In the year of our lord 1989 when I was only a pup, I was woken in the middle of the night by a roaring session. I was 8 and it was my parents 25th wedding anniversary and was about 2 in the morning. I got out of bed and followed the noise and found 90% Of the parish set dancing on the front lawn and the road outside while my neighbors played the most exciting reels jigs and hornpipes on accordions, fiddles, whistles, guitars and bodhran's. Being only 9 and never having frequented the local pub sessions, the only time I had heard these tunes before was my dad lilting or whistling them. I spent the rest of the night until the sun came up, enthralled by the pure energy and excitement of the music. I was amazed and invigorated. Listening to the music and laughing and watching the dancing is a memory I’ll have for ever. It was from that night on that I was "infected" by a love for trad music.
So my question is; what's your story? How were you infected ?
It was 1965 and I was packed off for the summer to learn the native tongue in the Donegal Gaeltacht.I was too shy to ask a girl to dance at the first night Ceili so went outside to hide in the darkness where ,to my horror,I was dragged into a car by 3 attractive women in their 30`s.I was taken to a location some miles away and kept prisoner for certain reasons, which need not be explained here...locked in my prison all day the girls put on non-stop recordings of a really good ceili band to hide my yells for help.I managed to escape back to the coláiste in the end but could never get the sound of jigs and reels out of my head,so my love of Irish music was engendered in me from an early age and I still wake up some nights and hear a ceili band in the distance....
A few hundred years AD I heard Barney McKenna on the banjo
and loved the sound so I got one on the HP went to lessons
for 6 months, Times got bad had to give the banjo back some
people might say that was a blessing. But years later my wife
bought one for me as a engagement present she did not
realise what she had let herself in for. After many years of
looking at the banjo in the corner I found a banjo teacher.
I made some friends at the lessons and for the past year or so
we have been having a ball playing at session's. I often
wonder would I be enjoying it today if I had not to give my banjo
back all those years ago.
Nothing instantaneous - no blinding flash. It crept up on me like like middle age and my mortgage and my waistline. I described it to a friend as it being like true love. I distinctly remember disliking squeaky fiddles and boring diddly....but I also found myself drawn to the people and the fun surrounding it.....and then the music revealed itself to me.....and I started to hear and feel its beauty, it's diversity, it's simplicity. And I can only say that it's been like olives, wine, good cheese, dark chocolate and single malt whiskey......none of them I liked when young..... :
I was 14 and studying for an exam while listening to The Stranglers. My dad came in with a tape he'd borrowed from the library and said "Here, you might like this". The song he played was "Alison Gross" and the album was "Original Masters" by Steeleye Span. And on that album were Sligo Maid, The Bride's Favourite, Tansey's Fancy, The Mooncoin Jig, The Hag With The Money, Willie Clancy's and no doubt a few others. Within a year I had seventeen Steeleye albums and had converted several mates to the music. It's all been down hill since then
Was always very fond of the tunes, my mother would have had a tune or two on a tape in the car now and then when I was a kid. But becoming hooked, it took me to the age of 18/19 at university, when friends and flatmates were playing tunes on whistles and fiddles, it was then I realised these wee tunes are part of a bigger picture. Many drunkin student parties with anything from Planxty to Micko Russell to Mike Mc Goldrick blaring from the Hi-fi and the odd tune played live by a wonderful fiddle player from county Leitrim (our student pad was a stange place, lots of trad at the parties with a "if you don't like it you know where the door is" approach. It is amazing how many Heavy Metalers and Grungies were converted to the way of the tunes!) A weekly student session etc.,
Well, thats only half the story really, but you get the idea!
In 1993 i took my first trip to ireland. upon returning i decided to take tin whistle lessons--i'd bought a whistle in doolin and i thought it would a great way to pick up lasses and pass the summer. This was in Chicago and i signed up for lessons at the Old Town of School fo Folk Music. There was this flute and whistle player teaching the calss. Din't know him from adam. His name was Larry Nugent. I remember to this day my first class when larry busted out some tunes on the whistle and my ears popped out of my head and danced a jig on the floor. I didn't pick up any lasses that summer. But the life long romance with irish music had begun...
It was around 1990, and I was in a monthly science fiction writers workshop in Boston. During the time when I drove up, there was a show on WGBH called Celtic Sojourn, hosted by Brian O'Donovan. I had always liked folk music, but over the months, the music I heard on the radio grew on me.
I later gave up the writing thing when the only editor who liked my stuff got laid off, but have stuck with the music.
In 1975 my sister passed away (struck by lightening) and while cleaning our her apartment I found a fiddle. She did not play and I still don't know how it came to be in her posession. After asking all of her friends no one claimed it so I took it home to hang on the wall. After looking at it for several years I thought I should learn to play the darn thing and set off to find a violin teacher. Instead I found a fiddle player from Scotland who was here in Pennsylvania teaching at a local folk studio. I signed up, went for my first lesson and was intorduced to Johnny Cunningham. Yes, that Johnny Cunningham.
I only took lessons from him for a short time before he left the area but the infection was complete. Seems like the entire sequence of events as tragic as it started out was custom made for me to end up playing the fiddle. I can't imagine life without it.
Sometime in the 1980's I went up to the old Folkway in Peterboro, NH and heard Jake Walton play the hurdy-gurdy. The only recordings of that instrument I could find were of Andy Irvine, and those recordings led me to the Uillean pipes. Coincidentally, soon after, a piper and fiddler gave a little concert in Sharon, NH, and when I told them I played a bit of violin, they invited me to their session, a thing I had never heard of before. Infected for life after that.
