie Ryan and Heidi Talbot, and singer Aoife Clancy.

Heart of the Home is a fine next step of Cherish the Ladies. If you know their work you will certainly want it; if you’ve not yet met them, this is a fine place to make their acquaintance. They tour extensively, too . As the music on Heart of the Home suggests, you will certainly enjoy seeking out the chance to see Cherish the Ladies in performance.

Photographs oby Kerry Dexter, made at the Celtic Connections Festival In Glasgow, with the permission of the artists, the festival, and the venue.

You may also wish to see
Eileen Ivers Beyond the Bog Road.
Cathie Ryan Through Wind & Rain
Cherish the Ladies storytellers in music, which talks about their winter holiday albums

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Celtic Colours on Cape Breton

Cape Breton is a fascinating place to explore at any time of year. When autumn landscape, community welcome, and generous sharing of the strands of music which weave though life in this island in Atlantic Canada come together each October at the Celtic Colours International Festival, it’s really time to be on Cape Breton.

This year, 2017, the festival runs from 6 through 14 October as it marks its twenty first season of concerts, workshops, community meals, and cultural experiences all across the island. Visiting artists from Scotland, Ireland, the United States and many parts of Canada will inform the music this year. There’s a special emphasis on Canada’s artists this year as Celtic Colours joins in celebrations across Canada marking the150th anniversary of Confederation.

People were coming to this island in the far north of what would become known as Nova Scotia long before 150 years ago, however. They were making music then, too.

The fiddle is one of the most portable of instruments. When people were driven from their homes in the Highlands and Island of Scotland by landlords who thought livestock would bring better profit than farms, often there was little they could take along. The music and dances in their memories and in their hearts survived, and in many cases, so did their fiddles. Those memories and those fiddles became the basis of their music in the new world.

As much as that music and dance carried on the traditions of Scotland, new elements had their influences. Back in Scotland, music and dance continued to evolve, too. One place where all this comes together in the 21st century is at the Celtic Colours Festival.

The theme of Celtic Colours this year is Roots. It’s an idea which encompasses both the depth of connection and community which make up the island’s cultures and the need to nurture and connect and evolve what is now and what’s to come. This is all present in the music which anchors the festival, and is marked in varied ways in the sharing of arts, crafts, community meals, and other events.

A few things you may expect at Celtic Colours this year:

We Walk As One: the Grand Opening, is a concert which takes place in Sydney at Centre 2000, will feature artists from Scotland, Ireland, Nunavut, and from the Acadian and Scottish communities of Cape Breton. The trio of guitarist John Doyle, flute player and piper Michael McGoldrick, and fiddler John McCusker account for some of the Ireland and Scotland presence as they make their festival debut as a trio. Swing du Sutete brings dance from the Acadian tradition, while singer IVA from Nunavut makes her first appearance at the festival and Cape Breton group Coig returns. Fellow Cape Bretoner Heather Rankin, long known for work with her family band, makes her solo debut at the festival this night, while Cathy Ann McPhee and Patsy Seddon add in Scotland’s presence.

This sort of evening is a tradition at Celtic Colours: every concert -- and most nights there a half a dozen or so going on across the island -- includes several acts. Each plays a set and then they join for a finale. Each evening in this way serves as an ambassador for several sorts of music, and the connections among them.

Across the nine days of the festival, you will a fiddle summit, a gathering featuring First Nations artists, a performance which will take place in historic Fortress Louisbourg, and a tribute concert to John MacDougall, who composed 38,000 tunes. Most evenings offer performances from musicians of differing cultural stands, drawing on connections and contrasts so all may celebrate and learn.

Six songwriters from different parts of Canada will have been working for a week to write material for their concert Songs from Scratch. Gaelic song and Gaelic infused piping, fiddling, dance,and piano playing will fill Saint Matthew’s Church one afternoon in Inverness as Seudan, based in that other Inverness meet up with Cape Breton fiddlers Shelly Campbell and Andrea Beaton and others.

There might be a bluegrass and jazz tinge to things as Grammy winning banjo player and composer Alison Brown from the US joins top Cape Breton fiddle player Kimberley Fraser and Scotland’s Paul McKenna for the Cow Bay Ceilidh.

It’s sure to be an evening to remember when Boston based Scottish style fiddler and composer Hanneke Cassel and her band mates Mike Block on cello and guitarist Keith Murphy share the bill with dynamic African American roots based singer Rhiannon Giddens and Cajun/old time singer Dirk Powell -- and take note, Giddens and Powell are both ace banjo players, too. Ben Miller and Anita MacDonald will add Cape Breton pipe and fiddle tunes to the night as well.

