Turlach Boylan: The Chiff & Fipple Interview
Many
of you who are veterans of Chiff & Fipple will recall my enthusiasm for Turlach
Boylan’s previous CD, The Tidy Cottage.
I am happy to report that flutist Turlach’s new CD, Shame the
Devil, which features several tunes on whistle, is now out and
available. It is a wonderful CD and
a completely worthy successor to The Tidy Cottage.
And, now, bowing to the
pressure of the ever-growing juggernaut which is the Chiff & Fipple
community, Turlach plays whistle on this new CD !
Turlach’s
recordings never suffer from the kind of overproduction which plagues many
Celtic and Celtic-oriented CDs. I
have a particular fondness for listening to Turlach play unaccompanied or with
relatively little backing. I marvel
at his ability to maintain absolute fidelity to the dance rhythm.
Don’t get me wrong—the backing band on this CD consists of some
amazingly talented and tasteful players. He
is joined on this CD by some of the finest acoustic musicians in Houston,
including EJ Jones and Jennifer Hamel of Clandestine, Therese
Honey of Wyndnwyre and Randy Wothke of The Scottish Rogues.
From
Turlach's bio: One
friend has described Turlach Boylan as "fierce", while others think
him enigmatic, and elsewhere he is seen as a curmudgeon. It boils down to
a couple of things: This intense Irishman insists on good music and seldom
wastes a lot of time with words.
Given
that, I was very pleased to be able to sit down with Turlach at a small
restaurant in Florence recently where he wasted some time with words.
Dale Wisely: Where were you born and where did
you grow up?
Turlach Boylan: I was born in Ballymoney,
County Antrim, the nearest town with a maternity hospital. I grew up on a farm
in Glenullin, an area just outside Garvagh in County Derry.
You have said that your father decided that you and your six siblings would
play Irish music. So, I gather he was a musician. Just how musical
was your family?
My
father never played music. He had an accident in his teens and lost joints on a
couple of fingers. My mother played a little on the piano. As you mention, all
of my siblings play. Caitriona plays the banjo, Maeve plays piano-accordion and
piano, Sheila plays fiddle and piano, Clodagh plays fiddle, concertina and
piano, Ruairi plays flute and whistle and Donal plays a little on the button
accordion. For a while they all played together in a ceili band called Gleann
an Iolair (a more Irish version of Glenullin) and made a CD called The
Derry Boat, available on big plain
records. Sheila and Clodagh are still very active musicians. Sheila
toured Germany last year playing for one of the dance shows and Clodagh is a
member of a Dublin group Providence which you will be hearing a lot
about.
At what point did you turn to the flute?
I started playing the flute when I was sixteen after
several years with piano and trumpet lessons. That was my first serious attempt
at Irish music.
Tell us about your teacher, John Kennedy of County Antrim....
John is a larger-than-life character from a place called
Cullybackey. He learned to play music on the fife marching with the Orange bands
and is also a great singer. John doesn't place a lot of emphasis on technique
but instead on rhythm and 'lift' which he would demonstrate by lilting along and
raising his shoulders up and down. He taught a lot of musicians around North
Antrim including several members of the group Deanta. John has a CD of
his singing with a few fife tunes played on whistle. The info is:
John Kennedy - "The girls along the road"
Veteran Tapes VT137CD
44 Old Street, Haughley
Stowmarket, Suffolk IP14 3NX
tel/fax +44 1449 673695
Now, along the way you've had other education and careers outside of
music.....
I have an engineering degree which brought me to Houston
to design drill bits for oilwells. I was supposed to go back to work in Belfast
but that position fell through. After six years, I left that job and had a
freelance programming business for several years. But I'm trying to work
fulltime at music now.
Your debut solo CD, The Tidy Cottage, got very nice notices. However, it
seems to me that in these days when so many of the "Celtic" albums
sold in record stores stray considerably from the tradition, it must be tempting
to go that route to sell more CDs.