Some 40 or so years ago we had a hour long bus journey to get to school. One of us had learnt some songs off an LP - Old Dun Cow, Captain Wedderburns Courtship,stuff like that. She taught them to the rest of us and we used to sing them on the bus. We didn't know they were folk music (that was horrible choral arrangements of things like Early One Morning that we 'did' in school music lessons and no fun at all). Later on at college I found that these songs were part of a marvellous heritage of traditional music and I've been involved ever since.
Also a gradual journey starting in 1965- or maybe 1956 if you count when my first accordion appeared.
Raised by trad Polish parents, resisted playing polkas and 'Polish Stomp' Music. Got started on 'Rock'nRoll' but heard people playing acoustic. What a revelation!
Married a McFadden. Frequent readers know family by way of Donegal than Maogh. Moved into a sort of Irish neighborhood a couple of blocks off the Chicago South Side St. Patrick's Day Parade route. Met some musicians claiming Irish heritage and started hammering away Tommy Makem and Republican sorts of stuff on my old PA or as a back up guitar. No slight meant given the significance of that music's origins, but infinite repeats of Rising of the Moon, Colonial Boy and Danny Boy get real old real fast.
Then the enlightenment. Heard a group doing flute, fiddle, a bit of bodhran. Visited Ireland with Herself and heard trad in the south west. Got hooked. Got CD's, went to watch good players. Learned the whistle to start learning the tunes.
Tried to imitate the music on the PA. Close but no cigar. So, I got a button box.
I'm a classically trained... I never thought I'd get into all of this... one day I'm at the liquor store (we have to buy our booze that way in PA) and there's this Irish guitar player/liquor store guy checking me through. He asks if I know a fiddle player... I said "me." When in reality, I never played any ITM or Bluegrass or anything that wasn't in an orchestra setting. He taught me a couple of tunes and then I sat in with their band at a pub. That was it... I quit the orchestras to play with this band... love every minute of it... my only regret is that my father wanted me to get into this stuff when I was a teenager, but it was beneath me then... we could've had some good sessions, he and I (Dad was a banjo player)
For me it was computer game Quake (3D first person shooter) with a little help from Paddy Glackin (bare with me on this one).
In my younger years I started playing the said game on my pc (which basically involves running down passageways shooting anything that moves). What I thought was the backing track to the game was unusual but very suitable & addictive music. I later discovered that the game was just playing a CD (Paddy Glackin's In Full Spate) in the drive which my brother had left there. Well from then on I was hooked, and I've never been able to listen to the tunes on that CD with out felling the urge to whip out my shottie and blow a few heads off.
PS. I'm seeing the doctors next week to review my release date.
Spent many years doing guitar/vocal solo stuff. in various folk clubs. Didn't much care for diddly dee music except in very small doses, or when treated to Fairport/Steeleye styles.
However, on moving to a new area 12 years ago I was asked to fill in for an absent guitarist in a local ceilidh band. Yes, I'm still in that band, along with two of the other original members, and some other, much prettier ones, who have joined us since. I've grown to like the music more and more. I also help host a fortnightly session, which has really expanded my repertoire. Mostly I play, dare I mention it, backing guitar, with occasional solo guitar tunes. Have also dabbled in mandolin and octave mando, but still have a long way to go with these instruments. Hardly sing at all now - probably a good thing!
So I think what held my interest long enough to learn to love the music was the pleasure of being in a fun band with some good players who are also really nice people.
I attended a musical saw festival (!) in Santa Cruz in 1979, and met a man who builds and plays hammered dulcimers, and especially does Irish stuff. I was hooked. I didn't take up the dulcimer, but had recently taken up the fiddle, and I was off and running.
Terry
My dad used to play his Callowglass Ceilidh Band records on Sunday morning after mass. Occasionally he would entertain us with a few tunes on the tinwhistle or mouth organ until we all decided we knew better and only wanted pop music. But that little seed grew and grem until as an adult I realised what a wonderful gift he had bestowed.
I was forcibly injected in the shoulder at 14 by a vindictive school nurse. There was a 5 year incubation period. When I was 19, I was gripped with a sudden urge to play the mandolin that my mother bought a couple of years earlier in a junk shop (with a view to learning to play it herself). I've been searching for a cure ever since.
For me, it was a local ballad session to celebrate my Da's 50 th birthday. A couple of local musicians and singers gathered and had a session, which was mainly songs. Among the set up was a banjo player. That was the first time i heard a banjo live, or maybe at all. Amazing. I was 10 or 11 then.
A couple of years later i got hooked on the dubliners and, once again, the banjo sound broke through everything else, even Luke Kelly's voice.
There was something there, that sound, that made me realise i have a deep interest in this. But it was still mainly ballads i was listening to.
Anyway, long story short, for my 18th birthday i got a banjo and started learning, first with a teacher for a few lessons, then by ear from CDs.
Gradually, me ears were opened to the sounds of reels and jigs on the dubs CDs, leading me to venture out and gather more tunes.
After a couple of years wasted, i am now fully commited to trad. It has captured me and wont let go.
I was infected by Steeleye Span as well. "Below the Salt" in 1976. Peter Knight's was the first Irish style fiddling I'd ever heard. Maddy Prior's voice was (and is) amazing and the old songs weren't like anything I'd heard before. I was only 16 so it was a life changing experience for me. Up to that point I'd pretty much only listened to The Beatles and Bowie. Steeleye led me to Planxty and the Bothy Band and it all snowballed from there.
When I began to be able to play the tunes off the Steeleye Span albums, it was a big milestone for me Just picked up Dowd's Favorite and the Willy Clancy/Paddy Clancy set recently.