The learning and sharing ad collaboration is not limited to each night’s featured concerts. There are workshops, master classes, and talks to do with music, of course, and you’d have many chances to take part as a players, dancer, or observer, in a ceilidh -- a party with music and dance. You’d have the chance to learn a few steps, too, or you could learn a bit of Gaelic, or perhaps how to hook a rug in the longstanding Acadian way, or try your hand at painting sea scene or learn about blacksmithing with a side of tunes and talk. You could go for a guided walk in the outdoors of Cape Breton autumn, take in art exhibits, create your won art as you try your hand a pumpkin carving, and visit farmer’s markets and craft shows.

If you are not quite ready to wind down after the main concerts each night, too, the always popular Festival Club at the Gaelic College at Saint Ann’s keeps things going until the small hours of the morning.

The people of Cape Breton are warm and welcoming, you’ll find, and very ready to talk and to listen as you participate in all these things. Another great time for Cape Breton conversation is over a meal. You’ll have good chance to do that: there are breakfasts, lunches, afternoon teas, and dinners a plenty. Seafood is a big deal on this island, and you will find ham, roast beef, turkey, Scottish and Acadian specialities, and plenty of veg and desserts on hand too. Groups across Cape Breton step up each year to prepare and host community meals.

The Grand Finale of the music concerts of this twenty first year of Celtic Colours will take place in Port Hawkesbury. Powerful singer and guitartist JP Cormier will bring in the Cape Breton presence. Imar, a high energy group formed of members from top Celtic nations bands, will likely blow the roof off the hall, but if they have not, then Rhiannon Giddens and Dirk Powell are quite powerful enough to do that all on their own. This year’s festival artists in residence, songwriters Buddy MacDonald and James Keelaghan, will no doubt have surprises to share, as will top irish American group Cherish the Ladies, who have been thrilling audiences across the world with the thoughtful and lively sides of Irish music for more than three decades.

This is just a taste of what’s in store across the nine days of this year’s Celtic Colours Festival. Even if you’ll not make it to Cape Breton for Celtic Colours this year, explore the festival’s website to learn about this vibrant place where, as the festival’s artistic director Dawn Beaton says “Music is a powerful force that feeds the soul.” Keep an eye on the Celtic Colours website too to learn if, as has been the case in past years, some of the festival’s concerts will be live streamed online.

One other thing: as part of the living legacy of the festival and to honor this special anniversary in the story of Canada, Celtic Colours will partner with Strathlorne Nursery in Inverness and community partners across the island to plant a maple tree for every ticket sold. Last year there were around 22,000 tickets purchased, so the spring of 2018 should see a big season of maple planting across Cape Breton!

Photographs of Michael McGoldrick, Alison Brown, Hanneke Cassel, Dirk Powell, Rhiannon Giddens, and Joanie Madden (of Cherish the Ladies) made with permission of the artists, by Kerry Dexter. Thank you for respecting copyright.

You may also wish to see
Canada’s music: Catherine MacLellan who will take part in the Songs from Scratch project
Celebrating Cape Breton’s Heritage and Connections though Music
Sounds of Cape Breton
Scottish Musicians Look at the Future of Our Past
Women of Ireland: Music
Reflections, Travel, Music: Music and its Power to Connect

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Late Winter, Christmas, and Music

Late winter, leading up to Christmas, is a time that calls to flurries of activity and travel, preparation and celebration, even as it calls equally to reflection and quiet. Music, specifically of the season and otherwise, is always a good companion and a fine gateway to all these things. For a moment in the midst of hurry or for a longer time in the silence of night and morning, let the work of these musicians be you companion and guide.

Allow this music to renew your hope and peace and joy...

Wintersong, from New England based quartet Rani Arbo and daisy mayhem offers joy, sadness, reflection, exuberance, and good questions. All of this is framed in great harmony, fine lead singing, and top class playing on fiddle, bass, guitar, and percussion. There’s a lively treatment of Jesse Winchester’s Let’s Make a Baby King, a gospel infused spiritual from the African American tradition with Children Go Where I Send Thee. Christmas Bells finds guitarist Anand Nayak setting Longfellow’s words to a new, reflective melody. The four (Arbo on fiddle, Scott Kessel on percussion, Andrew Kinsey on bass, and Nayak on guitar; they all sing) interweave voices on a song Kinsey grew up with called Julian of Norwich. Arbo’s haunting lead well suits her original music framing words by Alfred Lord Tennyson in Ring Out Wild Bells. There’s a lifting of hope in the closing song, Singing in the Land. That’s just a hint of the music, which will make a fine companion for winter’s celebrations and questions.

