Hi. I’m sort of a newcomer to Irish music. I’ve heard it before, I’ve just never really investigated it very well.
Anyway, I’ve had a copy of O’Neill’s Music of Ireland gathering dust on my bookshelf for a while. Last week I pulled it down and gave a few jigs a try. I liked it so much, I cut 2 strings off of my guitar & tuned the thing in 5ths to get more of a fiddle feel going on.
I’d like to listen to more Irish music to get a better understanding of it all. So I’m turning to you folks for suggestions. I’m open to traditional & modern, instrumental or vocal (I’ve studied jazz, played in punk bands, released electronic records - I’m open to lots of things). If you could recommend anything where some one’s playing fiddle-type things with a flat-pick on a guitar, I’d be very interested in hearing that especially.
John Carty, I Will If I Can, is a fantastic album of tunes played on either tenor banjo or guitar.
BTW, if you’re in Toronto, stop by the session at Dora Keogh on Thursday or Sunday nights. There are loads of great string players in the Toronto area, some will usually be at the session. (But probably not so much for the next week and a day – many of them will be in Goderich for the festival there.)
There are so many great musicians/bands to choose from!
If you’re looking for tunes on a guitar…hmm…you don’t hear that too much. Maybe check out John Doyle. He mostly does back-up, but in concert he played some great tunes as well when I saw him. On one of the “Patrick Street” albums, the guitar player plays a set with melody. Maybe check out some tenor banjo players as well. For example, Seamus Egan or someone like that. The most well-known Seamus Egan plays for Solas, but here in Portland, Oregon, there’s another Seamus Egan who plays a lot of tenor guitar/banjo, and I believe he has a CD available on his website if you search his name.
Maybe check out some big bands from the '60s as well just to hear some of the most well-known musicians. For example, “Planxty,” “The Bothy Band,” etc… I don’t know about guitar in those groups, but I love the music they play.
Well, I’m acquainted with quite a few Irish musicians from your town. They make it over close to the Michigan/Ontario border on a pretty regular basis, and I usually make it over to Toronto once a year or so. When I visit, I always stop in Dora Keogh.
PS There’s a fantastic guitar player who last I heard was living about an hour west of you – Tony McManus. He’s great at picking tunes, but I think his albums include relatively little of that sort of thing, which is why I didn’t recommend him in my first post.
Seamie O’Dowd’s playing electric on one of those tunes with a fair bit of sustain & reverb added. I would’ve assumed that approach was strictly verboten in the ITM world.
Wow, I didn’t know Tony McManus had moved over that way. He’s probably the best trad tune picker I have heard. Arty McGlynn is another one that springs to mind but most of his gigs are with Cathal Hayden and others playing back-up. McManus does a lot of solo gigs so ends up picking a lot. Well worthwhile looking up hisgigs.
I can’t explain it exactly. These two can just play anything, with anybody, anywhere and it will sound wonderful. They could play the phonebook and it would be great. And Liz had written some wonderful tunes like “Lament for the First Generation” and “The Isle of Trees” that just slay me. John is a vastly underrated singer and on his most recent project, he wrote an heart wrenching tune called “Bitter the Parting” and Kate Rusby (!) sings the duet.
Hmmn.. maybe that’s one way to explain it. If you check the discography on these two, you’ll see that the giants of the roots, folk, Celtic and bluegrass worlds all want to play with these cats because they are KILLER players and absolutely lovely people. Rare combo.
John was strongly influenced by the great Scottish singer/guitarist Dick Gaughan, and you should definitely check his stuff out as well, especially his all-instrumental album Coppers and Brass.