One drunken night in the Baggot Inn stumbled into A Paul Brady Andy Irvine Gig. Blown away with the music bought a mandolin the week after.Played it for six months without much sucess.It died under a truck on the grand canal in a motor cycle accident I lived on.I didnt get back to playing for over twenty years.A trip to tax the car one day I was too late for there 4pm closing but not to late to buy a cheap bouzouki in Waltons with the money for the tax.Now I was infected beyond cure have moved on to a Mandola as I found Melody playing didnt really suit Bouzouki IMO.Cant get enough tunes and sessions now
Scottish music on holiday there when I was eleven. Gilbert and Sullivan songs and music soon after. The Incredible String Band at public school. At Oxford, heard records of Billy Pigg, The High Level Ranters and then Irish music - The Dubliners, John Doonan, Finbar Furey, one or two good samplers featuring people like Margaret Barry and Michael Gorman. Went to folk clubs and sessions, took it from there. The small group of people I knocked around with all played something; I was anxious to do likewise, so got a whistle.
It happened gradually for me. As a child, I liked whatever bits and pieces of American/English/Irish/whatever folk music I heard and,by the time I was 17 or 18, I was actively seeking out that stuff, even while playing in rock & roll bands. Before the 1970's, it was hard to find many recordings of non-American folk music, but my university library had a modest collection. It was slim pickings until eventually I heard Peter Knight with Steeleye and then The Chieftains and Boys of the Lough. After that, it was a blur and I was badly infected.
I wonder how many people were infected by Peter Knight.
I got infected after my great-grandfather gave me his set of pipes for my seventy-fifth birthday, must be a quarter of a century ago now. Unfortunately the bellows contained spores of a virulent strain of Clostridium botulinum, whose toxin contained a very powerful neurotoxic component. After ingestion of the spores, this had the effect of inducing apoptosis in all the neurons in my lateral geniculate nucleus leading ocular dysfunction and consequent blindness, so the only thing left to do was to learn the pipes. However I soon found that my blindness made it impossible for me to read music or read anything, even after I had purchased a book called "Teach Yourself To Read". So it was back to the drawing board, but I found that too hard to bash my head against. Fraught with anguish and anger and self-pity, I took to annoying my neighbours and drinkers in my local pub by playing badly on the whistle then flute then box. Oh, I nearly forgot - I had the misfortune to hear Planxty way back in the 70's and that was bad but it has been downhill ever since.
My father played abit on flute and whistle and I remember him playing old 78's of Jimmy Shand and other ceili bands etc. and then the Dubliners music came into the house and I was chomping at the bit to get a banjo and learn to play.
At the age of 16 I attended college in Befast and shared digs with a bunch of older guys who were up at The Ranch. Three of them played in a folk band and they introduced me to the likes of Fairport Convention, Dubonnet wine in stew, myfirst pint in a bar .......I've been hooked ever since
Well being a Polack from New Jersey it tooks three trips to Ireland (97 02, 03) where I listened to some sessions in the West (Dingle-Town, Galway). But what really did it was an Irish Pub 'round the corner from my digs when I moved to San Francisco with a good sesh. Dug some sessions at the Plough and Stars too, where I had occasion to meet the lovely and talented Zina Lee (whose name comes up frequently in archived discussions). I come from more of a jazz/blues guitar background, but have taken up both the mandolin and tin whistle (and used those on jazz gigs, too, with varying degrees of success) insofar as one guitar at a session seems more than enough.
I'm impressed that there are irish "polkas". I grew up having polka recordings played *ad nasuem* by my dear departed parents, but now, damn it, you irish have me playing polkas for the first time in my life. Now I want to do a all-irish-polka recording entitled "Music from County Bratislava". That is, after I get jigs and reels down solidly.
Peter Knight,Maddy Prior & Steeleye Span again!! I can't remember how I came to be infected with ITM ( and celtic generally) but their album in 1973 aggravated it badly: it was a compilation of 2 albums, and on special, bought on spec. Had the Morning Dew, after Dowd's Favourite on it. and 10 pound float too, Went to a bush dance and a scots birthday bash in 1975/6-this really established the condition, also the Irish Whistle Classes in Adelaide for a while in 77-8 when I could get to Adelaide, and it has been with me in varying degrees ever since. Plus I got given some really great cassette tapes to listen to-Triona, Planxty,Chieftains, all sorts.
I have never developed resistance and find I am becoming increasingly susceptible to the infection as I age. Even find I actively seeking out further attacks.
I hope to be contagious one day.
A leprchaun bit me. SERIOUSLY! He, another friend and I now play ITM together.
Okay, true story. My heart was always in folk music. I played all kinds of folk music in a after school fiddle group in high school.. Some irish, some american, some french canadian, cajun..etc..When I was about 19 or 20, I my friends Matt and Matt in college (even though we all went to the same highschool. I remember them but they don't seem to remember me :P ) and they had always tried to play ITM. One of the Matts asked me to play with them and that's how I started my ITM life. I fell in love with it and we've been playing together for about 6 years. Our first groups that we listened to religiously were Altan, Chieftans, Boiled in Lead :P, Danu and Old Blind Dogs. We would also listen to tape recordings of the Simply Folk hour on NPR.
in retrospect, i see there is something in my dna or neurons that is hard-wired to the modal minor, but i hadn't discovered this due to the fact that i hadn't been around those sounds enough for the receptors to be activated. finally, living in san francisco, i saw an alan lomax documentary on kentucky mountain music. it was instantaneous, like a switch going on. i had to hear more, i had to learn about it, i had to play it. that took me to galax/roundpeak-style clawhammer banjo, which i was learning at gryphon stringed instruments in palo alto. from there, i wanted to go to fiddle. while struggling with fiddle, i encountered itm---around that time there was a martin hayes cover story in "fiddler," a magazine involving some gryphon folks. the ghostly modalities of east clare/east galway did it. fiddle didn't work out for me (bowing-hand tendonitis), i moved to box, quit a couple of times and then got into the groove and it's now a life passion. it's been about five total years with box, i recently began on concertina....i still love roundpeak oldtime music, but i am crazy for itm, especially oldstyle clare/south-east galway stuff.....
