The history of traditional Irish tunes

It's amazing the things you learn at a session. The other night I was at the weekly Irish session at Radio Bean in Burlington and in between tunes some of the musicians were talking about where they learned a particular tune or that it sounded like a particular musician wrote it and I realized just how little I know about the music I play. So I'm on a quest to learn all I can about the great musicians and composers of Irish music.

I'm starting with one of my favorite CD's, Live at Mona's, because there are a lot of great tunes and musicians on this album. It is a session that was recorded at a bar in New York City called Mona's. What I love most about this CD, aside from the fact that it has amazing tunes on it, is that if you listen closely you can hear people playing pool in the background, a cell phone ringing and at the end of the album you can hear the bar tender calling "last call." It really gives a sense of what a good session sounds like and with headphones on, you feel like you're actually there.

I've been on a quest for weeks now to learn every tune on this CD. It's not an easy task by any means but I've already gotten 4 under my belt and am working on another one this morning. Though I am learning the melody of the tunes, I should be learning the history the tunes I play and the players who I am learning them from. Some of these tunes are hundreds of years old and have been passed down from country to country and from generation to generation...It's all so fascinating and I'm sure when I find out all I can about this music, playing the tunes will be that much more enjoyable.

I'll keep you posted as to what I find...

Creating a band name

I'm not sure why but creating a band name couldn't be more difficult. Trying to come up with something that describes your music, your personality and is easy to remember can seem close to impossible.

A band called Trinity was the first real band I was ever in and the band already had it's name, so that was easy. I left Trinity to start my own band and the band went through a variety of different names. The first was called Salamanca. You see we were a Celtic groove band complete with fiddles, congas, guitar and banjo. There is a famous fiddle tune called The Salamanca so we thought it was perfect. However, the name sounded too much like Latin music so it seemed a bit misleading since we played traditional Irish music. And unless you are a regular session goer, you wouldn't know the history of the tune The Salamanca.

The next name for the same band was called Down to the Wire. I thought it was a great name because it seemed like we were always "down to the wire" when it came to practicing for gigs. But the band eventually broke up. (Keeping a band together is another blog entry for another day).

I'm in two bands now. One is a spin off of Down to the Wire in that it's my guitar player and me and we are playing some of the same tunes though we have strayed from Celtic groove music to more folky, Americana type music with some Irish fiddle tunes thrown in. I'm not sure just how you would classify our music, which is why it is so hard to come up with a band name. I welcome any suggestions.

The other band I'm in plays traditional Irish music. We call ourselves Muddy Boots. We began with the same problem in that we couldn't come up with a name. So Andrew, our guitar player, decided that we should cut up some paper and write down as many nouns and adjectives that we can think of. We threw the nouns in one hat, the adjectives in another and then spent the better part of an hour pulling them out of the hat and putting them together to come up with Muddy Boots. Though it doesn't say much about traditional Irish music, most Vermonters can at least relate to having muddy boots.

Heading into the recording studio

As with most bands who come to the point of getting sick of playing kick-ass tunes in their living room, my band Muddy Boots, is heading into the recording studio this week. We're planning to lay down 5 tracks of rockin' Irish fiddle tune sets.

It's hard to believe but we have been playing together on a weekly basis for almost 7 months now. We've played two gigs, one for a benefit to raise money for Jerry Holland and one at the Richmond Farmer's Market. And it's now time we get our there and share what we have been working on so off to the recording studio we go.

I'll post the finished product when it's...well, finished. In the meantime, you can catch some of us playing at the Wednesday night Irish session at Radio Bean, in Burlington.

Tony DeMarco coming back to Vermont

This is a picture of Jerry Holland and Tony DeMarco playing tunes at the Red Shoe Pub in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia.

Tony DeMarco played in Vermont a fews year back for a memorial concert in honor of the late and great Johnny Cunningham. I had never heard of Tony DeMarco before that day. He's a big teddy bear of a guy and as he walked out on stage that night I couldn't imagine what kind of music was going to come out of his fiddle. Once he sat down and began to play, I quickly realized that I was not in the know. This man made my jaw drop with his fiddle playing. He was incredible.

DeMarco is a Brooklyn native with Irish and Italian in his blood. He plays County Sligo style Irish fiddle with lot of crisp ornamentation, fast rhythms and he improvises like nobody's business.

DeMarco is one of the musicians that will take the stage with Ashley MacIsaac and John Doyle next month at Chandler Music Hall to raise money for Jerry Holland's battle with cancer.