L.E. McCullough:
The Chiff & Fipple Interview
2/99
Friend & subscriber to Chiff
& Fipple, prize-winning performer, composer and producer
L.E. McCullough
is a pioneer and prime exponent of
Celtic World Beat, an innovative musical fusion blending traditional Irish and
British Isles folk music with contemporary genres from Africa, Latin America,
Asia and the Middle East.
Trained as a youth in classical
piano and jazz saxophone, the Indianapolis native took up the study of Irish
traditional music on the flute and tinwhistle in July, 1972, after living in
Ireland for a year and studying at the School of Irish Studies in Dublin.
In 1974 and '75, McCullough won
First Place in the Midwestern U.S. Fleadh Ceoil for Senior Tinwhistle; in 1975
he was runner-up in the Senior Tinwhistle competition at the All- Ireland
Fleadh Ceoil in Buncrana,
Donegal. At the All-Ireland competitions
in Buncrana the following year, he won the 1976 New Dance Tunes Composition
category.
McCullough's passion for Irish
music led him to extend his activities into the scholastic realm. From 1974-78,
with fiddler Miles Krassen and mandolinist Mick Moloney, he traveled across the
U.S. recording Irish musicians for various archival and scholarly projects. He
earned a Ph.D. from the University of Pittsburgh in 1978 by authoring the first
dissertation-level analysis of Irish traditional music ever published, Irish
Music in Chicago: An Ethnomusicological Study.
In 1976 McCullough wrote The
Complete Irish Tinwhistle Tutor, a highly acclaimed instructional
manual now distributed by Music Sales, Inc. From 1977-86 McCullough operated
Silver Spear Publications, a book publishing company devoted to issuing Irish
music instruction books and tapes. His book/tape publication, 120 Favorite
Irish Session Tunes, was produced by uilleann piper Patrick Sky and is
distributed by Homespun Tapes, who issued McCullough's instructional
video, Learn to Play Irish Tinwhistle in 1998.
McCullough's book of 61 original Irish traditional compositions, St.
Patrick Was a Cajun, was released by Ossian
Publications in
1998.
McCullough's chief involvement
with Irish music has been in the area of performance, recording and touring
during the past 27 years with a variety of groups including Trim the Velvet,
Devilish Merry, Bourrée Texane, Money in Both Pockets and The Irish Airs.
An accomplished performer on flute, tinwhistle, harmonica, alto sax, tenor sax,
recorder, bodhran, bones, Irish bagpipes, piano, synthesizer, guitar and
miscellaneous ethnic percussion, he has appeared on 34 albums.
During the 1980s McCullough
evolved into an inspired composer-arranger with a rare talent for shaping brand
new genres based on traditional musical structures. His three solo albums -- His
Own Kind, LateBloomer,Feadanísta-- have spotlighted 33 of his own
compositions while stretching accepted stylistic boundaries to create the fresh
new musical hybrid of Celtic World Beat, an idiom critics have dubbed "the
ultimate folk-fusion. . . multi-faceted, innovative, unorthodox, and slightly
nefarious."
In the last decade McCullough has
composed music for numerous broadcast commercials, PBS film scores and
incidental theatre music including soundtracks for John Kane, A Place Just
Right, Together Alone,Waiting for Godot, Story Theatre, Shadow of a Gunman,
Consider This, Puppet Strings, The Greeks and Painting the Universe.
He performs on the music soundtracks of Ken Burns's PBS television series, The
West and Lewis
& Clark: Journey of the Corps of Discovery, and the Warner Brothers film Michael
Collins.
In 1993, with Indianapolis
jazz musician T.H. Gillespie, McCullough composed the score to Connlaoi's
Tale: The Woman Who Danced on Waves, a full-length Celtic Ballet
choreographed by former Martha Graham soloist David Hochoy and hailed by
critics as "a bold, shimmering fusion of myth, music and dance. . . a
thrilling voyage into the past and a fervent prayer for the future." In
1998 Gillespie and McCullough repeated their music/dance collaboration with
Hochoy in the Celtic Ballet The Healing Cup: Guinevere Seeks the Grail,
which explores the Celtic roots of Arthurian legend.