Their fiddler Peter Knight was and presumably remains a pretty good Irish-style fiddler. He learned classical as a boy and at The Royal Academy Of Music, then (inspired by Coleman recordings) played ITM in sessions in the late 60s before joining Steeleye Span. English fiddlers of his standard were not two a penny round 1970!
I am so old I remember Peter Knight, Bob Johnson, Tim Hart, Maddy Prior, Martin Carthy, Dave Swarbrick, and Sandy Dennt, from before Steeleye, Fairport, etc..
Pete and Bob used to play at the song session after the Tuesday night guitar classes at Cecil Sharpe House, and then down in the Engineer for the rest of the evening. Tim and Maddy used to run St Albans folk club, Carthy and Swarbrick were everywhere, I remember Sandy turning up with a french guitar-player to do a gig at The Enterprise opposite Chalk Farm station, her explanations for his presence were a little confused, and we came to a general conclusion as to what they had been up to before they turned up at the club....oh, I feel so old.....
I also believe that Peter Knights' father ran Boreham Wood folk club at one time....
I also believe that it was Peter's irish influences in his playing that was one of the reasons Ashley Hutchings went off to try a more english-based band; there was much less strongly styled english music about then, and it required a positive effort to find it and work with it.
I'm not sure where I got infected, but it was a very long time ago....
I suppose at one time, I used to like Steeleye Span as well - and I definitely liked Sandy Denny's voice, with Fairport. It's just I never thought of either of those bands - or that group of artists, for that matter - as remotely Irish, even when they might play the occasional Irish tune. That's why I was puzzled.
I got into Irish music round about the same time I got into other folk music - around the late sixties. But I never really associated the two things. They *should* have been associated, of course, but I saw them as completely separate largely *because* of bands like Steeleye and Fairport who were creating something new and, as I saw it and still see it, distinctively English.
Steeley Span again- for my husband who heard "London is a Great Big Place" (OK that has to be English!) on the radio over 25 years ago and sought out the group responsible.
A bit of a cliche really, but our first date ended on a Manly ferry trip on Sydney Harbour, and for some reason we were singing and got onto "My Johnny was a Shoemaker" in harmony, discovered a common interest in folk music and Steeleye Span, discovered that we had INTERLOCKING record collections of their albums, got home early next morning, and he hasn't sung with me since!
Went to Ireland as boy (about 13 years old) with my Mom, who was anxious to sow her roots. Left with a tourist 's souvenier...a whistle and a Francis McPeake tutor combination.
Fate sneezed and being rundown at the time, I came down with the dreaded lurgy, big time. Followed me half a world away from initial infection and I never truly got rid of it. Flares up in good times and bad, actually pretty well every time it rains (which isn't all that often) and whenever the sun shines (pretty well all the time). Lies in wait in the breeze, the landscape particularly for some reason around water and even on starry or moonlit nights. Bugs me travelling in the car or sitting at home in the evenings. A vital ingredient of the very air I breathe. Argh choo!
How were YOU INFECTED???
How were YOU INFECTED???
In the year of our lord 1989 when I was only a pup, I was woken in the middle of the night by a roaring session. I was 8 and it was my parents 25th wedding anniversary and was about 2 in the morning. I got out of bed and followed the noise and found 90% Of the parish set dancing on the front lawn and the road outside while my neighbors played the most exciting reels jigs and hornpipes on accordions, fiddles, whistles, guitars and bodhran's. Being only 9 and never having frequented the local pub sessions, the only time I had heard these tunes before was my dad lilting or whistling them. I spent the rest of the night until the sun came up, enthralled by the pure energy and excitement of the music. I was amazed and invigorated. Listening to the music and laughing and watching the dancing is a memory I’ll have for ever. It was from that night on that I was "infected" by a love for trad music.
So my question is; what's your story? How were you infected ?
# Posted on February 23rd 2007 by session savage
Re: How were YOU INFECTED???
It was 1965 and I was packed off for the summer to learn the native tongue in the Donegal Gaeltacht.I was too shy to ask a girl to dance at the first night Ceili so went outside to hide in the darkness where ,to my horror,I was dragged into a car by 3 attractive women in their 30`s.I was taken to a location some miles away and kept prisoner for certain reasons, which need not be explained here...locked in my prison all day the girls put on non-stop recordings of a really good ceili band to hide my yells for help.I managed to escape back to the coláiste in the end but could never get the sound of jigs and reels out of my head,so my love of Irish music was engendered in me from an early age and I still wake up some nights and hear a ceili band in the distance....
# Posted on February 23rd 2007 by cos
Re: How were YOU INFECTED???
A few hundred years AD I heard Barney McKenna on the banjo
and loved the sound so I got one on the HP went to lessons
for 6 months, Times got bad had to give the banjo back some
people might say that was a blessing. But years later my wife
bought one for me as a engagement present she did not
realise what she had let herself in for. After many years of
looking at the banjo in the corner I found a banjo teacher.
I made some friends at the lessons and for the past year or so
we have been having a ball playing at session's. I often
wonder would I be enjoying it today if I had not to give my banjo
back all those years ago.
# Posted on February 23rd 2007 by celtic strings
Re: How were YOU INFECTED???
