Did Tansey ever record albums with guitar or other backing music as opposed to that old piano type of backing that I just can’t stand??
I have 2 tapes of him, “Jigs reels and airs” and “The best of Seamus Tansey”, but I’ve hardly listened to them. I know I like his playing from some clips I heard of him on TV where he was playing with no backing music at all, but that piano just kills it for me.
I have only slowly begun to appreciate piano accompaniment. When I first began listening to Irish and Scottish music I thought it sounded dorky but now I’m starting to enjoy it.
A large number of flute recordings have piano accompaniment. It’s nearly unavoidable.
Cheers,
Aaron
The Breeze from Erin has Seamus with bodhranning you won’t like, either. I’ve a session CD of him with bouzouki and drum, and plenty of raps from the man as well.
The Bodhran is fine. It’s just that piano. Thanks for the tip. Any other CDs of him without piano?
Well, this is really not addressing your question. But on Cape Breton Island almost all the fiddle music is accompanied by piano. I don’t know what the tradition in Scotland is. I really like it—the people playing the piano are really expert at accompanying. I know a flute and a fiddle sound very different though.
I have been listening to some clips of whistle playing, high and low, all of which seem to be accompanied by guitar and I just can’t stand that. It sounds like just this constant whanging away at chords and it’s way too loud. I would actually be interested if anyone knew of a clip that had string backup that they thought was good. Right now I am unable to conceive of what that would sound like. Maybe just single string for starters.
Hi
have any of you listened to Sean Maguire with the four star quartet, a recording done back in the sixties i believe, the piano player on that record is Eileen Lane, and i must say she did a fantastic job on that recording, her playing on the piano really complimented Maguires great violin playing,
but this is not always true with regard to piano players backing good traditional music, some years ago i happened to be in the catskill mountains,
i entered a bar where a violin player was playing a very nice reel,i tried to record the violin music , but this was not to be, behind the violin player sat this old guy vamping and banging away at the piano, he thought he was gods gift to traditional irish music, it sounded like someone was banging the inside of a garbage pail with a bat, after a while he left his seat at the piano only to be replaced by a younger guy, whom i was told was his son, so the same banging away at the piano continued, i left without hearing the music of a good violin player, whom i came to hear, but i did meet the violinist the following day, and really enjoyed listening to his music.
There’s an old 78 rpm by the Old ireland Quartette (Billy Andrews pipes, James Cawley flute, Frank O Higgins, fiddle together taking the melody) that has a single cello as accompaniment. Was extremely refreshing when i first heard it (which is over twenty years ago).
There are also a few 78 rpms of flute playing (basically a rehash of some McKenna sets) that have a jazzy drum and double bass as backing. interesting too. Can’t think now who the player was.
Mary Bergin’s recordings have bouzouki and bodhran which is decent enough.
A CD of superb whistleplaying is at this moment at the CD reproduction factory and will be out in a week or three, pure solo playing (solo as in it proper meaning, without backing). Beautiful stuff, I’ll come back to that soon.
Tansey’s last recording - called “Easter Snow” - was done on Robin Morton’s Temple label in Scotland. There was some accompaniment on piano, I think, by Alan Reid of the “Battlefield Band”, and I think by other members of the band at the time, perhaps guitar and percussion. I’d have to check. That would be very easy to obtain via the “Temple” records website.
He also did a recording called “Sligo Ceili” with a box-player called Joe Sheridan, and some pretty dodgy guitar and bodhran playing, but no piano. It would be regarded today as a pretty hellish recording, but for some strange reason, I still like it. Don’t know whether or not it’s still available, probably quite difficult to find, as I doubt it ever made it onto CD. It was on the Belfast “Outlet” label.
Sounds interesting!
A CD of superb whistleplaying is at this moment at the CD reproduction factory and will be out in a week or three, pure solo playing (solo as in it proper meaning, without backing). Beautiful stuff, I’ll come back to that soon.
You Tease!! 
ps, franco - I was listening to an archive programme of RTE’s “Ceili House” programme a couple of days ago of Tansey recorded at a festival in Co. Sligo, I think around 1988. You should check that out - just him playing on his own, no piano, or anything else.
I’m with franco, can’t stand that dreadful vaudevillian joanna clanking away like a bad night in a 40’s East-End pub. Frankie Gavin’s concert in Oxford was completely ruined by one of 'em (piano that is, not a pub).
