Mad, Ballad & Dangerous to Know

In the ballad boom of the ‘60s, sean-nós sessions were as ubiquitous as lying politicians today. However, we eventually tired of guitarists with two and a half chords, singers with sinus problems and venues with bad or no sound systems.

Well, guess what? Irish ballads have just become listenable again, thanks to The High Kings. Blending the natural ruggedness of the material with musicianship that does the songs justice, the group deliver the kiss of life to songs such as ‘As I Roved Out’, ‘Boolavogue’ and ‘The Rising Of The Moon’. Not an easy task, but they've done it...
Then again, it could hardly be otherwise given the pedigree of the quartet, comprising Martin Furey (son of Finbar), Finbarr Clancy (son of Bobby), Brian Dunphy (brother of Eurovision representative Sean) and former Riverdance lead vocalist Darren Holden.
Martin Furey explains the genesis of The High Kings. “I’d been playing ballads at gigs in Manhattan to make money," he says, "until the woman I’d been playing with had a bit of a breakdown. Myself and Finbarr Clancy had talked about playing together. When the call came to join The High Kings and stay in nice hotels and maybe wear Aran sweaters, I jumped at it.”
So why has the public taken to this rather superior take on Irish ballads?
“I think it’s a generational thing. I played them myself in Manhattan and elsewhere. We had great ballad groups – The Fureys, The Clancys, The Dubliners and so on – but in time the music got relegated to the bars or maybe one or two a night with country and western bands. I suppose there was an element of rebellion in it too for Generation X, rejecting the music of their parents and getting into the club scene, dance music and indie rock and so on. Now, people around the world are going back to their roots, and our ballads, whether they’re old songs like ‘The Irish Rover’ or contemporary works like Thom Moore’s ‘Cavan Girl’, are an indelible part of our culture. I believe The High Kings are bringing a fresh quality to those songs that really appeals to people.”
Furey makes the point that we haven’t been hearing many Irish ballads on the radio in recent decades either.
“I think that’s fashion. There seemed to be no problem until about 1990 when acid house and techno and the club scene hit and made ballads seem very dated. It might have become a little too introverted and people didn’t want the romance any more. They also maybe wanted to forget about troubled times and day-to-day reality.”
Furey had been half of Bohinta with his sister Áine in the early ‘90s, and with songs like ‘Home’, they explored a rugged terrain later mined by Kila. They also brought a more contemporary edge to their acoustic set, much as Furey does now with The High Kings. Yet he’s rarely strayed far from the tradition.
“In my twenties we wrote a song called ‘Lord Gresham’ which Queens University in Belfast put into the archive of traditional music," he says. "To me, it’s a huge honour to be part of that tradition. So in a real sense what I’m doing now with The High Kings is part of a long involvement with Irish music, since I was a lad growing up with The Fureys’ music all around me.”
As a Furey, there must be pressure to live up to the family name and reputation...
“My father Finbar encouraged me not just to go and sing ‘The Green Fields of France’, which we actually do on the new album Memory Lane, but to write my own songs too. He also warned me that for the rest of my life, once somebody knew my family pedigree I’d be expected to sing. So I’d better learn at least one song that I could sing well! He told me to practice and not be fartin’ around. I listened to nothing but my dad’s music until I was about was about eight or nine.”
Over the years he’s become an accomplished musician, playing guitar, banjo, bouzouki and whistles. When did he think of making a living from it? “I was always enamoured with the whole music thing. The sight of my dad’s pipes case, the sounds and the smells of venues... Myself and Áine used to sleep in the van outside venues. I remember it was a hugely positive thing – the craic and the jokes. So you either go in the opposite direction from your parents, or you go into the family business, as it were. There was never much doubt which road I’d take. In fact I toured with Dad for about six or seven years and that taught me the tricks of the trade.”
Memory Lane has a less polished feel than the debut album. As Furey explains, “that’s just the way it developed on-stage with us. The first album was produced by David Downes and he did a magnificent job and brought something distinctive to the music, but for this one we wanted a more rugged approach and Mark Murphy came in to produce it.”
The highlight for him to date was walking down New York’s Times Square and seeing his face up on a huge electronic billboard as part of The High Kings.
“I know an advertising company was paid to put it up, but that didn’t stop me, who came from a sawdust-on-the-floor background, feeling a deep warm glow. But I’ve also really loved playing and recording with the lads. On the new album I really enjoy Finbarr Clancy’s singing ‘As I Roved Out’. I also loved doing ‘Step It Out, Mary’ myself, and I felt feckin’ great singing ‘Green Fields of France’ which my father had sung before me.”
Mark Murphy was drafted in to produce The High Kings’ new album Memory Lane.
“Most of the songs on the album have been recorded and sung thousands of times, so it was a case of getting myself and the band to approach them with fresh ears. These guys can really play and sing, but I come from outside the traditional music arena. I don’t have a huge trad record collection.
"Before The High Kings I worked with a singer Lesley Roy on Jive Records, so The High Kings was a big jump and I was coming at the project with a rock attitude. But Dave Kavanagh, the Chairman of Árd Rí Entertainments, who look after The High Kings, wanted to get the next generation of Irish kids into those ballads with a different, maybe less polished approach to the first album. He wanted it to be playable live, so I tried to bring a little rawness to the sound, with a bit of welly to it. There’s a percussion drum called a cahon adding a four-to-the-floor rhythm almost throughout, so they almost sound like dance tracks when played over a big rig. I was looking for the dynamic rises and falls in the music and the riff element in it, with four lads thrashing it out in a room, and so a lot of it was recorded live.
"Martin’s bouzouki was an important part of the sound. There’s something primeval about songs like ‘Rising Of the Moon’ too. Our response to those songs in engrained in us, and I wanted to capture that and make them sound as meaty as possible. We recorded Memory Lane in Hatch Lane Studios in Dublin which is quite small and intimate, and that was another factor in giving Memory Lane the tight-knit sound it has.”