The title of Heidi Talbot’s newest recording, Here We Go 1,2,3 suggests change. That is an idea that pulls through the songs, the ones she writes, and the ones she chooses from contemporary writers and from traditional sources. Talbot is Irish, living now in Scotland and married to fiddle player and composer John McCusker, who worked with her to produce this project. They’ve created a musical journey that references tradition and yet is contemporary. A clear eyed facing of shifting ground and a thread of resilience to learn from whatever comes are threads that pull through as well. These are stories, too, that leave any certain conclusion open to the hearer’s reflections. Talbot’s fine soprano and thoughtful phrasing illuminate these ideas in songs including the title track, Chelsea Piers, Song for Rose (will you remember me), and The Year That I Was Born.

...and if you happen to be looking for Christmas music, Talbot worked for some years with the band Cherish the Ladies. She is the voice on their fine seasonal album called On Christmas Night on songs including Silent NIght, The Holly and the Berry (all the women trade verses on this one), and The Castle of Dromore.

For her album Songs for Christmas, Emily Smith has chosen traditional and contemporary songs along with carols that have become favorites over the years as she done festive season concerts in her home region of Dumfries and Galloway in the southwest of Scotland. This year she’s expanded her holiday tour across Scotland, sharing such favorite carols as God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen and Silent Night along with the gentle contemporary piece Santa Will Find You, the American spiritual Heard from Heaven Today and the Scots song Christ Has My Hairt Aye. Her clear voice and thoughtful phrasing imbue the songs with holiday grace and make the collection work well together. Smith’s own songwriting shines too on Find Hope and on Winter Song.

This is Cara Dillon’s first year to offer a Christmas album. Her choices for the album, which is called Upon a Winter’s Night, are in keeping with the path she’s been following in her non seasonal work, With husband and musical partner Sam Lakeman, Dillon has created a seasonal outing that shares several original songs from the couple, a piece in Irish, a reach back in time to the twelfth century for the Wexford Carol and even further back for the Advent hymn O Come, O Come Emmanuel. Dillon, who grew up in Northern Ireland, infuses the songs with a haunting grace and touches of Celtic connection along the way.

Carrie Newcomer’s recording The Beautiful Not Yet is not filled with carols -- it is not a seasonal album -- but the ideas of connection, of questions, of thoughtful reflection, and of staying in touch across time and miles work well with the holiday season. New comer has a gorgeous alto voice on which to tell the stories in this collection of original songs, too. It is an album that works well across the seasons -- as indeed all the recordings here do. During the winter holidays you might find Lean in Toward the Light, The Season Of Mercy, Sanctuary, and The Slender Thread especially worth hearing.

Bringing us back to Advent and Christmas, Matt and Shannon Heaton offer Fine Winter’s Night, which moves from contemplating how the cold dark skies of winter connect to warmth inside our homes and lives, to lively jigs and reels, both original and from Irish tradition. There’s a vignette of a Christmas love story set in Victorian era winter, and a story about a cat and Christmas, too, along with thoughtful presentations of carols including O Little Own of Bethlehem and It Came Upon the Midnight Clear. Shannon plays the flute, Matt plays the guitar, and they both sing, trading leads, joining in duets, and adding graceful harmonies as festive songs mix in with seasonal tunes.

Photograph at top by Jude Beck, other photographs by Kerry Dexter. Thank you for respecting copyright.

You may also wish to see
Music for a Winter’s Day at Wandering Educators
Scotland, Christmas, and Music at Journey to Scotland
Music for the Heart of Winter: Cathie Ryan here at Music Road
Cherish the Ladies: storytellers in song: Christmas here at Music Road

-->Your support for Music Road is welcome and needed. If you are able to chip in, 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.

Second week in Advent

Advent: it is a season which holds both preparation and celebration, both reflection and creation. In the prayers said at mass when I was growing up, it was a time when we were advised read and reflect on the wisdom to be learned from the scriptures. I thought then and still do that there is much wisdom of the season to be gained in song and story, in poem and painting and looking up at the night and morning star, as well. Ideas which may illuminate scriptural aspects, and which may be illuminated by them.