Nothing instantaneous - no blinding flash. It crept up on me like like middle age and my mortgage and my waistline. I described it to a friend as it being like true love. I distinctly remember disliking squeaky fiddles and boring diddly....but I also found myself drawn to the people and the fun surrounding it.....and then the music revealed itself to me.....and I started to hear and feel its beauty, it's diversity, it's simplicity. And I can only say that it's been like olives, wine, good cheese, dark chocolate and single malt whiskey......none of them I liked when young..... :
# Posted on February 23rd 2007 by TheCurvyFiddle
Re: How were YOU INFECTED???
I was 14 and studying for an exam while listening to The Stranglers. My dad came in with a tape he'd borrowed from the library and said "Here, you might like this". The song he played was "Alison Gross" and the album was "Original Masters" by Steeleye Span. And on that album were Sligo Maid, The Bride's Favourite, Tansey's Fancy, The Mooncoin Jig, The Hag With The Money, Willie Clancy's and no doubt a few others. Within a year I had seventeen Steeleye albums and had converted several mates to the music. It's all been down hill since then
# Posted on February 23rd 2007 by bc_box_player
Re: How were YOU INFECTED???
Was always very fond of the tunes, my mother would have had a tune or two on a tape in the car now and then when I was a kid. But becoming hooked, it took me to the age of 18/19 at university, when friends and flatmates were playing tunes on whistles and fiddles, it was then I realised these wee tunes are part of a bigger picture. Many drunkin student parties with anything from Planxty to Micko Russell to Mike Mc Goldrick blaring from the Hi-fi and the odd tune played live by a wonderful fiddle player from county Leitrim (our student pad was a stange place, lots of trad at the parties with a "if you don't like it you know where the door is" approach. It is amazing how many Heavy Metalers and Grungies were converted to the way of the tunes!) A weekly student session etc.,
Well, thats only half the story really, but you get the idea!
# Posted on February 23rd 2007 by proinsiasrua
Re: How were YOU INFECTED???
In 1993 i took my first trip to ireland. upon returning i decided to take tin whistle lessons--i'd bought a whistle in doolin and i thought it would a great way to pick up lasses and pass the summer. This was in Chicago and i signed up for lessons at the Old Town of School fo Folk Music. There was this flute and whistle player teaching the calss. Din't know him from adam. His name was Larry Nugent. I remember to this day my first class when larry busted out some tunes on the whistle and my ears popped out of my head and danced a jig on the floor. I didn't pick up any lasses that summer. But the life long romance with irish music had begun...
# Posted on February 23rd 2007 by Brendan
Re: How were YOU INFECTED???
It was around 1990, and I was in a monthly science fiction writers workshop in Boston. During the time when I drove up, there was a show on WGBH called Celtic Sojourn, hosted by Brian O'Donovan. I had always liked folk music, but over the months, the music I heard on the radio grew on me.
I later gave up the writing thing when the only editor who liked my stuff got laid off, but have stuck with the music.
# Posted on February 23rd 2007 by AlBrown
Re: How were YOU INFECTED???
In 1975 my sister passed away (struck by lightening) and while cleaning our her apartment I found a fiddle. She did not play and I still don't know how it came to be in her posession. After asking all of her friends no one claimed it so I took it home to hang on the wall. After looking at it for several years I thought I should learn to play the darn thing and set off to find a violin teacher. Instead I found a fiddle player from Scotland who was here in Pennsylvania teaching at a local folk studio. I signed up, went for my first lesson and was intorduced to Johnny Cunningham. Yes, that Johnny Cunningham.
I only took lessons from him for a short time before he left the area but the infection was complete. Seems like the entire sequence of events as tragic as it started out was custom made for me to end up playing the fiddle. I can't imagine life without it.
Mary
# Posted on February 23rd 2007 by Antikhntr
Re: How were YOU INFECTED???
Sometime in the 1980's I went up to the old Folkway in Peterboro, NH and heard Jake Walton play the hurdy-gurdy. The only recordings of that instrument I could find were of Andy Irvine, and those recordings led me to the Uillean pipes. Coincidentally, soon after, a piper and fiddler gave a little concert in Sharon, NH, and when I told them I played a bit of violin, they invited me to their session, a thing I had never heard of before. Infected for life after that.
# Posted on February 23rd 2007 by fiddlercjp
Re: How were YOU INFECTED???
Some 40 or so years ago we had a hour long bus journey to get to school. One of us had learnt some songs off an LP - Old Dun Cow, Captain Wedderburns Courtship,stuff like that. She taught them to the rest of us and we used to sing them on the bus. We didn't know they were folk music (that was horrible choral arrangements of things like Early One Morning that we 'did' in school music lessons and no fun at all). Later on at college I found that these songs were part of a marvellous heritage of traditional music and I've been involved ever since.
# Posted on February 23rd 2007 by c.g.
Re: How were YOU INFECTED???
Also a gradual journey starting in 1965- or maybe 1956 if you count when my first accordion appeared.
Raised by trad Polish parents, resisted playing polkas and 'Polish Stomp' Music. Got started on 'Rock'nRoll' but heard people playing acoustic. What a revelation!
Married a McFadden. Frequent readers know family by way of Donegal than Maogh. Moved into a sort of Irish neighborhood a couple of blocks off the Chicago South Side St. Patrick's Day Parade route. Met some musicians claiming Irish heritage and started hammering away Tommy Makem and Republican sorts of stuff on my old PA or as a back up guitar. No slight meant given the significance of that music's origins, but infinite repeats of Rising of the Moon, Colonial Boy and Danny Boy get real old real fast.
Then the enlightenment. Heard a group doing flute, fiddle, a bit of bodhran. Visited Ireland with Herself and heard trad in the south west. Got hooked. Got CD's, went to watch good players. Learned the whistle to start learning the tunes.
Tried to imitate the music on the PA. Close but no cigar. So, I got a button box.
