we caught martin hayes and dennis cahill, wed. night at the philadelphia art museum, nothing short of spectacular in my humble opinion. i’ve always wondered what the pure drop fans think. anyone?
Martin is, IMHO, without a doubt, one of the finest fiddlers out there! His style of playing is exactly as I like to hear it…very lyrical, smooth, emotional…very Clare. I have been listening to Martin since he started playing in the states up to the present day and I have nothing but praise for the man. Dennis Cahill, again IMHO, is a tremendous guitar player and a perfect compliment to Hayes. The two weave a fine musical thread that is both delicate yet strong, and always a joy to listen to.
May not be exactly what the prue drops want, but I know of very (and I mean very) few who would turn their nose up at Hayes and Cahill… a ‘must hear’ in my book.
I can take Martin in small doses (he tends to put me to sleep), but Dennis Cahill to me is the supreme guitar accompaniest. This IMHO is the only way a guitar should be heard in ITM.
djm
I absolutely love Martin Hayes… it just depends on my mood and what I’m after! But all music is that way. Sometimes I want the rant of Tommy Peoples, or the powerful flute of Seamus Tansy. On the other hand, the cool contemporary trad of Kevin Crawford’s flute while I’m fixin’ dinner is the way to go. And if you’ve ever played with a fiddler who favors the Martin Hayes style… well, there’s a great deal to be admired (and to learn from)!
Back to Martin… if he’s not the pure drop, who is? His father was PJ Hayes. The purest of drops!! Sets that PJ recorded decades ago have become the standards at sessions worldwide! What his son does with the music can redefine the pure drop, IMNSHO, which changes every couple of generations, anyway!
Yes!! Two thumbs up. Six stars out of five. The Pure Drop indeed. Great exponent of East Clare fiddling. Of any fiddling. None better. Buy the CDs. Read the book. IMHO it doesn’t get any better.
I like Martin Hayes’ first album the best. And Martin can certainly play pure drop, truly a great musician.
But are his CDs and the stuff he currently plays pure drop? No. Nor will he redefine pure drop (just like Tommy Potts didn’t) although he may have an influence.
At this point the discussion can remain at the level of adulation, or you actually look at how Martin Hayes’ playing differs from the playing of people like James Kelly, Tommy Peoples, Brian Conway. Just one obvious point: The departures from the tunes and the improvisation that M Hayes’ uses in his music not pure drop. Less obviously, I feel that he has a very stylized approach to the music (in his recordings) that varies very little and is both the reason why one grows tired of his stuff quickly and why he won’t redefine Clare fiddle music.
Bloomy, which is the first album?
This has to be an oxymoron…
i agree with Bloomfield, i thought the first (eponymous) album was great, and also enjoy “Under the Moon”. But his newer stuff strikes me as a little too self-conscious. As regards Pure Drop, i remember a debate on Irtrad-L a few years ago (after “Under the Moon”) and there are a number of people who don’t regard his music as ITM. I doubt the opinion of those in question has changed little since the last couple of albums have come out. I’m sure Martin Hayes couldn’t give a rat’s a**, he’s making a living doing what he loves, so more power to his elbow sez i.
This seems to be a funny debate to be having. 
If he plays traditional tunes in a traditional way (none of that speeding-up or slowing-down stuff for example), without accompaniment, it’s pure drop, right? I asked about this a month or two ago here and that’s what I gleaned. And if he doesn’t, it isn’t, right? I’m glad the debate has edged decidedly in the direction of discussing his merits - much more fruitful. I think he’s great!
Steve
There was a very interesting interview with the man himself in Fiddler Magazine several years back. Wonder if it’s still on their website?
Matters of taste aside, he is a prodigiously talented musician. I would caution listeners not to assume the fiddling on most of his recordings is representative of the stylistic traits of East Clare. It certainly is based on that to a degree, but Martin’s style is Martin’s style and I have a feeling he’s probably prone to varying it a bit depending on the context in which he’s playing. Were he having a few tunes with his father PJ or his uncle Paddy Canny, it might veer a lot more towards notions of what East Clare fiddling sounds like. He did appear on one album very early on before he went to the States. I think it was on Gael Linn…“Ceol An Fhideal II” or something like that…Where’s Peter our man in Clare when you need him?
And yes, rh nailed it right on the head. He’s making a living doing what he loves (and he lives in Seattle, which means that aside from the traffic, he’s a lucky man). More power to him.
I am hiding for the WIllie avalanche presently landing on the town, where else.
I actually retracted an earlier post to this thread. I enjoyed the tape he made with his father. I saw him play in 1992 and he managed to hold the audience spellbound with a very simple version of the Foxhunters reel. He’s great with an audience, great at pulling the strings on them.
I thought that was wonderful. I enjoyed the first CD but noticed a few traits I didn’t fancy all that much. ofcourse then he instantly became the flavour of the month. And madness grew up around him.
