òran mór

Saturday night was a great treat, as both Dave and I saw the legendary Andy Irvine at The Elysium Folk Club in Rollinsford, NH. Great show, great player and, as I’ve mentioned before, all in a great room. And, as you can see from the camera phone, my seat wasn’t too bad either.

The legendary Andy Irvine

Dave has been lucky enough to see Andy play a few times – either as a solo, with Patrick Street or the band Mozaik. This was my first time seeing him live, and he didn’t disappoint. He did a fine mix of songs from his new album — including The Spirit of Mother Jones, Emptyhanded, and Oslo — and classics from earlier in his career like Arthur McBride, My Heart’s Tonight in Ireland and Never Tired of the Road.

One song that stood out for me was O’Donoghue’s – his ode to the days when he first got started in music by hanging out at the famous Dublin pub with the boys from The Dubliners and the lads that Andy would soon join to form Sweeney’s Men. Kinda reminds me of my experience coming to The Press Room — getting to know all the other musicians, forming deep friendships and, eventually, creating this duo with Dave, and our maritime group Mudhook with our friends Alan Eaton and Mike Jeanneau (the biggest Andy Irvine fan I know). As the song says: “This is what life was all about.”

If you made it to the show, or his performance at Blue in Portland, what did ya think? What was your favorite song?

Just a quick note:

If you missed us playing with Mudhook at the Portsmouth Maritime Folk Festival, you’ll have another opportunity later this month. We’ll be playing a coffee house gig at the Universalist Unitarian Fellowship in Durham NH on Oct. 15. You can see details and let us know if you’re coming at the Facebook event page we set up HERE.

In the meantime, you can get your Mudhook fix with this video that our friend Jeff Murdock took of us last weekend at our PMFF performance at the Moffatt-Ladd House.

Just thought I’d mention that Dave and I will again be performing as part of the maritime folk group Mudhook at this year’s Portsmouth Maritime Folk Festival, which takes place this weekend (Sept. 24 & 26) in different venues around Market Square. It’s a great weekend of music, and audience participation is always key!

If you want to catch one of our shows, stop by The Moffatt-Ladd House on Saturday at 1 p.m. for a set that will feature several new songs. A full calendar of the festival’s events are at the website, and the schedule has all our other performance times listed.

We've come to LOVE playing The Barn at The Moffatt-Ladd House...the acoustics are great!

FYI – We’ll also be playing in Prescott Park at noon on Saturday to kick off the NH Fish and Lobster Festival (known locally as The Fishtival). The PMFF and the Fishtival have been working together on some overlap during the last couple of years because they are so interwoven thematically. Ours will be a short set, but that event is well worth checking out.

Debbie and Steve Codd and family go beyond just running a great shop at  Celtic Crossing  Portsmouth – as they are always finding new ways to support local musicians.  They have been the key sponsor for the Portsmouth Maritime Folk Festival for three years, they give local CDs  special display space and in-store listening, and this week they’ve unveiled a new ‘local music’ window.  Debbie has created large versions of a number of local CD covers, like the classic vinyl LP size.  These are hung in mobile form amidst  the actual CDs.  It’s eye-catching and very effective.  

Thanks again to Debbie and the whole Cobb family!

As I mentioned in previous posts, Dave and I are part of a quartet called MUDHOOK, which performs maritime music. Every fall, we get together with our friends Mike Jeanneau (of Boghat) and Alan Eaton to sing shanties, fo’c'sle ballads and contemporary songs of the sea at the Portsmouth Maritime Folk Festival.

Mudhooking in Market Square

The festival was this past weekend and, as always, we had an absolute blast playing our sets and catching some of the great music from some of the best performers currently on the maritime scene: Ken Sweeney, Bobb Webb, David Coffin, Ken Schatz, Liam Robinson, and others.

This year, we were able to release a special festival edition of our upcoming CD entitled “First Home.” In talking about the CD, however, a couple of people have asked what the album name means.  Actually, the name works on several levels, which is why we liked it so much.

The first connection is to a specific song on the album. ”The honor of ‘first home’” is the folly of the hero in Honor & Praise, a song Mike learned from the singing of Fairport Convention. The hero pushes his ship and his crew in order to be the first merchant vessel back to the home port, which — in part — is how he loses his vessel.

But “First Home” is also how we think of Portsmouth and the Portsmouth Maritime Folk Festival particularly. We all met singing and playing at the traditional music sessions in Portsmouth and Mudhook was originally formed four years ago specifically to perform at the PMFF…so the festival is our first home. Since we’re releasing this special edition of our CD at the festival, the name just made sense.

If you were able to make the festival and were kind enough to pick up a copy of this limited release — great. But if you weren’t able to make it and would still like a copy of this special edition, we have a few left and we’d be happy to get one to you. And we’ll have copies at our gigs as long as they last.

Mudhook's first CD - a special edition for the 2010 PMFF