# Posted on February 23rd 2007 by zippydw
Re: How were YOU INFECTED???
I'm a classically trained... I never thought I'd get into all of this... one day I'm at the liquor store (we have to buy our booze that way in PA) and there's this Irish guitar player/liquor store guy checking me through. He asks if I know a fiddle player... I said "me." When in reality, I never played any ITM or Bluegrass or anything that wasn't in an orchestra setting. He taught me a couple of tunes and then I sat in with their band at a pub. That was it... I quit the orchestras to play with this band... love every minute of it... my only regret is that my father wanted me to get into this stuff when I was a teenager, but it was beneath me then... we could've had some good sessions, he and I (Dad was a banjo player)
# Posted on February 23rd 2007 by pastrings
Re: How were YOU INFECTED???
For me it was computer game Quake (3D first person shooter) with a little help from Paddy Glackin (bare with me on this one).
In my younger years I started playing the said game on my pc (which basically involves running down passageways shooting anything that moves). What I thought was the backing track to the game was unusual but very suitable & addictive music. I later discovered that the game was just playing a CD (Paddy Glackin's In Full Spate) in the drive which my brother had left there. Well from then on I was hooked, and I've never been able to listen to the tunes on that CD with out felling the urge to whip out my shottie and blow a few heads off.
PS. I'm seeing the doctors next week to review my release date.
# Posted on February 23rd 2007 by farmer barleymow
Re: How were YOU INFECTED???
LOL farmer
# Posted on February 23rd 2007 by session savage
Re: How were YOU INFECTED???
Spent many years doing guitar/vocal solo stuff. in various folk clubs. Didn't much care for diddly dee music except in very small doses, or when treated to Fairport/Steeleye styles.
However, on moving to a new area 12 years ago I was asked to fill in for an absent guitarist in a local ceilidh band. Yes, I'm still in that band, along with two of the other original members, and some other, much prettier ones, who have joined us since. I've grown to like the music more and more. I also help host a fortnightly session, which has really expanded my repertoire. Mostly I play, dare I mention it, backing guitar, with occasional solo guitar tunes. Have also dabbled in mandolin and octave mando, but still have a long way to go with these instruments. Hardly sing at all now - probably a good thing!
So I think what held my interest long enough to learn to love the music was the pleasure of being in a fun band with some good players who are also really nice people.
Bye now
# Posted on February 23rd 2007 by ocarolan
Re: How were YOU INFECTED???
Grew up listening to old Bothy Band records, and "Thistle and Shamrock," on NPR. Didn't start playing (or trying to at least) until recently.
# Posted on February 23rd 2007 by North Light
Re: How were YOU INFECTED???
I attended a musical saw festival (!) in Santa Cruz in 1979, and met a man who builds and plays hammered dulcimers, and especially does Irish stuff. I was hooked. I didn't take up the dulcimer, but had recently taken up the fiddle, and I was off and running.
Terry
# Posted on February 23rd 2007 by twildman
Re: How were YOU INFECTED???
My dad used to play his Callowglass Ceilidh Band records on Sunday morning after mass. Occasionally he would entertain us with a few tunes on the tinwhistle or mouth organ until we all decided we knew better and only wanted pop music. But that little seed grew and grem until as an adult I realised what a wonderful gift he had bestowed.
# Posted on February 23rd 2007 by rochson
Re: How were YOU INFECTED???
I was forcibly injected in the shoulder at 14 by a vindictive school nurse. There was a 5 year incubation period. When I was 19, I was gripped with a sudden urge to play the mandolin that my mother bought a couple of years earlier in a junk shop (with a view to learning to play it herself). I've been searching for a cure ever since.
# Posted on February 23rd 2007 by ragaman
Re: How were YOU INFECTED???
For me, it was a local ballad session to celebrate my Da's 50 th birthday. A couple of local musicians and singers gathered and had a session, which was mainly songs. Among the set up was a banjo player. That was the first time i heard a banjo live, or maybe at all. Amazing. I was 10 or 11 then.
A couple of years later i got hooked on the dubliners and, once again, the banjo sound broke through everything else, even Luke Kelly's voice.
There was something there, that sound, that made me realise i have a deep interest in this. But it was still mainly ballads i was listening to.
Anyway, long story short, for my 18th birthday i got a banjo and started learning, first with a teacher for a few lessons, then by ear from CDs.
Gradually, me ears were opened to the sounds of reels and jigs on the dubs CDs, leading me to venture out and gather more tunes.
After a couple of years wasted, i am now fully commited to trad. It has captured me and wont let go.
# Posted on February 23rd 2007 by copo24
Re: How were YOU INFECTED???
I was infected by Steeleye Span as well. "Below the Salt" in 1976. Peter Knight's was the first Irish style fiddling I'd ever heard. Maddy Prior's voice was (and is) amazing and the old songs weren't like anything I'd heard before. I was only 16 so it was a life changing experience for me. Up to that point I'd pretty much only listened to The Beatles and Bowie. Steeleye led me to Planxty and the Bothy Band and it all snowballed from there.
When I began to be able to play the tunes off the Steeleye Span albums, it was a big milestone for me
Just picked up Dowd's Favorite and the Willy Clancy/Paddy Clancy set recently.
# Posted on February 23rd 2007 by soft black stars
Re: How were YOU INFECTED???
One drunken night in the Baggot Inn stumbled into A Paul Brady Andy Irvine Gig. Blown away with the music bought a mandolin the week after.Played it for six months without much sucess.It died under a truck on the grand canal in a motor cycle accident I lived on.I didnt get back to playing for over twenty years.A trip to tax the car one day I was too late for there 4pm closing but not to late to buy a cheap bouzouki in Waltons with the money for the tax.Now I was infected beyond cure have moved on to a Mandola as I found Melody playing didnt really suit Bouzouki IMO
.Cant get enough tunes and sessions now
# Posted on February 23rd 2007 by Dphil
Re: How were YOU INFECTED???