Music to go along with these ideas, seasonal and otherwise --

Anticipation is one of the features of Advent. That’s an aspect Gretchen Peters expresses in two very different ways on her album Northern Lights in her songs Waitin’ on Mary and December Child. With people across the world thinking about or being refugees so much at this time, it’s a good time to take a listen to them both.

Carrie Newcomer’s music is always both reflective and thought provoking, and quite beautiful as well. On her album A Permeable Life the songs Light in the Window and Writing You a Letter speak to the aspects of travel and connection across distance that come with winter holidays. So, too, does the tile track of her European release The Slender Thread.

There’s joy in the anticipation and preparation as well as tenderness and reflection. Cherish the Ladies are great at expressing all these through their music. They have a new seasonal album out this year which they went to County Clare to record and have called Christmas in Ireland. Song, tune, and spoken word comprise the lively collection. If you might have a taste for seasonal music mostly in Irish, then check out the just released collection Amhráin Na Nollag: Favourite Christmas Songs in Irish from Róisín Elsafty and Ronan Browne with Tony Maher. In addition to spiritual classics including Don Oíche Úd I Mbeithil/ One Night on Bethlehem there are also seasonal favorites, among them that song about the reindeer, Rudolph Na Sróine Deirge.

Shannon Heaton recognized that she wasn’t a big fan of winter weather, but, having chosen to make her home in Boston, she decided to write a song that would help her remember the good things about deep winter. The result is Fine Winter's Night, in which she contrasts the beauty of cold night with its sparkling stars with warmth beckoning to fellowship and community within. It became the title track fro the seasonal album Shannon and her husband Matt made, which includes several fine originals in both song and tune, the Wexford Carol, which reaches back to twelfth century Ireland, and other fine songs new and old.

Take a listen to these musicians this Advent, and see how their perspectives might inform your celebrations and anticipations this season.

Photographs by Kerry Dexter. Thank you for respecting copyright.

You may also wish to see

First Week in Advent: music and quiet
Advent reflections and music
Music for Winter Travels and Celebrations at Wandering Educators
Wreaths, Music, Legend at Perceptive Travel

-->Your support for Music Road is welcome and needed. If you are able to chip in, 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.

Celtic Connections 2014

by Kerry Dexter

Celtic Connections: each year in January, this major music festival fires up concert halls. clubs, theaters, and other performance spaces across the city center of Glasgow with music that includes both the Celtic side of things and music that reaches out into the connections of music across the world.

Through the hundreds of gigs on offer, it is always an individual journey of what music to take in. Several highlights of the 2014 edition of Celtic Connections for me included

Hearing classical violinist Nicola Benedetti talk about -- and play -- collaborations with Scottish musicians including Aly Bain, Phil Cunningham, andJulie Fowlis, which they have been working on for an album that native Scot Benedetti plans to release this summer

Seeing fiddler Duncan Chisholm bring his straight from the Highlands of Scotland music to the stage of Glasgow Royal Concert Hall that same evening, and knowing he was part of the opening concert at the first Celtic Connections festival twenty one years back

It wouldn’t be Celtic Connections -- or Scotland -- without the pipes. One of my favourite pipers this year was James Duncan Mackenzie, playing both traditional music and his own compositions as part of a concert at The Mitchell, and sharing stories of the tunes with a lively wit

Speaking of lively wit, that was as much in play as was world class music and dance as Cherish the Ladies with bandleader Joanie Madden

brought the heritage of Ireland to the stage of the Royal Concert Hall, to the delight of a sold out house. Among the guests was singer and songwriterCathie Ryan, who along with Madden and guitarist Mary Coogan was part of the group’s first appearance at Celtic Connections twenty years ago.

Photographs are by Kerry Dexter. They were made with permission of the festival, the artists, and the venues involved, and are copyrighted. Thank you for respecting this.

There will be more to come of windows into the sights and sounds of Celtic Connections 2014 here along the Music Road. You might also like to see

Celtic connections: twenty years of extraordinary music
Cherish the Ladies: storytellers in music
Celtic Connections 2013: Images

Cherish the Ladies: storytellers in music

Storytellers in music: that is what Cherish the Ladies have been since they began with what was meant to be a one off concert in New York twenty seven years ago. The story they’ve told, through traveling the world, through comings and goings of band members, through night after night of concerts and conversation, has been that of the vibrancy of Irish culture, and the variety and professionalism and creativity of women in Irish music.