As for Seamus Tansey, franco, his CD “Easter Snow” has not a piano anywhere on it. Much relief.
Sadly, however, on a couple of tracks, there is a cheesy elctronic organ accompaniment (the word ‘bontempi’ springs to mind) and some feel that the guitar accompaniment is out of place. I, however, much prefer it to a piano any day of the week. There’s also a lovely track, the eponymous “Easter Snow”, where the flute is accompanied by harp, and very lovely it is too.
Be warned though… Seamus bursts into song (solo, unaccompanied) on track 9, which made I jump I can tell you.
I saw him play a few years ago, on his own (i don’t really go for his style of playing i am afraid). He came on stage dressed in blue, three flutes dangling from his belt like truncheons. An american cop from a dodgey tv series, ready to club anybody.
And young upstart girly box players in particular.
Off the top of my head, there’s are a lot of tracks on Seamus’s Words and Music 3-CD set which are only accompanied by bodhran.
And though they are not full CD’s of Seamus’s playing, Music from the Coleman Country has several tracks which are just him and Andrew Davey (and a lot of other excellent tracks, with no piano anywhere). And there’s another Sligo compliation CD which has two tracks of Seamus backed by Brian Taheny on guitar (or some string instrument, at any rate). Unfortunately, I’ve lost my copy of that one, and don’t remember the name. (Maybe it rings bells for someone else?)
Let’s not go there, Gary ! Thanks for the correction re piano on “Easter Snow” - it’s a while since I heard it, and I’d have to say, I preferred his older recordings, piano and all.
peter- yer man turned up in exactly the same rig-out at a concert in Edinburgh supporting the “Battlefield Band” just after he made that particular recording. I remember him playing “Kitty Goes A-Milking”, a reel I’ve known since the Chieftains first album, and I didn’t recognise it until he introduced it retrospectively. I reckoned he must have played the whole tune in the 2nd octave! A “character”, indeed.
That’s a good analogy because that’s kind of what it sounds like. Anyway thaks for all the tips. I’ll go for a copy of Easter Snow and see what I think.
There’s electric organ on that too, basically inaudible on the original LP, but quite clearly heard on the CD remix, along with the guitar. I rather like it. As Séamus explains in the interminable “added-value” tracks of commentary on the CD, they got musicians from the local country band in to provide the backing for the LP.
As an aside the Hammond organ seems to be making a bit of a comeback on trad records these days - Andrew MacNamara’s box CD No Compromise is one example among several. I rather like it there too. But if you can’t stand Frankie Gavin’s choice of pianists, perhaps you won’t care for the Hammond organ either.
I think the only track I ever notice organ on is the John Henry (?) one they added for the CD release. Though I’m sure it’s there in the mix in those big group numbers.
Still, the duet tracks are all straight duet, right? No backing at all.
The great thing about listening to all your music from MP3 is that you can keep things like those “added-value” tracks out of your normal listening, in which case they really are an added value! Not many IRTrad albums have liner notes as informative and entertaining as Seamus’s commentary. (Though I do take it all with a “this is Seamus Tansey, after all” grain of salt.) Great stuff as long as you don’t have to listen every time you want to hear the music.
Well, to be fair to Frankie The G, I think it was the sound engineer’s fault at the Oxford gig. Brian McGrath (the accompanist) is a lot more subdued on Mr Gavin’s latest CD (Fierce Traditional). But at Oxford he was deafening, the piano mercilessly crushing the fiddle, and when he switched to ‘church organ’ mode for the slow air, you could hear the stage and balconies resonating and rattling horribly, with Frankie’s lovely playing of the Bb whistle completely ruined in the background.
On the CD, The G plays flute rather than whistle on track 4, Sliabh na mBán, and very tasty it is too.
In fact Col I think they all have backing. The most minimal is the enthusiastic “tambourine” on some of the Tansey and Davey tracks (Willie Coleman’s, The Fox Chase) and on Jim Donaghue’s whistle solo. This might be worse than piano for franco, I don’t know.
But there is guitar on just about everything else and as far as I can make out organ too. Listen to Tansey and Davey’s “Lord Gordon” and tell me you can’t hear the organ on that. It’s just a “pad” but it’s loud and clear.
Steve