#father aime lemaitre

[mendely]

[theloniousbach]

50 Years of Going To Shows, Part 4: The ANGLO-CELTIC Hillbilly Connection

When Judy Stein, the Queen of Focal Point, had a KDHX show, “Family Reunion,” she said her brief was “the Anglo-Celtic-Hillbilly connection.”  That is, she aimed to trace how the music from the British Isles influenced traditional American music.  Both Focal Point and KDHX have had decisive impacts on my musical culture, debts that I can only imagine beginning to repay by being parts of those communities and being committed to sharing music.

This installment in this series on seeing live music for lo these many years then will center on the traditional British and Celtic music we’ve gone to largely via The Focal Point.  That music was the common ground Ellen and I settled on as the family music.  She had a deeper appreciation, but I found the virtuoso playing, tradition, and core repertoires that blues and jazz also have.Let me though start, as usual, with guitars and even what I might have thought was an unattainable relic of the long 1960s.

The Pentangle was a favorite—virtuoso playing, a jazz rhythm section, acoustic guitars, and an at the time deep and mysterious repertoire.  They were obscure enough to not have toured the American Midwest.  I would never see them.  Except I did, sort of: guitarists John Renbourn and Bert Jansch with pure voiced singer Jacqui McShee (Triangle?) played The Focal Point as did Renbourn and McShee as did Renbourn and Robin Williamson of the Incredible String Band as a follow up to their “Wheel of Fortune” album which was recorded at a Focal Point show (they said they should be The Incredible String Tangle).  And then several Renbourn solo shows (one with a borrowed guitar as an airline had done very bad things to his; another with 8 year old Sam falling asleep leaning on me during the second set; one I came home from KC for around my birthday, the last time I saw my father as he died in Scotland just a week later; and probably at least one more.)

John Renbourn was a hero and, as with many Focal Point artists, he became someone I kind of knew.  He played jazz and baroque, Celtic (Scottish gloom and doom, he called it) and British songs.  He was fluid and magical.  Larger than life as a 60s hero and a key part of the folk revival of the 60s (London version) and yet there he was.  St. Louis was a place to rest up mid-tour or start or finish.  To this day, I have a straw hat that he had while here in St. Louis for a stretch between legs of a tour in the summer time.  He had a similarly big head, so I could wear it too.  The John Renbourn hat has gone on many Lake Michigan vacations and kept the sun off me as I spend hours transfixed by the water.

Martin Carthy taught Paul Simon “Scarborough Fair” and is another giant of the London Folk Revival who is another old friend of Focal Point.  Son David helped arrange a small US tour for Martin so that he could play St. Louis for Judy and Eric Stein’s 50th Wedding Anniversary.  I think we saw him first with wife Norma Waterson and a then teen aged daughter Liza in the first iteration of Waterson: Carthy as well as once more and then a tour where Norma couldn’t travel.  Wonderful songs—spooky, ancient, and fun—from all three of them; his primordial modal guitar; Liza’s fiddle.I recall an earlier solo tour and one with old partner Dave Swarbrick too.  Swarbrick was in Fairport that time I saw them in KC opening for Weather Report, so I asked about that, pulling back the screen from those old days.  Carthy is a real student of the music, offering from the stage the same kind of background that sneak into discursive liner notes.  He’s warm and garrulous, but also charmingly compulsive, stopping/restarting tunes, including once three or more verses into a long ballad, if he’d made a mistake only he noticed.

Another giant/huge friend of Focal Point is Brian McNeill, a founder of the foundational Scottish band, The Battlefield Band.  Just last weekend, as I write this, he invited Gwen Harkey, to play a tune with him.  She’s a Morris Dancer because she comes along with her dad (Jay of the Wee Heavies whose second CD was produced by Brian) and little sister to Mississippi River Rats Border Morris practice.  I was at a folkie gathering that he came to with his fiddle and just sat down to play.Brian has played numerous shows, showcasing whatever thematic project he’s been writing songs about (the Scottish diasporae to both the Americas and Eastern Europe plus recovering episodes of Scottish history, frequently from the perspectives of the downtrodden, crafters, travelers, miners, other unionists.  There are fiddle tunes, guitar pieces (on Eric Stein’s wonderful Martin dreadnought) and songs, sometimes guitar, sometimes a beast of a bazouki.  He’s here every year, so sometimes I see him and sometimes I don’t.  We’re amazingly lucky that we can take him for granted.  But we shouldn’t and there will be a time when he won’t be back.

The first time I saw him though, I can only remember that it was just days after that Renbourn show and even fewer days after Dad died in Scotland.  Even Mom wasn’t back, so there was nothing to do but wait and be stunned.  So we held our tickets and went to see Brian with Dick Gaughan do a heavy Scottish and political show.  But I only know that I was there.

