The folks at Nashville based Compass Records have them coming at us thick and fast, with new releases from both well established artists and new faces this month. Musician and folklorist Mick Moloney’s new album, McNally’s Row of Flats, centres on theatre songs by an Irish songwriting team from the late 1800s.
In those days, vaudeville and minstrels were giving way to American musical theatre in New York City. The Irish team consisted of actor and writer Ed Harrigan and musician David Braham, both acclaimed performers of the early Great White Way.
The songs on Moloney’s CD range from 'Dad’s Dinner Pail' to 'I Never Drink Behind the Bar.' It also includes a top hit of 1878, 'Such an Education Has My Mary Ann.'
It’s a bit of a maverick recording from one of the great explorers of Irish traditional music, and while it looks at music which had only the loosest of connections to the musical tradition that came from Ireland, this is the music which many Irish Americans think of when they slip into a reverie about ‘the ould sod’ traditional material or not, the line-up he has put together includes some fine traditional musicians with John Doyle on guitars and bouzouki, Ivan Goff on pipes and whistles and Brendan Dolan on piano.
Also released on Compass this month is Daybreak: Fainne An Lae from Danu singer Muireann NicAmhlaoibh, which mixes up traditional tracks with some modern favourites like Gerry O’Beirne’s 'Western Highway' (with the man himself on guitar).
In December 2004 Belfast-based music writer Colin Harper unveiled The Wildlife Album, an essentially freelance fundraising venture on behalf of international environmental charity the World Wildlife Foundation and the Ulster Wildlife Trust, it featured an eclectic array of local and international folk, rock, jazz and classical artists.
The album first album was a hugely enjoyable and eclectic affair with an entertaining mix of oddities, rarities and tracks seeing the light of day for the first time. It gained tremendous coverage and airplay, and sold steadily via retail and its dedicated website (www.thewildlifealbum.com) clocking up sales in thirty countries across six of the world’s seven continents. Antarctica is the elusive continent thus far but as Harper notes: "We come to save penguins, not sell them stuff."
A year on, Harper and the WWF/UWT launch The Wildlife Album 2, subtitled Live In Hope with every track based on the theme of nature. Simon Barnes, nature columnist for The Times provides the booklet notes while the cover features the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker – the ‘American Dodo’ which reappeared recently in the Big Woods of Arkansas, having been extinct for 60 years. Artists featured include Roxy Music, Jethro Tull, Richard Thompson, the Mahavishnu Orchestra, Jan Akkerman, Steve Hackett, Shaun Davey, Bert Jansch and Bruce Cockburn.
Whelans has a bumper month in April with a wide variety of shows on offer. Roesy is touring his current album, and fit and well he was looking on the Late Late Show, and a Friday night in Whelans on April 7 should see it well and truly launched in Dublin.
Declan O’Rourke will be in town on Monday 10 and as he routinely stuffs venues many times the size of this I would be surprised if tickets hang around for long.
Both Bonnie Prince Billy shows on April 18 and 19 are now sold out so you’ll have to be content to stand outside the window with a bottle of lemonade and a packet of crisps.
Anyone who didn’t make it to see Emm Gryner in the Spirit Store last year can check out Canada’s best kept secret in Whelans on Thursday 20. Having toured with Bowie and many another luminary she knows her onions when it comes to a live show.
Albert Lee will keep it cranking in the Wexford Street haven on Saturday 22 and the month rounds out with shows from the incomparable Dar Williams on Wednesday 26th and an acoustic set from The Levellers on Thursday 27 .
Unconventional to the last, The Levellers plug in and give it the works two days later at the Temple Bar Music Centre.
Highlight of the month at the Village has to be the woman who put the ‘belle’ in Belle And Sebastian, Isobel Campbell. Riding high on the rave reviews she has received for her recent collaboration with Mark Lanegan, she visits Dublin as a solo performer in her own right for a show on Sunday 16.
The Shetland Islands are a long way from anywhere so it’s a good thing that the sensational Fiddlers’ Bid are willing to make the long journey here. Having been booked for the excellent Baltimore Fiddle Fair way out in west Cork on May 13, they’ll also be taking time to stop off in the altogether more metropolitan confines of Dublin’s Sugar Club on the previous evening.
Christy Moore is confirmed to perform at this year’s Live at the Marquee at The Showgrounds, Monaghan Road, Cork on June 23. Having closed the event last year, Christy Moore will open this year’s festival and will be joined on the stage be an array of international artists; Bob Dylan, David Gray, Art Garfunkel, Roger Waters, The Frames, Robert Plant, Roxy Music and Des Bishop. Live at the Marquee will take place over two weeks from 23 June to 7 July. The Bob Dylan show is already sold out and with acts of the calibre of Messrs. Gray, Garfunkel, and Plant, not too mention The Frames on the bill, I wouldn’t sit on my credit card for too long as it’s not a question of if they’ll sell out but when. Last year's series of concerts were wildly successful and there can be no question that if the same series of shows were staged in Dublin you could sell them out in seconds.
Also doing it under canvas again this year, the Sligo Live festival re-states its claim as the country’s most essential festival for roots based music. Having started off small last year the bill for this year’s version of the festival is packed with quality acts and a few really special shows. A giant marquee at Sligo racecourse will be the focal point for the Sligo Live concerts and some of the country’s leading traditional musicians will also be in action in the Sligo Sessions in the city’s pubs. Sinead O’Connor, The Proclaimers, Midnight Well and Dervish have been announced as headline acts for the festival, which is expected to bring music fans in force to Sligo over the June holiday weekend.
One of the highlights of the festival will undoubtedly be the re-union of Midnight Well, happening specially for the occasion. It’s a unique opportunity to see why the band – Thom Moore, Janie Cribbs, Gerry O’Beirne and Mairtin O’Connor – were one of the top folk festival acts in the 1970s.
The list of performers also includes singer-songwriter Declan O’Rourke, the US-based trad giants Solas, English folk queen Kate Rusby, fiddle legend Martin Hayes with Denis Cahill, Canadian singer-songwriter Ron Sexsmith, Donegal’s legendary sisters Mairead and Triona Ni Dhomnaill and breaking talent on the Irish music scene such as Duke Special and The Guggenheim Grotto. Weekend tickets cost a hundred quid which keeps it all pretty affordable too.