Part of that creativity has been shown across the years in their recordings. Two (update, now three) of those are seasonal winter holiday albums -- fine ones to prepare for Advent, to enjoy for Christmas, or indeed to hear any time of year.

-->Update 2021: All three Cherish Christmas albums Including the newest one Christmas in Irleand) are availble as one 40 track compilation called Cherish the ladies: Ultimate Christmas Mix, from Bandcamp. You are also able to audition and purchase individual tracks there. You may also wish to know that on one Friday every month, Bandcamp waives fees to artists so all income from sales goes to creators, something to look out for...

Star in the East finds the band focusing on the celebratory side of the holiday season while adding a touch of reflection here and there. The Dash for the Presents set, opening with an original tune by bandleader Joanie Madden sets the tone. It is followed by Michelle Lee Burke handling lead singing on a fine retelling of the Christmas tale written by Robbie O’Connell called All On a Christmas Morning. There are carols and hymns, reels and tunes, Madden reading a reflective poem by Patrick Kavanagh which is well paired with the music of In the Bleak Midwinter, and Burke taking lead again on the rollicking traveling song song Home on Time for Christmas.

On Christmas Night is the band’s earlier Christmas album, one which timeless and engaging nearly ten years on from its first release. There are tune sets which include versions of traditional carols and hymns with perhaps less well known pieces of Irish music, such as Ding Dong Merrily On High / The Cordial Jig / Old Apples in Winter / Con Cassidy’s. Heidi Talbot is the lead singer on this recording, offering inspired versions of Silent Night, which she sings in English and Irish, trading lead with other members of the band on The Holly and the Ivy, and bringing a gentle, graceful take on The Castle of Dromore.

Mary Coogan, who with Madden is a founding member of Cherish the Ladies, plays guitar in this video. She also has a seasonal album out, called Christmas.

As I write this the band is preparing a holiday tour in December as well, with original band member Cathie Ryan returning for some dates as guest singer. Catch them live if you can.

Photograph of Cherish the Ladies at the Royal Glasgow Concert Hall with guest Alison Brown during the Celtic Connections Festival (to which they will be returning for their twentieth anniversary appearance in January). It was made with the permission of the artists, the festival, and the venue, and is copyrighted, Thank you for respecting this.

You may also wish to see
Galway Afternoon: Joanie Madden
The Last Star: Heidi Talbot
Cathie Ryan: teaching tradition
Cherish the Ladies web site and tour schedule

If you enjoy what you are reading here, check out my newsletter at Substack for more stories about music, the people who make it, and the places which inspire it.

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You can also

national drum month: bodhran

July is national Drum Month in the United States. The bodhran is a frame drum often used in Irish and Scottish music. A drum story...






During the time Cathie Ryan was part of the band Cherish the Ladies, her primary role was that of lead singer. But she wanted to challenge herself further. "I really wanted to be part of the music somehow. I was just so exciting to me, Eileen Ivers on the fiddle, Joanie Madden, Maureen Doherty, Siobhan Egan, Mary Coogan with their instruments -- I wanted to be a part of that sound they made. I thought about the bodhran, and Joanie actually also wanted me to play it, because we had a lot of treble instruments but there was no bass, so it was nice to bring some bottom to the sound.

"So I bought a tourist bodhran," Ryan said, "and I started practicing in my apartment, and driving my neighbor crazy! That's why my publishing company is called Wake the Neighbors Music, because I was up in my apartment banging away, and my neighbor finally said, could you please not be practicing so much? So I started practicing with the tipper on a big dictionary. It didn't have the bounce of the goatskin, but it helped," Ryan said. Though she practiced by playing along with traditional music, "of course, being from Detroit I brought sort of a funk approach into my bodhran playing, which was maybe not always welcome in Cherish!" she continued, laughing.









Ryan is now well into a solo career, with four well respected recordings. The bodhran, and her unique approach to rhythm, are still part of her work.

"My style works, for what I do now with my own band especially, because I love just that little bit of a funky rhythm on jigs and reels, it's a very cool sound. It's a great instrument. I love it, it just has such a primal sound. Everybody loves rhythm, when you're a kid in kindergarten you're bangin' away on the tambourine and on the little drum. I'm not a brilliant bodhran player, I don't claim to be, but I think it adds to the songs, and makes you a part of the tunes."



photographs are from Burlington, Vermont, Carlingford, Ireland, and Alexandria, Virginia.

you may also wish to see

Delicious Baby's Photo Friday, where travelers offer new insights to the world each Friday
Music Road: Cathie Ryan: Songwriter
Music Road: Voices: Cherish the Ladies

want to try the bodhran for yourself? Ray Gallen’s Irish Heartbeat: A Bodhran Tutorial dvd is a good basic introduction.