For a long time, fiddle players were the virtuoso soloists who regularly dropped my jaw.  Relatively early on we saw the original Celtic Fiddle Festival of Johnny Cunningham, Kevin Burke, and Christian Lemaitre: Scottish, Irish, and Breton playing each other’s tunes.  Lemaitre’s Breton music was ear opening, Celtic sure but with a little bit more.  I saw him later in KC on a reunion tour of Kornog and he came back with a later version of CFF (he had a broken bone in an arm, no cast but I’m sure in pain as he played) with Andre Brunet from Quebec and La Bottine Souriante replacing Cunningham who died way too soon.  Cunningham was amazing, clever verbally and musically, both perhaps as deflections from just how  brilliant his playing was.  Like his brother Phil (whom we saw just once with Aly Bain), his own records were overproduced just a bit, too many clever ideas cluttering the space.  But live, both of them would shine, a little bit of the simple taste showing through.

That was also the first time we saw Kevin Burke and he is just a giant.  He plays effortlessly so his brilliance sneaks up on you.  There are “wait a minute” moments where you catch yourself wondering how he just did what you heard while watching what seems like an easy session.  We saw him with Patrick Street (Andy Irvine, Jackie Daly, and the ubiquitous Ged Foley), with Daly on box, with Cal Scott, and solo at least twice.  Sam helped do sound at one of them and I got to stand at the back while he wrapped up cords while Burke put away his fiddle.  They stood by the stool that held things during the show symmetrically silhouetted by the back light, my kid chatting amiably and naturally with a commanding figure of this music.  In telling that story in a guided session on the lessons of stories, I came up with what is a pretty good slogan: “if you’re there and engaged, then you belong.”  I have gotten behind the scenes often enough to seem like an insider, but I should—but don’t—have imposter syndrome.   I’m just there and engaged.

That access to artists is such a gift from Focal Point.  It really is folk music, music made by folks for folks, without pretension or artifice. And being to witness that magic, in this case, at such close range has been a treasure.

St. Louis also has John D. McGurk’s as a nightly source of Irish music as it has been particularly even before I came to town in the early 1980s a key entry point for Irish musicians playing in the States.  The pictures on the wall attest to numerous giants on the music playing, too often over conversation, in this pub.  Early on Joe Burke, by then a box player, was the artistic director.  We stopped my on several Sunday or Monday nights for sets by Bernie and Barbara McDonald playing tunes, songs, and O’Carolan compositions.  Joe and Bernie were hosts of “Ireland in America” on KDHX, our community radio station.  I got myself FCC legal following in Sam’s footsteps and his apprenticeship on Judy Stein’s “Family Reunion.”  That was his four year high school community service project; then Ellen and I went for the three years he was in college.  I filled in for Judy and Bernie and now for shows for Americana and Eastern European music.  All have been part of my music education.

In more recent years, we trekked to McGurk’s to see box players like John Redmond, Peter Browne, and Johnny B. Connolly after they had been scouted out by friend Jesse who himself played at McGurk’s in the 1970s.  I remember magic from all of them.  Redmond and banjoist Darren Maloney weaving in and out of tunes together, realizing that no matter my enthusiasm I couldn’t get away with saying, “no really, the banjo AND accordion were amazing together.”  I’d probably get accused of liking bagpipes too—and I am guilty of that.  Peter Browne was some combination of bored and shy but he would jam very odd noted phrases into seemingly simple jigs and reels.

Sam helped Eric Stein with sound for a couple of years at the Tionol, the Irish music festival with classes and concert.  I invited myself along (rationalization: he didn't drive) and hung out back stage.  Even after that rationalization past, I told myself I was helping stage manage by getting musicians lined up to go on stage.  So even more of the magic there and at the sessions at various pubs, particularly McGurk's on Sundays.  While the big names tended to gravitate together, there still were nifty moments of rank beginners and recording stars working through a tune set.  No matter what, there was that intimate informality where everyone was playing for themselves and the music itself.

One fixture has been John Skelton whom we saw twice with the House Band (always Chris Parkinson and Ged Foley, once with Roger Wilson) including a time when I announced them as Judy had lost her voice.  Skelton also brought in The Windbags, a pipes/whistles version of the Celtic Fiddle Festival that was remarkable in range and texture.  The guitarist was Tony Cuffe who was a treat himself and a great loss to cancer.But at the Tionol and in his shows, Skelton displayed great wit, always good for an annual polished joke.  But he too could do sessions with jokes--so we have played that game together.

Tionol's have brought in marvelous fiddle players like Liz Carroll and Tommy Peoples, too nervous to live up to the legend.