Dr. McCullough's website is http://feadaniste.tripod.com/
Dale: What year did Troy Ruttman win the Indy
500?
L.E.: 1952, in Car 98 with a race speed of
128.922 in 3 hours 52 minutes 41.88 seconds with an Agajanian four-cylinder.
Pace car was a Studebaker. All "real" Hoosiers mark their calendars
and important life experiences in reference to the Indy 500. It is the Ur-Date
of our civilization.
Dale: That IS correct. Tell us
about your first encounter with Irish music in general and the tinwhistle in
particular.
L.E. I went to Ireland in August, 1971, for my
sophomore year of college. The first music I heard on Radio Éireann on the way
into Dublin from the airport was Breathless by Jerry Lee Lewis;
traditional music wasn’t very present in the mainstream Irish media back then.
I didn’t hear anything vaguely resembling traditional Irish music for over a
month, until one night when I stumbled — literally — into a session at
O’Donoghue’s Pub right off Stpehen's Green in south downtown Dublin. Jammed
into the corner by the front window, completely surrounded by a cheering crowd,
were John Kelly, Sr. and Joe Ryan on fiddles, Peter Phelan on uilleann pipes,
Paddy O’Brien the Younger on accordion (now living in Minneapolis), Mary Bergin
on tinwhistle, Mick O’Connor on flute and Owen Pender on guitar. I’d walked
into one of the hottest sessions in town, and I’ll never forget the way that
music thrilled me. Curiously, it was October 3, 1971, the same day the great
Irish composer and traditional music revivalist Seán O'Riada died in London. As
his musical spirit was leaving the world, it was maybe coming into me, who the
heck knows. As a teen in Indiana, I’d heard echoes of this music in bluegrass
and Appalachian music and I dug the Poco/Burrito Bros./Workingman's Dead
country- rock thing happening in pop music then, but jigs and reels and slow
airs in their more or less pristine state just blew my mind. My parents got me
a small cassette recorder for Christmas, and I hitchhiked around Ireland for
months taping every traditional singer and musician I could find. I had the
incredible good fortune to meet scholars like Breandán Breathnach, Hugh
Shields, Tom Munnelly, Seán O’Sullivan, Brian Boydell, Terry Moylan and John
Kelly and his family. Paddy Moloney spent an hour talking to me one day in the
Claddagh Records office on Dame Street. They were all an incredible fount of
knowledge. I’m sure they were quite amused that some kid from Indiana was
knocking about in search of the Irish music grail, but I was obsessed. I
brought a tinwhistle (Generation, D, brass) home when I left Ireland and fooled
around with it jamming along to jazz records, but it wasn't until July 3, 1972
that I actually sat down with the cassette player and LEARNED an actual tune
note by note. It was "Tabhair Dom Do Lamh" — "Give Me Your
Hand", which I really thought was neat and was fairly easy to focus on as
a distinct melody. It took me two hours to get it down, just the melody. Then
the next day, I learned a polka of the "Chieftains 2" album, and it
was just one tune after another from then on. I was hooked.
Dale: Who were your most influential teachers?
L.E: Back then there weren't many records of
Irish music around. Maybe two dozen LPs at most (really! — probably that many
recordings get issued a week now), and they were chiefly anthologies. I learned
a lot in terms of general "feel" from cuts I found by Willie Clancy
piping and whistling. Seamus Tansey had some outstanding tunes on a couple
Outlet LPs. Liam O'Flynn's solos on the first two Planxty LPs were very potent,
and I learned every single tune off of the cassette accompanying Breandán
Breathnach's "Folk Music and Dances of Ireland", which had been
published in 1971 and was pretty much The Bible of condensed Irish music
scholarship at the time. And I had a lot of tunes from tapes I'd recorded in
pubs and sessions in Ireland. So, I knew what the music was supposed to sound
like. In 1972 I went to study Ethnomusicology at Indiana University in
Bloomington and met fiddler Miles Krassen, who was already an authority on
Appalachian music and was getting seriously into Irish music. We'd play and
talk for hours, and we got hold of tapes of a bunch of 78 records featuring
Coleman, Morrison, Tuohey, Killoran, etc. He'd analyze every single damn note
of those things! And, frankly, I learned a whole lot about how to listen to
Irish music from him. How to really figure out what was going on structurally.