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.

Cherish The Ladies: A Star in the East

The ideas of stars, and of homecoming, and of connection, weave through and into the tunes and songs the members of Cherish the Ladies offer on A Star in the East, from Joanie Madden’s march Dash for the Presents, flowing into Joy to The World and then into Parnell’s March to start things off, to Boo Hewerdine's song New Year’s Eve paired with the Scottish tune on which Robert Burns based his music for Old Lang Syne to bring things to a close. It’s an hour of very fine music, ranging from the lively to the quiet, from dance tune to ancient carol.

The Ladies know how to do this well -- flute player Joanie Madden has been at the helm of this groundbreaking outfit since the days, twenty five years ago, when most people were skeptical that women could play real Irish music. Cherish proved them wrong time and time and time again, over the years and over the miles, and over band changes which have seen the group be a seedbed for many of today’s top musicians. Eileen Ivers , Winifred Horan, Donna Long, Heidi Talbot, Aoife Clancy, and Cathie Ryan are among those who’ve helped shape Cherish’s history. Madden and guitarist/mandolin player/banjo player Mary Coogan have remained constant presences in the group. Currently the band also includes fiddler Roisin Dillon, accordion player Mirella Murray, pianist Kathleen Boyle, and the newest member of the group, singer Michelle Burke. Burke offers an especially nice take on the lively and funny song Home On Time for Christmas, which sees people traveling all over Ireland to reach their relatives [and maybe meeting Santa on the way], and shows she can handle quieter songs as well. Madden steps out take lead vocal on the African American spiritual Rise Up Shepherd and Follow -- which is done with a slight Irish twist thoroughly in the sprit of the song. She also does a spoken world piece, Irish poet Patrick Kavanagh’s A Christmas Childhood. These two make a nice linking of the idea of stars, too.

Coogan, Murray, Madden, Boyle, and Dillon offer outstanding playing and ensemble work on each cut, whether working on tunes or supporting the singers. Every track sparkles with the love and care they invest in the music. Coogan’s guitar shines especially brightly to begin the What Child Is This?/Greensleeves Jig/The Tongs by the Fire/The Frost is All Over set. Other tracks worth noting are the Christmas Eve/Road to Glountane set, Deck the Halls/John Clifford’s/Jingle Bells, and Kathleen Boyle’s original The Homecoming.

It’s a bit like a great session around the holiday hearth with a bunch of talented and welcoming friends, and as it’s a recording, you get to play it again as much as you’d like, and add your own holiday memories.

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Music for a spring road trip: six albums

One from Scotland, three from Texas, a duo from Massachusetts, and a vintage collection from top Irish American musicians. Love songs, songs about children, travels, journeys, questions, mountains, rivers, markets, birds, trains, fish, grits and fancy pears, and many other things....all fine companions for where your late spring roads are taking you now.

Tish Hinojosa’s own roads have taken her from the west side of San Antonio to the mountains of northern New Mexico, to Nashville’s Music Row, through a time in Austin’s lively music scene, and a current base in Germany. All these experiences play into the music she’s made for Our Little Planet. Sparked in part by her rediscovery of some old work tapes from her time in Nashville, it is in many ways a more country sort of record than Hinojosa has made in a long time. It’s not mainstream country, but it is country of the country, and of Texas and the southwest. There’s a knockout duet with Carrie Rodriguez called Mi Pueblo, and Mountain Lullabye, a song which sounds like a western sunset, and ten more.

Jeff Talmadge comes from Texas too, though he’s been living in Georgia for a while. One of the ways he looks back on At Least That Much Was True is through the evocative Austin When it Rains. Talmadge does not shy from life’s harder questions, as with the songs White Cross and Let Her Go. There’s always a perspective, though, however indirect, of hope and change for the better. The anthem for that, on this record, might be the understated, quietly sung story in Wrong Train.


Jim Malcolm does a good bit of quiet reflection on his album The First Cold Day,
including a tribute to Robert Burns and the gentle pleasures of fishing, in a song called An Hour in the Gloaming. There’s a taste of highland legend in Schiehallion, and a hilarious road trip of his own through the American south in Down in Alabama. That's where the grits and fancy pears come in.

