òran mór

Last night in April — we were lucky enough to have a few good friends drop for some tunes and songs.  Mike Jeanneau, of Boghat fame, was first,   traveling light with just a fiddle and banjo, but he lit things up as he’s known to do.

Then Greg Heppe,  who runs the General Store and great concerts at the Old White Church in Tuftonboro, NH, stopped in with flutes and whistles in hand.

And then — Mr. Bill Zecker arrived with bouzouki in hand — to help us sail through the rest of the night.

A good time was had by all.  I’ll post some sound clips ASAP.

Pete and I dropped into the first Monday session that Eamon Coyne and Mike Jeanneau are starting at  The Port Tavern, 84 State St. in Newburyport, MA.  It was a good and a lively group, as you might imagine, and they are rocking the place with a great mix of tunes and songs.

The session runs from 7-10PM every Monday.  They want to get the word out and invite all to drop by.

You know you’ll be in for some great music AND a bunch of laughs (what, when Mike plays the banjo, and all).

See how many folks you can identify in this collage of last nights group…
(click to enlarge)

Seamus Creagh, the great fiddler who we lost too soon, about a month ago, will be remembered later today in an RTE steamed  broadcast called The Rolling Wave.

I’ve loved and learned from his playing – from the day I bought my first of his albums ‘The Dawn’ at a little music shop in Killarney – to the time a couple years ago that I was lucky enough (thanks to Mary Lou Philbin) to play with Seamus in his little session at the Pier Head Pub in Blackrock, just outside of Cork.   He was most friendly and gracious to Jim Burke and I, a couple of yanks who were keen to play a little fiddle next to the master.

I believe these shows are archived  – will investigate and update this post as appropriate.

In an earlier post, Pete told about the startup of  Trad Night at Johnny D’s.  I didn’t have to wait any longer for a good reason to go check it out – when on April 14th, he and Laurette learned their friend Martin Langer was playing bouzouki that night with  Oisin McCauley (of Danu) on fiddle,  Peter Malloy on flute, Noel Scott on button accordion.

What a unique opportunity this turned out to be.  While these guys are not really ongoing band, each is so accomplished that they can pull together for a night and sound like they’ve been recording and touring for years.

The romped through a great selection of jigs, reels, and special selections – providing a secret, fleeting peek at a trad supergroup.

Our good friend, and oft-times musical cohort, Susan Young gave a great performance and session-after at Blue in Portland last night.

Sue nicely built the momentum during the evening, starting a capella, playing some tunes with Chris Stevens, and then moving to songs (with yours truly and then Michel Jenneau) and more tunes, with most of Boghat (to be fair.. Jamie wasn’t there). 

She brought it around full circle to end with a pair of a capella songs.  The crowd, which happened to include Paddy Keenan, loved it.

We had a great session afterward, where, for a few fleeting moments, we all saw ‘another side of Tom Rota.’   Put the cash in a plain brown envelope, Tom.