He then came up with Under the Moon. I listened twice to that and put it aside. I heard a few bits from live in Seattle on the radio last night while driving back from Ennis. I can’t stomach it.
He is a wonderful musician, he has kept his integrity under all the fame [although he isn’t the flavour of the month anymore] he has put a lot of thought into what he plays and why he plays it. He has to my ears been utilising a few stylistic traits far beyond their sell by date, the overly slow playing, the slides etc, when you use that sort of stuff all the time it looses it meaning completely, they become empty mannerisms. Bloomfield said ‘boring’.
He acknowledges the musicians he learned from I don’t think though many people can appreciate really how much he took from Martin Rochford Paddy Canny and Tommy Potts, a lot of stuff there he really didn’t invent himself.
When he turns off the stage music and sits down to play with other musicians he’s just a great fiddler but re-defining Clare fiddling? Nah wouldn’t think so.
http://www.martinhayes.com/albums.htm
I got the 1993 album while I was at WC last year. I picked out about 5 cds, based partly on what tunes were on the CDs and partly who was playing, and if I’d see them playing in the concert. I don’t find Martin’s style to my taste, but that’s just my taste. Maybe I’m not that good at listening yet.
As a debut album, I actually preferred Malachy Bourke’s Draw the Bow.
On the Lonesome Touch album, Hayes explains that “draiocht” is a quality many of the old musicians had…an expression he heard in County Clare all of hs life. He says the lonesome touch means to put the requirements of the music before other personal considerations.
I was in the small audience of about 50 people when he recorded live with Burke about 4-5 years ago. When it came time for Martin to join him, Martin was nowhere to be found. Burke finally got right into the mic and said, “anyone seen a long-haired, Jewish, pot-smoking hippy wandering around?” Everyone laughed, of course.
When those two started playing sets of reels together, you couldn’t distinguish one fiddle from the other–he played them Burke’s style. All you knew was that there was two fiddles going and two different ways of bowing–they’d change directions at completely different times. The playing was uncharacteristic of Hayes playing by himself. I get the feeling that Martin knows several styles of fiddling, including classical.
He can, that’s what I meant above , he can turn off the stage music and blend in. kevin Burke went a lot to Martin Rochford too by the way.
I agree with what everyone has said about Martin, his style of fiddling, and whether or not he represents the Clare tradition. When I said he could define a new Clare style, I guess I really meant that he gets to play whatever he wants since he came up in the pure drop, and, well… he just gets to. I don’t really think that everyone living and playing in Clare will follow his lead. However, he has already had a profound effect on many “revivalists” as we’re known in the folklore world, and just maybe a few youngsters in Clare, as well.
And this gets to my comment about contemporary trad, which I don’t think is an oxymoron. I know you’ve all discussed this a thousand times before, but everything changes. Trad evolves, as it should. Great players influence other players. Is Matt Molloy trad? He brought a new complexity of style. Joe Burke and others brought in the B/C box, pretty trad by today’s account, but not everyone thought so when he started out. We’d have to go back to bone whistles in the 5th century, but even that would represent a change from what came before. I like an open minded view of trad. What came before, came before. It’s a snapshot. If trad or the pure drop refers to a particular time in history and set of cultural conditions, that’s fine. I’ll call today’s music something else. What would the harpers of the 16th century call what we call trad?
Sorry, I know this is old territory. I’m not an old timer on this discussion board. Just wanted to clarify my ealier comments.
Mark
Perhaps we should distinguish what Martin Hayes does on his own as being very much a “solo” style. I don’t know of any sessions where you could sit down and expect everyone to drag along with you as draw out each note as Martin does. As was noted above, when Martin sits to play along with others he reverts to a more traditional style. In other words, he knows it is no longer the Martin Hayes show, and co-operates with the other musician(s), playing in a style to suit.
djm
I found the Fiddler Magazine interview with Martin Hayes…lots of interesting things to think about.
http://www.ceolas.org/artists/Martin_Hayes/interview.html
No one argues that trad music doesn’t change or shouldn’t change. But think about how this change takes place: Different people try different things. Things are mulled over a bit and then accepted into the tradition or rejected. Tommy Potts’ playing is brilliant by anyone’s account, but his stylistic innovations have been rejected by the tradition. Ed Reavy was brilliant, too, but many of his tunes that have become traditional were toned-down (even simplified) a bit before they became traditional. There is a constant give and take of acceptance and rejection, and it’s odd to hear you call for an open-minded view of trad. Rejection of Tommy Potts’ style has nothing to do with not being open-minded (everyone who plays trad has listened to him).
And anyway I find that calls for open-mindedness usually are really saying “I want everyone to like the kind of music I like!”
What you say sounds pretty harsh at first, Bloom, but perhaps it might be fair to say that what comes out in the wash is the “individualist” stuff and what’s left behind becomes tradition - not necessarily the most brilliant solo efforts, but what feels comfortable to, and is within the grasp of the many who will carry forward that tradition.
djm