Miles went on into Klezmer music, incidentally, and got a Ph.D. in World
Religious Studies, which he teaches at Oberlin. But he still likes to play
Irish tunes best, and is always ready with the fiddle for anyone popping by. In
1973 I did a three-month fieldwork tour for my senior thesis — a great excuse
to look up Irish musicians in Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, Boston, New York,
Philly and Pittsburgh. There wasn't one single traditional Irish musician in
Indianapolis at the time. Not one. And for the next five years or so, I pretty
much hung in Chicago every chance I got, and it was there I really learned the
bulk of my tunes and style. The Chicago flutist Noel Rice was (and is) an
exceptionally brilliant, articulate musician, quite likely the most
accomplished innovative player of Irish music on the Boehm-system flute — ever.
He showed me how rolls actually work on the whistle. Also in Chicago I spent a
lot of time with flutist Seamus Cooley (died 1997), and from him I learned lots
of classic tunes as well as a smooth-flowing rhythmic and melodic approach.
Though in terms of how I actually think of a tune as I play it. . . I was
greatly influenced by the fiddlers, especially Sligo-style players, I heard on
the 78s and their modern counterparts — John McGreevy, John Vesey, Jimmy Neary
(all passed on). I think because I mostly played with fiddlers during my
learning period I basically adjusted my playing approach to jive with what the
fiddle does, especially in terms of mimicking, if you will, a fiddler's
ornaments, bowings, slurs. Chicago piper Joe Shannon was also a very unique
stylist — a direct stylistic link to the early 20th-century American pipers
like Tom Ennis, Eddie Mullaney and Patsy Tuohey — and I spent a lot of time at
his house watching him work out on those amazing Taylor pipes. And
concertina/accordionist Terry Teahan, flutist Kevin Henry, accordionist Jimmy
Thornon — while not really musical influences per se — were foremost among many
Chicago Irish musicians who generously let me listen to their records and
shared music lore and plenty of tunes whenever I asked. EVERYTHING I know about
Irish music is because of these guys and others.
Dale: We understand
you have had your primary tinwhistle for a while and that it was a bargain....
L.E. The whistle I've been using for most of
my main recording and performing work is a Generation nickel D. I got it for
$2.25 in Dublin, I think, in 1975. All the nickel plating has rubbed off, there
are several dents and flanges, but it plays in tune and has a consistent clear
tone all the way through. Personally — and this is just my humble opinion — I’m
a Pure-Tone Man. Yessiree, I LOVE the sweet, clean, sharp, pure timbre of a
tinwhistle that just slices through the air like a treble exacto blade and
dances like a speed skater whirling through the upper octave of the universal
soundscape. (Now there’s a thought. . . "Riverdance on Ice" . . .
PLEASE stop me before I think again. . .) In other words, I’m not much into the
"breathy" sound. I know this is completely a matter of taste and, as
a staunch First Amendement defender, I accord everyone the right to their own
belief about what exactly constitutes a "pure" whistle sound. But I
never much liked the Clarke whistle simply because it never gave what I
considered a "clean" sound free of the many overtones that make up
its distinct timbrel character. Which means when you’re playing with stronger,
louder, more precision-toned instruments like fiddle, pipes, concertina, banjo,
accordion, etc., The Clarke was always too "soft", too weak, too
vaporous and "airy" to join in crisply with these others; it’s fine
by itself, but who really wants to play much by themselves? Also, over the
years, most of the recording and music I’ve done with the whistle has demanded
extreme clarity — each note has to be heard, especially when I’ve delved into
jazz, Latin, ragtime, etc. The breathy sound just doesn’t give that kind of
quick response required by the music I play. To each, their own. But for me,
give me a Generation or give me a tuba. Still, I also own a Copeland D whistle,
and it is very nice, very loud, very strong. . . a bit "chiffy" in a
couple upper octave notes, but usually I can compensate or I play it on a tune
where I want that sound. I have no real current desire/need to own a Low D
whistle, but I played a Copeland on Jay Ungar/Molly Mason's Lover's Waltz CD,
and it was very mellow and nice. I'll play any sort of tubular device if you
stick one in my hand.