Scottish music on holiday there when I was eleven. Gilbert and Sullivan songs and music soon after. The Incredible String Band at public school. At Oxford, heard records of Billy Pigg, The High Level Ranters and then Irish music - The Dubliners, John Doonan, Finbar Furey, one or two good samplers featuring people like Margaret Barry and Michael Gorman. Went to folk clubs and sessions, took it from there. The small group of people I knocked around with all played something; I was anxious to do likewise, so got a whistle.
# Posted on February 23rd 2007 by nicholas
Re: How were YOU INFECTED???
It happened gradually for me. As a child, I liked whatever bits and pieces of American/English/Irish/whatever folk music I heard and,by the time I was 17 or 18, I was actively seeking out that stuff, even while playing in rock & roll bands. Before the 1970's, it was hard to find many recordings of non-American folk music, but my university library had a modest collection. It was slim pickings until eventually I heard Peter Knight with Steeleye and then The Chieftains and Boys of the Lough. After that, it was a blur and I was badly infected.
I wonder how many people were infected by Peter Knight.
# Posted on February 24th 2007 by Bob himself
Re: How were YOU INFECTED???
I got infected after my great-grandfather gave me his set of pipes for my seventy-fifth birthday, must be a quarter of a century ago now. Unfortunately the bellows contained spores of a virulent strain of Clostridium botulinum, whose toxin contained a very powerful neurotoxic component. After ingestion of the spores, this had the effect of inducing apoptosis in all the neurons in my lateral geniculate nucleus leading ocular dysfunction and consequent blindness, so the only thing left to do was to learn the pipes. However I soon found that my blindness made it impossible for me to read music or read anything, even after I had purchased a book called "Teach Yourself To Read". So it was back to the drawing board, but I found that too hard to bash my head against. Fraught with anguish and anger and self-pity, I took to annoying my neighbours and drinkers in my local pub by playing badly on the whistle then flute then box. Oh, I nearly forgot - I had the misfortune to hear Planxty way back in the 70's and that was bad but it has been downhill ever since.
# Posted on February 24th 2007 by Alf Tupper
Re: How were YOU INFECTED???
My father played abit on flute and whistle and I remember him playing old 78's of Jimmy Shand and other ceili bands etc. and then the Dubliners music came into the house and I was chomping at the bit to get a banjo and learn to play.
At the age of 16 I attended college in Befast and shared digs with a bunch of older guys who were up at The Ranch. Three of them played in a folk band and they introduced me to the likes of Fairport Convention, Dubonnet wine in stew, myfirst pint in a bar .......I've been hooked ever since
# Posted on February 24th 2007 by Strathfoyle
Re: How were YOU INFECTED???
Well being a Polack from New Jersey it tooks three trips to Ireland (97 02, 03) where I listened to some sessions in the West (Dingle-Town, Galway). But what really did it was an Irish Pub 'round the corner from my digs when I moved to San Francisco with a good sesh. Dug some sessions at the Plough and Stars too, where I had occasion to meet the lovely and talented Zina Lee (whose name comes up frequently in archived discussions). I come from more of a jazz/blues guitar background, but have taken up both the mandolin and tin whistle (and used those on jazz gigs, too, with varying degrees of success) insofar as one guitar at a session seems more than enough.
I'm impressed that there are irish "polkas". I grew up having polka recordings played *ad nasuem* by my dear departed parents, but now, damn it, you irish have me playing polkas for the first time in my life. Now I want to do a all-irish-polka recording entitled "Music from County Bratislava". That is, after I get jigs and reels down solidly.
# Posted on February 24th 2007 by buskerjohn
Re: How were YOU INFECTED???
I refuse to say, but the treatment was 100% successful.
# Posted on February 24th 2007 by lazyhound
Re: How were YOU INFECTED???
Peter Knight,Maddy Prior & Steeleye Span again!! I can't remember how I came to be infected with ITM ( and celtic generally) but their album in 1973 aggravated it badly: it was a compilation of 2 albums, and on special, bought on spec. Had the Morning Dew, after Dowd's Favourite on it. and 10 pound float too, Went to a bush dance and a scots birthday bash in 1975/6-this really established the condition, also the Irish Whistle Classes in Adelaide for a while in 77-8 when I could get to Adelaide, and it has been with me in varying degrees ever since. Plus I got given some really great cassette tapes to listen to-Triona, Planxty,Chieftains, all sorts.
I have never developed resistance and find I am becoming increasingly susceptible to the infection as I age. Even find I actively seeking out further attacks.
I hope to be contagious one day.
# Posted on February 24th 2007 by mrs.b
Re: How were YOU INFECTED???
A leprchaun bit me. SERIOUSLY! He, another friend and I now play ITM together.
Okay, true story. My heart was always in folk music. I played all kinds of folk music in a after school fiddle group in high school.. Some irish, some american, some french canadian, cajun..etc..When I was about 19 or 20, I my friends Matt and Matt in college (even though we all went to the same highschool. I remember them but they don't seem to remember me :P ) and they had always tried to play ITM. One of the Matts asked me to play with them and that's how I started my ITM life. I fell in love with it and we've been playing together for about 6 years. Our first groups that we listened to religiously were Altan, Chieftans, Boiled in Lead :P, Danu and Old Blind Dogs. We would also listen to tape recordings of the Simply Folk hour on NPR.
