Eclectic Company: Ireland Is One Long Open Mic Night

I’m out of the country on vacation in Ireland with two girlfriends who haven’t been here before, remembering that what I like best about this extraordinarily green island (and there’s a lot to like here, whether or not you’ve got Irish roots), is the sound of Irish voices singing in the sweet sad shushing sounds of the Irish Gaelic language, and musical instruments like the fiddle, piano key or button accordion, wooden flute and tin whistle, uilleann pipes (bagpipes without a mouthpiece), mandola or mandocello (large mandolins), banjo and bodhran (handheld drum that looks like a large tambourine), playing the “auld” songs.

Right now, having driven all around the prehistoric sites in The Burren, taken in the natural beauty of the Cliffs of Moher, and driven over the majestic Connor Pass, while playing Irish music as a soundtrack for the drive on the rental car’s CD player, I’m sitting in an internet café in the little tourist town of Dingle, listening to thirty-two artists performing 32 songs on “Eistigi: The Essential Traditional Irish Music Collection,” a double CD set featuring some of the best musicians of the last forty years, many of whom I’ve been lucky enough to hear live over the years, in concert halls and clubs, and most often, at open-air summer festivals, both here in Co. Clare, and back in the States. In addition to world renowned bands like The Chieftains, The Dubliners, De Dannan, and Clannad, featuring their sister Enya, you can hear the sounds of Irish step dancers tapping along to the Kilfenora Ceili Band (like an unrehearsed version of Riverdance), current hot favorites Kila, throwing in a musical nod to Pachelbel’s Canon, and numerous traditional songs sung in both English and in Gaelic. There are dozens of compilations to choose from, and you can buy them at most Irish gift shops at tourist sites, as well as at record stores in the bigger towns, but not all are of such luminescent quality. This particular set has me jumping up and down in the internet café, it’s so lively. It's available on Dara Records from www.irelandcd.com.

If what you want are non-stop musical jam sessions, Ireland is the best place for you, whether you’re in Dublin or Dingle, and pretty much all points in between. Most nights you can stop into a local public house after 9:00 p.m. and find homegrown and visiting musicians having a “seisiun,” playing and singing traditional and modern reels, jigs, hornpipes and the like, lubricated with almost overflowing pints of black Guinness stout. These aren’t public performances in the way that setting up microphones and marking off a boundary between musicians and audiences makes performers out of even the loosest jam band. Rather, these are shared musical experiences, combining the feeling of an open mic night and a folk club song session, in which everyone asks for or leads a song in turn. The music is heavily instrumental, with all who can joining in, but sometimes there will be a soloist and the audience will be asked to “give a bit of hush” so the singer or quiet instrumentalist can be heard. Here in Dingle we stopped into one pub where we ran into some New Yorker's looking for a seisiun, and I found them again today in the internet cafe. We've already made plans to hit some open mic clubs in New York when we all return, and I'm looking forward to hearing some of their original music which they gave me me just as they were leaving for Cork and more "craic."

Lake Charles has a few Celtic connections of its own, foremost of which is the annual Celtic Nations Festival held around St. Patrick’s Day, March 17, that features transplanted-to-Louisiana musician Danny O’Flaherty, who hails originally from Ardmore on the coast, Co. Waterford, in the Gaeltacht or Gaelic-speaking part of Ireland. While I’m over here, a few hours drive from his birthplace, O’Flaherty is in Lake Charles, performing at Sylvia’s Bistro (October 17), but if you’ve missed him, you’ll have other opportunities in and around the area. You can find his schedule, as well as his music, on www.dannyoflaherty.com.

A few years back, the Festival celebrated the life of Irish superstar Tommy Makem, featuring his family members, who came over for a special memorial event. Makem was well-known as the banjo-playing singer in The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem. On our Irish trek, my girlfriends and I have listened to double CDs of the Clancys with Makem, and by last surviving Clancy brother, actor and musician Liam Clancy. They were the group most responsible for popularizing Irish music in America, and for the pipeline of Irish musicians who followed thereafter. When I first traveled into New York from my home in the Rockaways, a seaside resort and resident community at the foot of the outer borough of Queens along the Atlantic Ocean, especially popular with Irish immigrants because it reminds them of home, I’d head for Greenwich Village, where the Clancy’s were part owners of The Lion’s Head bar, around whose large back table they would gather a squadron of folk music inclined friends to eat, drink, and share the “craic” (pronounced crack) or fun, into the wee hours of the night. Those were the first official “seisiuns” I attended, and I got my taste for egalitarian singarounds peopled by fantastic musicians on those magical nights. The Clancys and their friends were superstars, appearing on major concert stages, on film soundtracks, and on television, around the world, but they’d expect everyone at the table, professional or not, to sing or play along. They were most respectful of talent and ability, and not at all set up in their own importance. Astonishing to think of it now in these days when even unknown performers travel around with an entourage of their own security staff. You can get “The Very Best of the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem” from www.allmediaentertainment.co.uk/, and Liam Clancy’s “Yes…Those Were The Days” from www.irelandcd.com.

In those days, Tommy Makem owned a tonier club in midtown Manhattan called The Irish Pavillion, where he’d play when in town, and where he’d hire other Irish musicians to play every weekend. An old boyfriend of mine played guitar to back up one of those singers, the beautiful, but sharp-singing Mary O’Dowd, and I’d go in to watch one of their sets. When I told him I was going to be in Dublin, the OB asked if I’d stop in and see if his photo was still hanging on the back wall of O’Donoghue’s, a pub that was the center of the traditional music seisiuns in 1960s swinging Dublin. The girls and I did, and had a great night, listening to an understated but particularly great bodhran player, and some very nice mandolas and a bouzouki, played by the luthier who’d made all the instruments. The standouts of the night were a couple of a capella songs from Antoni O’Breschi, better known as a jazz pianist, whose lovely voice stilled the loud room almost instantly. www.nomadicpiano.com. He performed on Fiona Ritchie’s NPR radio show “The Thistle and Shamrock” a few years back, which you can find, no doubt, archived on the web. The girls and I drank a few too many pints, retold the old joke, ‘How can you tell one Irish tune from another? By their titles.’, and took plenty of photos of the OB's publicity shot, still in pride of place, well-lit by a wall sconce. We've got four more days to make the most of the music, so off we go on another adventure. As they say in Ireland, Slainte! And may the road rise up to meet you.