Dale: How did you come up with the term
"Celtic World Beat"?
LE. In 1983 I just got tired of cold weather
and moved to Austin, Texas. The variety of musical expression in that town then
was phenomenal! Literally, you could hear every type of music existing on the
planet played there, and always by oustanding musicians. I immediately fell in
with a French traditional band that also did a little Irish, a little Cajun, a
little Mexican, a little Breton, a little Quebecois — well, you know the drill
by now. And I discovered, for example, that Mexican huapangos are in 6/8.
Essentially, they're double jigs. As are French rondeaus. So what kind of
wonderful music can be created by fusing jigs and huapangos and rondeaus? And
why not take a medley of polkas from Mexico and Ireland and France, mix in some
merengue and samba rhythms from the Equatorial Culture Belt, and, wow, do you
have something snazzy — a World of Polka! Dan Del Santo, a guitarist/singer/songwriter
from Poughkeepsie originally, had been in Austin since the late 70s. He had a
weekly radio show on African, Carribbean, Latin, etc. music and led a
sensational big band that played all this Third World music and jazz and rock.
He truly is one of the first North Americans who fostered the interest in
contemporary
African musicians like King Sunny
Ade, Fela, etc. Anyway, he called his music "World Beat", and by the
end of the 80s that's pretty much what I was doing except the basis was Irish,
hence, Celtic World Beat.
Feadanísta is the album that
documents that phase. I'd take the reel "Girl That Broke My Heart",
make up English and Spanish lyrics, set the first part to a salsa rhythm and
arrangement that moves imperceptibly into whistles and flutes playing the
straight Irish melody while this salsa band roars along, and there you have a
third thing entirely — Celtic World Beat. However, on every fusion piece I've
done, the actual Tune can be heard and featured at some point. I mean, the original
idea is to showcase the beauty of Irish music, so it can never get lost from
what you're doing. Sure, stick in synths and saxes and merengue and hurdy
gurdies, but at some point, you HAVE to focus on the original root melody. . .
otherwise there isn't any There There, know what I mean? You can doll up the
Tune all you want, but the Tune has to be there and be heard.
Dale: But now you're back in the traditional
fold?
L.E. Well, the last few recording projects
I've done have been pretty much straight solo whistle backed by one or two
accompanists. If someone gave me a hundred grand and a major label record deal,
I'd hit the road with the baddest Celtic World Beat band you ever heard. Till
then, I'm happy to just keep playing the whistle and flute in simple settings
people enjoy. And then, the Celtic Ballets T.H. Gillespie and I whip up pretty
much satisfy my fusion cravings. Also I want to focus more on teaching the
music these days. Time to pass on the gifts I received. Just had a wonderful
teaching session at The Riley School in Cincinnati. . . lots of dedicated folks
making the music happen there.
DALE: Do you have a day job?
L.E. I've always been fortunate to work at
something in the arts, so my day jobs tend to also be my night jobs as well. Since
1996 I have been the Administrative Director of the Humanities Theatre Group at
Indiana University- Purdue University at Indianapolis. We work with American
Cabaret Theatre, run by my boss, the playwright/director Claude McNeal, and
produce educational outreach theatre for the university and community. Our
social-issue theatre troupe, the A.C.T.-OUT Ensemble, tours nationally and has
been featured in People, Mode, Wash. Post and PBS Healthwatch. They're really
good, and if they come to your area, check them out. My schedule is very
flexible. I also teach Creative Writing for the IUPUI English Dept. and write
about four books of original children's plays for Smith & Kraus a year and
try to do some theatre music scoring here and there and produce some of my own
grownup plays and get commissions to write same. It's a daily hustle, but
having followed the humble Way of the Whistle all these years, I possess the
endurance and stamina to at least drag my butt out of bed in the morning and
check online for a new issue of Chiff & Fipple.