Everyone
is subject to the influences of the times they live in and those can't help but
affect the music that is played. On The Tidy Cottage there are
some American tunes, for example, and music has always been passed around across
borders. But I think that the vast majority of 'fusion' music fails dismally,
probably because it represents a rejection of the Irish music it is based on.
There are a few shining exceptions like Sharon Shannon and Lunasa
but it takes tremendous virtuosity to pull it off. Whenever I am tempted, I
think about Martin Hayes, who has been incredibly successful playing the
music that he loves and hasn't forgotten where he came from, even when he adds
references from other music into his tunes. I'm just trying to make music that I
like, and hope that it shows in the end result.
On your new CD, you play some other instruments: banjo, mandola and,
hooray!... tinwhistle. When did you first pick up a tinwhistle? Do
you recall what kind it was? What whistles have you played on your
recordings and in performance more recently?
I probably first played a whistle in my early teens, and
knew a couple of tunes, but nothing serious until I started playing the flute.
It would have been a Generation D, probably nickel with a blue top but maybe
brass with a red top. There wasn't much else around. On Shame The Devil
I play an older Generation in C on one track, a borrowed Riordan D on one track,
and a borrowed low G Schultz PVC whistle. I've since been sponsored with one of
those Schultz whistles by a nameless global internet tinwhistle conglomerate and
recorded another unreleased track with it. At the same time I recorded a track
using a Waltons Mellow D. On stage I've been playing the Schultz, older
Generations in C and B-flat and the Mellow D. I'm not convinced that the
expensive handmade whistles offer any benefit in the smaller sizes but I do have
a nice low D Copeland.
You are now touring with Glen Road. Tell us about this band.
Glen Road is a trio with myself, Mike Dugger
on guitar and vocals and a third guest member. We toured last autumn with Brendan
Bulger, a great fiddle player from Boston. This spring the guest is Johnny
Connolly, an accordion player from Dublin living in Portland. He has just
recorded a solo album for Green Linnet. Glen Road has a website at www.glenroadmusic.com.
We do a lot of presentations in schools, talking about the music and the
instruments. It is a great way to promote Irish music and also helps to secure a
lot of our gigs.
I have to say I've been very impressed with the way you are marketing your work.
Your press kit is attractive and beautifully done. Tell us about bigplain
records. ( http://www.bigplain.com
)
There is a lot of Irish music that goes unrecognized in
America where a few big names seem to rule. But those bands are really just the
tip of the iceberg. A long term goal of big plain records is to change that
situation. But for now, it is just me and my music as I learn the
business. A parallel would be Alasdair Fraser's label Culburnie
which has released only 27 albums in 20 years, all of them top class. I've been
lucky to have the services of a great graphic designer (www.mustdesign.com)
and spend a lot of time trying to get my materials just right. You mentioned
that straight traditional music isn't the most lucrative genre, so I've tried to
pay attention to the business details and present the best image that I can. I
find the design work interesting, probably because, like engineering, it is a
matter of organizing information in a coherent and efficient way. The townland
in Glenullin where I grew up is called Magheramore which translates as 'The Big
Plain' but the name also refers to an emphasis on a straightforward approach to
both music and business. On the other hand, my sister Clodagh insists that big
plain describes 'the realities of your countenance'
Turlach's recordings are available at http://www.bandstore.com
. Visit http://www.bigplain.com
. I'd also suggest checking with Margaret Tice at Tayberry Music at http://www.tayberry.com.
Black & white portrait of Turlach by James
Fuller. Color photo by Ursula Ann Parks Photography.
Dale Wisely is the Undisputed King of Tinwhistle
Internet Journalism and is the founder and leader of Chiff & Fipple: The
PostStructural Internet Conglomerate. (Visit the website at http://www.chiffandfipple.com)
For more interviews visit http://www.chiffandfipple.com/interviews.htm
.
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Lord, help us see
how near
is your kingdom.