The Living Tradition
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Providence |
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Providence
are a band with a mission - to play traditional music. Alan McIntosh Brown
investigates. Clodagh
Boylan comes from a musical family from Glenullin, Co Derry and has
played with members of her family in the Gleann an Iolair Ceili Band. She has toured extensively with Comhaltas Ceoltoiri
Eireann in the USA, Australia and the UK and toured Italy as a member
of All Set. She joined the band
after the release of the first album so "A Fig for a Kiss"
will be her first recording with Providence. The
point about second albums is that the singer/musician/band has a lifetime
to prepare the debut one and - if lucky a year to prepare the
follow up. I asked Joan McDermott how this album differed
from the first. "Songwise,
this album is different in that all the songs are traditional and theyre
also more up-tempo," she says. "There are two slow songs
"Will You Go to Flanders?" and "Sé Fáth Mo Bhuartha"
but no unaccompanied songs, although "Sé Fáth Mo Bhuartha"
is probably the equivalent of the unaccompanied song in that its
just voice and guitar." I
told you earlier of Joans day job with the Irish Traditional Music
Archive. On the surface this
would appear to be a great help in the choice of songs but is there
perhaps too wide a choice? She
smiles. "We chose these songs in order to have a change from the
last album. Theres a song about cross-border smuggling
called "Smuggling the Tin", which I learned from Liam Weldon,
a favourite singer of mine who died a few years ago. "Will You Go to Flanders?" is an anti-war song which I
got from my friend Alistair Russell, who used to play with the Battlefield
Band. "The Jolly Young Ploughboy" is the
only song I learned specially for the album, a song recorded a few years
ago by Frank Harte." Never
one to desert the native tongue, Joan sings two Irish language songs.
"`Sé Fáth Mo Bhuartha" is a love song that most people would
have learned in school," she says. "Its commonly played
as a slow air but seems not to be sung very much these days."
The second Irish language song is "Muiris Ó Coinnleáin",
again a love song but more light-hearted than the other. "I came across this song last year in the course of my work
for the Archive and I liked it so much that I learned it immediately,"
she says. "I discovered later that Nóirín Ní Riain had recorded
it previously." But
traditional or not, just because a tune is written down in a certain
way doesnt mean Providence have to stick slavishly to that arrangement. "One tune is unusual in that when we heard
it first it was played as a waltz and weve slowed it down to a
slow air," says Joan. "We
havent been able to find out yet where it comes from but its
reputed to be a Carolan air."
And theres also a Scottish input, for the final track was
recorded at Dougie MacLeans Taybank Bar in Dunkeld during a very
brief visit to Perthshire last year when Providence played at the Callander
Festival. Youll also find
a great and varied selection of barn dances, jigs, slip jigs and hornpipes
and the band is bowing to popular demand by including the Providence
Reel, which is one of the sources of their name. The
first album had very favourable reaction with good reviews from the
papers that matter, and received a lot of airplay in Ireland on RTÉ
1 and on Raidió na Gaeltachta. Joans
overseas contacts tell her that its had airplay, too, in Australia,
the United States and perhaps surprisingly - in Slovenia. She
leaves no one in doubt about the bands mission. "Those who dont like the first album seem to think that
were not innovative enough; that were old-fashioned. We deliberately set out to play old-fashioned
music - music that is melody based with its own inherent rhythm, not
music based solely on percussive elements.
The difference between the first album and the new one is that
when we recorded the first album we hadnt gigged together and
we only had a notion about how we should sound as a band." This time, too, the album is self-produced.
"We wanted to be sure to put our own stamp on the music
and not somebody elses," says Joan. "Now weve
gigged together as a cohesive unit for over a year. Were well
used to one another and our new fiddle player, Clodagh Boylan fits in
like a dream. Now we dont
have to think about how we want to sound," she adds, "because
weve developed that from gigging." Such
is their determination to be successful that Providence now have a full
time manager in Ian Robinson. "We
asked Ian on board to help us with the administrative side of things,"
says Joan, "because having been involved with other touring bands
we knew how difficult it is to tour, rehearse and record without having
to organise everything else. Ian
is an experienced salesman and he has a great grá
for the music as well as being a very talented bodhrán player, so he
was the ideal candidate to manage us."
After the launch of the new CD and a short tour of Ireland as
well as TV and radio appearances, there are plans to come to Scotland
later this year as well as to England, Austria, Germany, Norway, Italy,
Holland, and the USA. And,
finally, how about this traditional style band as the instigators of
a new form of audience participation the drive-by gig?
Well it happened at the Mary of Dungloe Festival in Donegal last
summer. Joan takes up the story. "We were on the gig rig on one side of
the street and the audience was on the other and there was a constant
stream of two-way traffic between us and the audience.
The really amusing aspect of it all was that most of the traffic
comprised coaches full of blue-rinse Daniel ODonnell fans on their
way home from his tea party! There
were about five thousand in all and we saw each and every one of them!"
she laughs. Drive-by
or not, this is a band worth taking a detour for. Check out the new album then go and see them live. It doesnt take a clairvoyant to predict
that Providence are going to be big. Alan
McIntosh Brown |
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