Dale: Anybody in particular you'd like to work
with?
L.E. I would love to tour and play with
guitarist/singer Nancy Conescu of Portland, Oregon. She is simply
astounding as a player and sean-nos style singer; she's on St. Patrick Was a
Cajun and the new "Favorite Irish Session Tunes" CD with
accompaniment for Homespun due out this spring. I hope to play with her in St.
Louis at McGurk's in April and possibly other festival gigs around the country.
PEOPLE, BUY HER CD —Long Distance — it is truly outstanding, and
I don't know if I'd say that for most of what's getting released these days.
Dale: What are the most common errors made by
beginning/intermediate whistlers?
L.E. I assume we're talking about grownups
here. With kids, just getting them acquainted with the structure of an Irish
tune is a challenge, because they probably don't have a real reference point
for that, unless they've grown up or lived in Ireland or in a family or
players. Beginners: not covering holes completely, overblowing. Intermediate:
when learning a tune, making sure you really are hearing what the player is
doing. It's vital when starting out to try and as best you can copy every
single infinestimal nuance of what you hear. . . you may discard half of it later,
but there's no better way to really learn the idiom than being able to
reproduce what you hear. Of course, everybody's ears hear things differently.
But even after you've gotten the basic melody of a tune, go back and listen for
variations, for rhythmic subtleties.
Dale: We haven't had
a chance to view your instructional video. Can you tell us a little about it
and about how you came to make it?
L.E.: I suggested to Happy Traum at Homespun that
I do a video whistle lesson. He agreed, and we did it in May, 1996. Learn to
Play Irish Tinwhistle is a 60-minute basic lesson; it's what I'd show you if
you came to me personally. I wrote the script, word for word, so as to be well-
organized, and it pretty much goes through the fundamentals of Irish whistle
technique. Best part is that you can breeze frame things and also there are a
lot of closeups of the fingerwork. There's a booklet with the tunes, exercises,
scales, etc. for readers. We shot it at Nevessa Sound Studio in Woodstock, New
York, an outstanding recording studio, incidentally for regular audio work as
well, and it looks really good.
Dale: Where can one
order this video?
L.E. Call Homespun Tapes at
1-800-338-2737. It's $19.95, I think, which is like 33 cents a minute for a
lesson you can run over and over until you get really sick of my face and
choice of neckties.
Dale: Tell us about the "St. Patrick Was a Cajun' project.
L.E. I composed my first
traditional Irish tune in 1973 and over the years had kept track of about 80 of
them as they erupted out of me at various times and places. A few had gotten
played here and there by other musicians and on an occasional recording, and
one day in 1995 Dave McCumiskey, a Northumbrian mandolinist and West Coast
Sales Manager for Music Sales, Inc. who now publish The Complete Irish
Tinwhistle Tutor, asked me why I didn't put out an L.E. McCullough songbook? I
replied that no one outside of long-term mental patients would want to hear me
sing a bookfull of songs, but that I could indeed fill up a volume of
instrumental tunes. He suggested contacting John Loesberg of Ossian Press, who
was immediately receptive to the idea. Though the tunes are workable and novel
enough, and the recording features good straightahead whistle playing and great
accompaniment from Gillespie and Conescu, I see St. Patrick Was a Cajun as
having a long-term musicological value. This is the first book of original
tunes composed in the traditional Irish idiom that attempts to document in
detail the circumstances of composition, including intellectual and emotional
aspects of the composer. Right now, it may be fairly mundane but in 50 or 100
or 200 years, the ability to be able to access that information could be of
value to some researcher. Just think how neat it would be to know what was
going on in O'Carolan's head when he composed his tunes! Which is not to say
that anything I've composed compares to O'Carolan or will be at all remembered
in the future, but if it does offer any insight into what people in the late
20th century were thinking about when they composed Irish music, it's possibly
a good thing.
DALE: You've worked on a number of soundtracks.
Do you have a favorite?