If Hinojosa didn’t get you dancing with her title track for Our Little Planet, then her fellow Texan Terri Hendrix will with Posey Road Stomp, or Wallet, or Bottom of the Hill, or one of the ten other songs on Left Over Alls. One of the great things about Hendrix is that she knows how to be serious through being funny, and also when it’s the right moment o focus on one or the other side of that equation.

Massachusetts based husband and wife duo Matt and Shannon Heaton know how to look at a subject from many aspects, too. They base their work in Irish tradition, and for Lovers' Well they’ve sought out your not so usual love songs. A chance encounter is the hinge for the story in Where Moorcocks Crow, waiting and wondering about a lover for Bay of Biscay, love turned to jealousy tells the tale in Lily of the West, love found in taking chances begins the story of Golden Glove. These they interweave gracefully and naturally with traditional and newly composed tunes meant for dancing together, Shannon playing flute and Matt guitar and bouzouki.

Cherish the Ladies is now a a well known Irish American band, but they started before Riverdance, before Celtic Women, and before the work of women in Irish music had received much recognition or respect. They'd been at constant touring for several years before they made their first record as a group, and through changing line ups, they’ve made many since. That first one, The Back Door, catches the group of seventeen years ago in fine form, tunes and songs alike reflecting Irish and American style and connections. It’s worth a look and a listen, once again.

If you’d like to dance -- alone or together -- to sing along, to laugh, to reflect, or just to listen, all of these will serve you well on your late spring travels. What would you add?


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Cherish the Ladies: On Christmas Night

On Christmas Night
Lively yet relaxed, warm and inviting, song and tunes, of the winter season a specifically of Christmas -- all those elements combine to make On Christmas Night a lovely, welcoming part of the holiday season.

Heidi Talbot is the lead singer for this version of Cherish the Ladies, and she does a stand out on pop chestnuts such a Little Drummer Boy, carols such as The Holly and the Berry, and lesser known songs including The Castle of Dromore. These songs are layered and woven with tunes which range from lively jigs to quiet instrumental renditions of familiar melodies such as Hark the Herald Angles Sing. There are ten sest on the recording, opening with the song On Christmas Night paired with the O’Carolan tune Charles O’ Conor and ending with a set that begins with O Little Town of Bethlehem and takes off into The Kerry Reel and Limestone Rock.

As always. band leader Joanie Madden’s work on flutes provides a running line of brightness through the music, and she adds backup vocals and button accordion here too. Donna Long joins in on fiddle and piano, Mary Coogan plays guitar, banjo, and mandolin, Marie Reilly plays fiddle, viola , and concertina, and Talbot plays bodhran in addition handling the lead singer’s place. The project was mostly recorded at the music room in Madden’s house in Yonkers, New York, and retain a bit of that feeling of musical friend sharing an evening os seasonal tunes and songs.

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by Kerry Dexter

heidi talbot: in love + light

In Love + Light.

 

Songs that she could sing with conviction, stories that she really wanted to share with her audiences, and ones that she could live with and work with over time: these were things that Heidi Talbot took into consideration while working on her solo album, In Love + Light. She had another consideration in mind, too: though she’d had an enjoyable career as lead singer with the the internationally renown band Cherish the ladies, she knew it was becoming time to strike out on her her own. With the dozen songs on In Love + Light, Talbot draws together the threads of her career to the present moment, and builds a song case for transition into a flourishing solo act.

Those musical threads Talbot waves into the tapestry hear include a Tom Waits song, one from Boo Hewerdine and Eddi Reader, a traditional Scottish song, and one from Appalachia. What ties them all together is the quality of Talbot’s singing, in a soprano that is at once light, expressive, and conversational, and the quality of the songs she’s chosen. They are all real stories. fiction or true, poetic or down to earth, they’re filled with emotion, connection, and interest that lives on be on beyond the end of the song. Some, like Cathedrals, might raise more questions than they answer, while others, such as Everything or The Music Tree, are filled with hope and celebration. It’s a fine journey that talbot leads, one well worth taking along with her. Hewerdine produced the project and sits in on most tracks. There’s a duet with Orcadian singer Kris Drever on The Blackest Crow. Donald Shaw, John McCusker, and John Doyle are among others who back up Talbot through the project.

Here's a bit of video of Talbot singing one of the songs she's recorded on the album, with Kris Dever on guitar, John McCusker on concertina and fiddle.
The song is called Bedlam Boys.