Martin Hayes is probably my favorite fiddler and I got to see him with Dennis Cahill at UMSL in November 2011, paying extra for a VIP ticket so that I could have the Focal Point experience.  He had said at a pre-show gathering that Celtic music owed more to Baroque counterpoint than blues based chord changes and that has triggered an extended study of that music as my starting point for European Tradition Art Music which I am vainly trying to establish as an alternative to Classical music.  Hayes did a wonderfully eclectic and extended tune set in the performance proper and then created another one on the fly with requests from the audience.  Since these tunes have multiple names, he didn't place the called out one so he asked for the first few notes and he placed it in two--or said he did.  My minute conversation was about his sympathetic interactions with Dennis Cahill and their ensemble sound, evocative to me of Bill Evans with his bassists.  He said they listened to Evans too.

I saw Aly Bain, the Shetland fiddler, once with his long-time band, The Boys of the Lough; once with Phil Cunningham; and once with Ale Moller, from Sweden's Frifot.  All were memorable--Phil's virtuoso piano accordion matching the fiddle in both skill and range of styles and influences; the Shetland/Sweden intersection is bracing and exhilarating; the Boys were always amazing in their own breadth.  Leader Dave Richardson's brother was a friend from the Missouri Botanical Garden so he had a connection with St Louis and Focal Point.  Cathal McConnell is a stunning singer and left handed flute player (he did a duo tour as he really needs a keeper); the box player we saw mostly, Brendan Begley had his own batch of songs; and they recruited another Shetland fiddler to replace Bain.

Besides the show with Bain, Moller was in with Frifot twice and widened my ears to all Nordic music.  In time, I've developed a sense of the variations in style and have seen the great Arto Jarvela with a young Finnish American band from Chicago.  And, the Danish Gangspil has played here these past two years.  Wonderful stuff.

The Boys and this whiff of Scandinavia (not really Celtic, but, as Leif Sorbye, leader of the Norwegian Celtic surf rock band and another long time friend of Focal Point say, Atlantic music is a better way to put it.Besides Tempest and the Bretons we've heard, the Asturian band Llan de Cubel won that style of Celtic music to our hearts.  LIke Breton, it is certainly Celtic—jigs/reels with the right instruments (fiddle, flute, pipes, even hand drums—but it is quirkily and naturally Spanish too.

At the heart of this catholic view of what Celtic music is is a real fondness, even preference for Scottish music.  Besides McNeill, we have seen the seminal band he helped found, Battlefield, at least twice, possibly three times.  I think it was twice with founding keyboard player Alan Reid and once with none of the original members during McNeill’s residency in town (he didn’t sit in the back).  While it wasn’t the Battlefield Band, it was good.

Another band that we’ve seen in a couple of iterations was Old Blind Dogs, twice with Jim Malcolm and once in the newer iteration.  Malcolm is stunning with powerful songs, his voice harmonizing with his DADGAD guitar and the band during the OBD days.  But Malcolm did at least three captivating solo tours through St. Louis.  There is something at least harmonically intriguing if not jazzy in his musical conception.

My family has been more attuned to songs than I, but I am the one who insisted they see the local a capella  quartet The Wee Heavies who sang a couple of tunes at Brian McNeill's set break.  He ultimately produced their second CD.  They have great songs, amazing arrangements, and a fun presence.

So does/did The Finest Kind whom we saw twice, including once when Ian Robb had no voice.  But in the presence of such singers, I'm impressed.  They built harmonies in impressive ways.  They were staying with Judy when the Morris Dancers came over to practice.  I saw them come out and created a song arrangement on the spot for one of the tunes they were dancing too.  It was stunning.

Ellen and Sam saw Louis Killen and then brought me along on a return tour.  A concert of unaccompanied solo singing was frankly a bit much.  But he was a giant of the repertoire, hugely influential, and kept singing after she transitioned as Louise.

Brian Peters came through a couple of times with engaging concerts of songs and box playing.  He probably was a school teacher, given his travel pattern and the thoughtful curation of his repertoire.  As impressive as his accordion is, he has an album of songs, “Sharper Than The Thorn,” that we got to hear most of one special night at Focal Point.

I should be a bigger fan of Richard Thompson than I actually am.  He’s a brilliant guitarist and songwriter, but also steeped in the traditions.  He wasn’t with Fairport the night I saw them open for Weather Report back in KC, so I only saw him on a very snowy night for the 1000 Years of Popular Song tour which implemented a brilliant conceit of tracing songs from “Sumer Ich Acumen” and an ancient ballad or two through Victorian music hall and Stephen Foster through vaudeville and Tin Pan Alley to some odd bits of pop songs including ABBA.  He had a percussionist, another vocalist, and his guitar, managing a very thorough sound somehow.

And, since guitars are where I start and stop, let me end with the amazingly fluid and versatile Martin Simpson.  He’s English and has that repertoire in hand.  But then he also has Celtic and American gospel music albums of the first order.  He spent enough time in New Orleans to record an album called “Righteousness and Humidity.”  He also does blues, playing slide in DADGAD, and Dylan.  So we saw him several times.

Let his eclecticism stand for this whole chapter of discovering music.