L.E. As an American of partly Irish ancestry, I
sure liked being part of the "Michael Collins" soundtrack. It was a
rare "ethnic pride surge" I don't often get since my family has been
in America for so long, but I know my mother and her people were proud one of
us could be associated with an element of Irish history even in the form of a
movie. All the Ken Burns films are great because you get to really delve into
the history, which I enjoy. The next one is about the 19th-century women's rights
movement, and it's going to have lots of great music.
Dale: What are your thoughts about the two
major methods of learning Irish tunes: (1) Aural tradition and (2) reading
music?
L.E. As far as simply getting the bare bones of
the melody into your head, use any source you can, whether it's listening to
records or reading music or one-on- one tutoring with a live musician or
accepting neural implants from The Crystal People. Whatever works! But then,
once you've learned the tune, you have to render it in an acceptable
traditional Irish "style", like learning French from a book, great
but eventually you have to speak it to French people and sound
"French". Or zey speet on you. You can't learn "style" from
written music. That goes for classical music to punk to Andean panflute.
Written music can clarify certain technical points, and I've certainly
consulted written versions of the most abstruse Carolan tunes to get a melodic
"blueprint" before getting down to memorizing the melody, but in the
end you have to develop your ear to learn and reproduce the elements of style
for the method you want to play. Ultimately, this will lead you into evolving
your own style, which may happen subconsciously, but it will happen. People
tell me they can identify my whistle playing whenever it appears on CDs or
soundtracks or commercials. So can I (usually), and I can even pinpoint certain
style factors, but I couldn't tell you exactly how I learned to do it or why my
brain reverts to those techniques that create that stylistic identity. But
every player has their own style, and that comes aurally. But learn the tunes
from any source you can.
Dale: What projects do you have going on now?
L.E. I'll was in Cincinnati Feb. 13 as a
soloist teaching whistle lessons at the Riley School, then rehearsing with a
band called Silver Arm with whom I'll perform at the Cincy Celtic Fest on Mar.
13. Maybe we'll jam somewhere in Cincy the night of Feb. 13, who knows. On
Mar.14 I play with The Irish Airs at the 439th annual Hibernian Breakfast at
noon in the Indiana Roof Ballroom in Indpls. On Mar. 16th it's The Irish Airs
accompanying the Irish Dancers of Indpls. at Market Square Arena during
halftime of a Pacers' NBA game; on Mar. 17 — that most happy and delirious of
musical days — The Irish Airs headline a big music/dance/drama extravaganza at
American Cabaret Theatre in Indy at 2 p.m. & 7 p.m., Claude McNeal's
"I Am of Ireland" which will have the theme this year of the coming
(hopefully) peace in the North of Ireland. There's the "Skin Walkers"
Celtic Ballet premiere in April 16-18 in Indianapolis at Civic Theatre. We play
live, and it's going to be pretty wild! Oh, and I'm giving playwriting
workshops and working a publishing booth at the big super-mondo Southeastern
Theatre Conference in Greensboro, NC Mar. 3-6; I played at a session in
Greensboro last year at some place called quite generically "Irish
Pub"; if anyone lives in that area and has a session of their own going,
give me a call at the Convention Center Holiday Inn! I'll be free nites and
ready to jam!
Dale: Any final thoughts?
L.E. I think the tinwhistle is a fabulous
instrument, and I've played several other instruments. I have found it to be
capable of an incredible range and depth of expression, emotion, soul. Playing
it has changed my life for the positive in many ways and allowed me to meet
thousands of really fine people. Thanks to whatever ancient Homo Feadog first
figured out how to drill holes in a tube and blow. Jeez, wouldn't it be wild if
one day every person who played a tinwhistle in the entire world played
"Si Bheag, Si Mhor" at the same moment all over the planet? A mass
whistle concert that might truly jolt the earth from its orbit!
Oh, and here's A Hoosier Blessing
for y'all: "May you be in heaven an hour before the repo man finds your
Chevy."
Best wishes,
L.E. McCullough
Dale Wisely is the Undisputed King of
Internet TinWhistle Journalism. His tinwhistle website,
Chiff & Fipple: The
PostStructural Tinwhistle Internet Experience
is at http://www.chiffandfipple.com.