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Tommy Makem & Cherish the Ladies: video

Looking back a bit: here's Tommy Makem from a television special with Cherish the Ladies and Barley Bree, all joining in on Will You Go Lassie Go? or as it's also known, Wild Mountain Thyme, from 1992. That's a song known all over Ireland, Scotland, most of the American South, and many points beyond, I'm sure. Joanie Madden on flutes and whistles, Cathie Ryan on vocals for Cherish.




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Music Road: Voices: Cherish the Ladies

Voices: Cathie Ryan

"My grandmother Catherine Ryan was a singer, and a fiddle player as well. She loved to sing and play, she loved having people come into the house and pushing back the furniture and they'd have a dance or a ceilidh, and everybody would have to sing. My mother's father was a storyteller," musician Cathie Ryan says, "and he was the one, I think, who gave me my love of the narrative. He told stories of the history of Ireland, the mythology, and the characters, what this one did and what that one did. And stories of banshees and fairies. For him there was a very thin line between this world and and the other world, and he had one foot in each of them."

As a singer and a songwriter, Ryan carries aspects of what she absorbed from her grandparents in Kerry and Tipperary forward in her music, along with her own experiences of Ireland and America. She's been learning and collecting traditional songs since she was a child growing up in Detroit, born to parents who emigrated from Ireland.

From being involved in music at the local Gaelic League in Detroit to competing for the All Ireland title in singing, from work with traditional singer Dermot Henry's band to studying with sean nos master Joe Heaney,to being the lead vocalist with the internationally renown band Cherish the Ladies, to inclusion in the award winning projects A Woman's Heart: A Decade On in Ireland and Wayfaring Strangers in America, to a solo career during which she has so far released four albums, (update: now there are five albums -- see link at end of story for more)Ryan continues to grow as an artist whose work builds bridges between Ireland and America. These days she presents her music in places ranging from top festivals to songwriter listening rooms to orchestra concerts to intimate clubs across North America and Europe. It's not always been the easiest of roads, she reflects. "I used to think I had to be either an Irish singer or an American singer," she says."It's taken me quite some time to realize I can be both, I can bring both sides of my experience as an Irish American to my music."

Listeners at her live shows and to her recordings will find a mix of trad, sung in both Irish and English, music from contemporary writers including John Spillane and Karine Polwart, songs from the American folk tradition, and Ryan's own writings, which touch on subjects ranging from pirate queen Grace O'Malley to the leaving, returnings, and longings of Irish emigrants to the many journeys the heart makes.

Much of her personal work, especially that which she wrote for her 2005 release, The Farthest Wave, has its beginnings in the natural world. "There's a lot mystery in the Irish landscape," Ryan says, " you can search it forever. And I find Ireland very inspiring for song writing." That title track, The Farthest Wave, is a spare, unflinching look at coming to terms with grief that stands in the poetic and ballad traditions from both sides of the Atlantic. Closest to the Heart, which opens the collection, is a passionate, sensual dance of a song that holds the rhythmic melodies and vivid light and shadow ideas of both Irish and American folk history. The most reflective of her four solo recordings to date, the album also includes a hymn to Saint Bridgid sung in Irish, along with the Flatt and Scruggs song Rough and Rocky which Ryan learned from the singing of one of her musical heroes, Emmylou Harris. There's a lively set of jigs with which to dance the baby round the kitchen, also in Irish, along with a celebration of hope and healing in Karine Polwart's song Follow the Heron, resonating with connection to Ryan's own economical look at the courage it takes to do that healing, Be like the Sea.

Recording or in live performance, writing her own music or searching the tradition for songs that resonate with her, Ryan is an artist in service to the music. "I don't like to show off," she says. "I like to sing the song whatever way it wants to be sung. I believe that a song is a real entity that must be courted and loved, that you have to find a place for it in your own center and bring it up from there when you sing it. When I'm arranging a song," she adds, "I think first of the lyrics and the mood of the melody, the feeling that the character in the story has. And I find myself wanting to leave space for the thinking, feeling part of the story. I also love the idea of space because then the listener can be more in the song with me. It's their song too."

Ryan also appears on the album Best of Narada Celtic Christmas, singing the opening track, It Came Upon a Midnight Clear.

There are additional articles on Cathie Ryan's work, including video of her time with Cherish the Ladies and reviews of her solo CDs, on this site. These may be found by searching the site through the box at upper right.

Here's one of those stories, about Cathie Ryan's recording Through Wind & Rain.

Photographs are by Kerry Dexter. Thank you for respecting copyright.

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