This is to let you know some sad news about a very fine musician, and to appeal to you all to help by buying a CD.
Louis McManus of Melbourne, Australia is by far the most gifted musician that I have ever known personally. I knew Louis (the name BTW is pronounced in the European fashion – “Lou-ie” not “Lewis”) when I spent a few years in Melbourne in the early 1980s.
Louis’ parents were Irish Scots who emigrated to Australia from Glasgow when Louis was 6, by which time he had already begun playing the mandolin, an instrument on which he was simply fabulous. He soon became equally proficient on tenor banjo and guitar, in fact anything with strings and frets. His flatpicking of traditional tunes on guitar was almost literally stunning - easily the best I have ever heard. He was also a very handy fiddle player.
I say “was” because I recently learned that Louis has been disabled by a series of catastrophic strokes that began in 1997 when he was only 41. He cannot walk and I am told his speech is unintelligible to everyone but his wife, who is caring for him. It seems certain that he will never play music again. For anyone that has known Louis and been exposed to his personality and to his particular brand of musical genius, this is very disturbing news.
It is a great pity that Louis never made a solo CD (although he appeared on many albums as a session musician or producer, and on those of bands of which he was a member, including the everlasting Bushwackers). I think this must in large part be attributed to Louis’ character - he is a very likeable, unpretentious, happy-go-lucky man, forever joking and punning. I could never understand why he didn’t go to live in Ireland like his now-famous mate Steve Cooney; if he had, you would certainly have heard of him.
Now however Louis’ friends and colleagues have put together a CD comprising various performances by Louis spanning 25 years. There are appearances at clubs and festivals and odd tracks recorded in studios, some at the ABC (Australian public radio). The CD is really a scrapbook but Louis’ technical brilliance and sense of musical fun shine through very strongly. The live tracks astonish with their daring, the studio tracks with their incredible precision.
The CD ends with one of Louis’ own tunes, “Feathers”, on which he plays all instruments. It is a kind of minimalist Irish raga played on tenor banjo, a melancholy improvisation on a four-note minor-mode riff - stark and simple, but mysteriously and powerfully affecting. In the light of what has happened to Louis, I can’t help hearing it as a kind of auto-requiem for a great musical mind.
Please buy this CD: the proceeds go directly to Louis. You’ll help a great musician in dire straits, and you’ll be rewarded with some very fine music.
You can buy it online from Celtic Southern Cross. Go to http://www.celt.com.au/austcd.html and search for “McManus”. The price is AUS$ 25 (currently about US$15) plus postage. Celtic Southern Cross are selling the CD as a service to Louis, who gets AUS$24 for every copy sold.
Note 1: at present there seem to be only a handful of copies of the CD left. Our man in Australia, Wombat, is using his contacts to track down any remaining copies. I hope that a repressing can be arranged, and if enough of you order a copy, this will surely happen.
Note 2: although CSC say their web site is secure, my browser failed to close the little padlock on the page asking for my credit card number. So I chose to fax my order to them at (+61) 3 63973533 and received the CD in a nice little package a week or two later. Please note that they are about 16 hours ahead of EST and as I post this the Australian weekend has already begun, so it might take a day or two before orders are confirmed.
Steve Jones
PS I hope over the next few days to get time to write an article reviewing the CD and giving some personal recollections of Louis. In the meantime, here is what another great musician wrote for the CD liner notes:
Louis McManus is, in my view, one of the great musicians alive today, and there are several good reasons for thinking so. A blotting paper memory, a great sense of humour (musical and otherwise) and, much more unusually, a fabulous intuition fed by his firm roots in the Irish fiddle music taught initially to him by his father, but which he allows to take him anywhere he musically fancies. One by-product is the galvanising effect which he has on those musicians who are lucky enough to play with him. It's not always an easy ride, because hallmarks of his playing are risk and daring, but the end result can be electrifying. He's an inspiring bloke to be around, as I discovered personally in Australia in 1989 when the Perth Festival arranged a shotgun wedding for the two of us for two gigs. The result lives in my memory. -Martin Carthy.[Two tracks from the CD feature performances from those gigs, with Louis on mandolin and Carthy backing him up on guitar.]
[ This Message was edited by: StevieJ on 2003-02-14 17:02 ]