# Posted on February 24th 2007 by *Misha*
Re: How were YOU INFECTED???
in retrospect, i see there is something in my dna or neurons that is hard-wired to the modal minor, but i hadn't discovered this due to the fact that i hadn't been around those sounds enough for the receptors to be activated. finally, living in san francisco, i saw an alan lomax documentary on kentucky mountain music. it was instantaneous, like a switch going on. i had to hear more, i had to learn about it, i had to play it. that took me to galax/roundpeak-style clawhammer banjo, which i was learning at gryphon stringed instruments in palo alto. from there, i wanted to go to fiddle. while struggling with fiddle, i encountered itm---around that time there was a martin hayes cover story in "fiddler," a magazine involving some gryphon folks. the ghostly modalities of east clare/east galway did it. fiddle didn't work out for me (bowing-hand tendonitis), i moved to box, quit a couple of times and then got into the groove and it's now a life passion. it's been about five total years with box, i recently began on concertina....i still love roundpeak oldtime music, but i am crazy for itm, especially oldstyle clare/south-east galway stuff.....
# Posted on February 24th 2007 by ceemonster
Re: How were YOU INFECTED???
Steeleye Span for me too.
I guess my Irish genes started dancing around to it..... or some past life memory more likely.
# Posted on February 24th 2007 by morning star
Re: How were YOU INFECTED???
I don't understand the connection between Steeleye Span and Irish music. Could someone explain?
# Posted on February 24th 2007 by benhall.1
Re: How were YOU INFECTED???
Their fiddler Peter Knight was and presumably remains a pretty good Irish-style fiddler. He learned classical as a boy and at The Royal Academy Of Music, then (inspired by Coleman recordings) played ITM in sessions in the late 60s before joining Steeleye Span. English fiddlers of his standard were not two a penny round 1970!
# Posted on February 24th 2007 by nicholas
Re: How were YOU INFECTED???
I am so old I remember Peter Knight, Bob Johnson, Tim Hart, Maddy Prior, Martin Carthy, Dave Swarbrick, and Sandy Dennt, from before Steeleye, Fairport, etc..
Pete and Bob used to play at the song session after the Tuesday night guitar classes at Cecil Sharpe House, and then down in the Engineer for the rest of the evening. Tim and Maddy used to run St Albans folk club, Carthy and Swarbrick were everywhere, I remember Sandy turning up with a french guitar-player to do a gig at The Enterprise opposite Chalk Farm station, her explanations for his presence were a little confused, and we came to a general conclusion as to what they had been up to before they turned up at the club....oh, I feel so old.....
I also believe that Peter Knights' father ran Boreham Wood folk club at one time....
I also believe that it was Peter's irish influences in his playing that was one of the reasons Ashley Hutchings went off to try a more english-based band; there was much less strongly styled english music about then, and it required a positive effort to find it and work with it.
I'm not sure where I got infected, but it was a very long time ago....
# Posted on February 24th 2007 by Guernsey Pete
Re: How were YOU INFECTED???
Sandy Dennt....( sic ).
# Posted on February 24th 2007 by Guernsey Pete
Re: How were YOU INFECTED???
I suppose at one time, I used to like Steeleye Span as well - and I definitely liked Sandy Denny's voice, with Fairport. It's just I never thought of either of those bands - or that group of artists, for that matter - as remotely Irish, even when they might play the occasional Irish tune. That's why I was puzzled.
I got into Irish music round about the same time I got into other folk music - around the late sixties. But I never really associated the two things. They *should* have been associated, of course, but I saw them as completely separate largely *because* of bands like Steeleye and Fairport who were creating something new and, as I saw it and still see it, distinctively English.
# Posted on February 24th 2007 by benhall.1
Re: How were YOU INFECTED???
Steeley Span again- for my husband who heard "London is a Great Big Place" (OK that has to be English!) on the radio over 25 years ago and sought out the group responsible.
A bit of a cliche really, but our first date ended on a Manly ferry trip on Sydney Harbour, and for some reason we were singing and got onto "My Johnny was a Shoemaker" in harmony, discovered a common interest in folk music and Steeleye Span, discovered that we had INTERLOCKING record collections of their albums, got home early next morning, and he hasn't sung with me since!
# Posted on February 24th 2007 by mrs.b
Re: How were YOU INFECTED???
"I got infected after my great-grandfather gave me his set of pipes for my seventy-fifth birthday, must be a quarter of a century ago now."
But Danny, I had you down as a man of 80! There must be something in those Clostridium spores.
# Posted on February 24th 2007 by ragaman
Re: How were YOU INFECTED???
Went to Ireland as boy (about 13 years old) with my Mom, who was anxious to sow her roots. Left with a tourist 's souvenier...a whistle and a Francis McPeake tutor combination.
# Posted on February 24th 2007 by Pete D
Re: How were YOU INFECTED???
Infested more like!
Did any of ye ever see a Corncrake in a Tree?
# Posted on February 24th 2007 by Schlongbow
Re: How were YOU INFECTED???
Thanks spoon - I know, I don't look a day older than ninety. Must be the dearth of brain cells due to the botulinum spores.
# Posted on February 25th 2007 by Alf Tupper
Re: How were YOU INFECTED???
Fate sneezed and being rundown at the time, I came down with the dreaded lurgy, big time. Followed me half a world away from initial infection and I never truly got rid of it. Flares up in good times and bad, actually pretty well every time it rains (which isn't all that often) and whenever the sun shines (pretty well all the time). Lies in wait in the breeze, the landscape particularly for some reason around water and even on starry or moonlit nights. Bugs me travelling in the car or sitting at home in the evenings. A vital ingredient of the very air I breathe. Argh choo!
# Posted on February 25th 2007 by Clear Drops
PS: Couldn't get rid of it even if I wanted to.
# Posted on February 25th 2007 by Clear Drops