I Looked West - some old, weird, americana

Some highlights, hopefully, of my long relationship with the "old, weird, America", from early days as a blues guitarist in the Hounslow Delta, through mountain banjo pickin' around the Hills of Fyvie, and more recently old-time fiddle playing in my current home town.

Download here

Tom McHale

Folk club recordings of Tom McHale, the Roscommon whistle player, have been uploaded to SoundCloud.

Here

Some Old Poems Set To Music

Blatant self-publicity? Why not!

I can't write lyrics, but tunes seem to come from somewhere or other, and some lyric poems seem to ask for a musical setting.

Here's a compilation on SoundCloud.

Tommy Potts

Interesting program about Tommy Potts on TG4, with video (!) of him playing, and some clues as to where all the variations come from.

Here while it lasts.

More here for those that can be bothered to wade through it. I don't think that this includes me...

Topic Records

Topic Records is current releasing a lot of its back catalogue as downloads (I hope I've got this right), including lots of long out-of-print folky stuff.

Check it out here. (Link down the page a bit)

Supplique pour être enterré sur la plage de Sète

Way back in the 1960's I managed to spend several days in hospital in Espalion, on the river Lot in France, having succumbed to some form of dysentry. My mate Richard was befriended by a bunch of others on holiday, and when I got better, we hung about with them for a couple of days. One of these guys had a guitar which at the time was vastly intriguing for us both, and he serenaded the group with an assortment of French and English folk songs. The only song which stuck in my head was a long French one with a distinctive chordal riff between verses. We returned to England both vowing to get guitars as soon as possible.

The other night I watched Les Plages d'Agnes, a film by Agnes Varda,and to my amazement this song popped up on the soundtrack at the point where her family moved to Sète during the war. George Brassens (a native of Sète) got a mention at another point in the film, so it didn't need much detective work to track the song down.

Hearing it again takes me back to the ruins on the hill in Espalion with swallowtail butterflies everywhere, and a very tender stomach.

Here's a page with it all in.

Repost - Northern Fiddle Session

For 'anonymous'. Re-post of Northern Fiddle Session. New link in comments. Two folders in one zip file.

The Boy In The Gap - Paddy Taylor

This has been re-released by Claddagh as a download. Get it here. This has to be a good way to make this older material available. The recordings are usually not great technically so nothing is lost in the 'mp3'ing, and the production overheads are small, which is good given that there are no fortunes to be made. More please!

Full cover scans at Ceol Alainn

7/3/2010 - This now seems to have been taken down...

Lots of Fun and Games

Trouble in the sand-pit at Mudcat.

P Joe and Martin Hayes

Three sets from a live Clare FM broadcast. One of the best sessions I was ever at was the Wednesday night in Pepper's, Feakle and this reminds me of those nights. Not technical music and a 'a bit like going to church' as someone once said but magic stuff. Its a pity 'The Shores Of Lough Graney' is not let loose again, sort of Martin Hayes (and dad) before he became Martin Hayes but there you go.

I haven't hunted all the names down for these tunes (too lazy). And I'll try and hunt a picture out (Christian beat me to it).

Download

The British Library Archive

Lucy Farr? Bobby Casey? No need to live outside the law any longer. Along with lots more unbelievable staff you can hear them here.

I can't wait for the Irish Traditional Music Archive to follow suit.

Mrs Galvin

This from a 1979 article in Dal gCais magazine: “Her family, McCarthy by name, were a musical people, and their house was a regular visiting place for the Inagh piper Garrett Barry, who is regarded as something of a father figure in the musical heritage of Clare. She became a close personal friend of Barry's before his death in 1901 and was perhaps one of the few people living in the 1930s who could speak authoritatively about the famous piper…Mrs. Galvin was a regualr competitor at Feiseanna in the 1920s and at one memorable Feis in Kilkee, in 1927, John remembers being present as she and Patsy Geary fought for first place in the fiddle competition. Geary beat her on that occasion, a feat which his son Sean used joyously refer to long afterwards as the time when 'the old man made the "Tocht" roll her sleeves down'. She was sometimes known as the Tocht [= 'mattress'] Galvin because she was such a fat woman, and she had the habit of playing the fiddle with her sleeves rolled up."

Yet another appalling recording (or copy). The source is labelled 'John Kelly, Mrs Galvin and Martin Rochford' so I had to guess who was who, and this might in fact be John Kelly as it is all his kind of tunes. Really scrapy playing but I like it.

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Martin Rochford

East Clare fiddler name-checked regularly, but of whom no legitimate recordings exist (I would be delighted to be corrected here). These tracks are from a pretty appalling recording and seem to be from two sessions. In the bit of chat at the end 'Peter' is mentioned, maybe Peter Kennedy?

Those familiar with Martin Hayes' recording will note the similarities.

I can't find any pictures, and a couple of websites devoted to him have vanished. His daughter lives at the bottom of my mate's lane but that doesn't really help.

Post removed on request (see comments)

The Isom Waltz

One morning, while surfing aimlessly around the net I came across the surname 'Isom' and remembered that I used to play a tune called the Isom Waltz from an old LP by the Hollow Rock String Band.

I could not remember a note of it however, and the CD rip I had of the album would no longer read on any of the computers in the house, neither could I get anything off the Internet to remind myself. As the day wore on I gradually remembered that it was in 'G' and that it started with a sort of downward chordal run, and by the evening I had managed to dredge it all from the depths of my memory.

Rather a weird experience and I now wonder what else is hidden away in the depths of my brain. I also realised that the tune had been far to difficult for my limited skills anyway....

I finally managed to get the CD read with a USB burner, and for anyone interested here it is.