Wow.. Its great to be back among the elite of Irish music.. Andy Pandy I think you might have helped me and I thank you in advance if so. Ben ..you have not helped me.
I looked at the clip. Dodgy audience at the oireachtais in 1994. Cooney is a great man and had a lot of silent prejudice to put up with before he was accepted as a changing force within the tradition. However the reason I posed the question is that I cant figure what tuning he uses even when i am looking at him!
BegF (& others) would know more about that than I do.
Did you read the comment by BegF regarding what he thinks is the tuning Steve Cooney uses? There are also comments saying Cooney has changed his tuning.
Strange place this. I ask a fairly straightforward question that should have as its answer ...dropped d..standard or dadgad. I get shown links that dont answer the question and then some genius googles the question and there is still no definitive answer. Maybe I was never meant to know.
Right or wrong this is the most conclusive answer either of us have found ~
Re: Standard tuning
DGADAE I think - worth a try.
Posted on July 5th 2005 by BegF
It may not be right, but what else do you have?
I'm almost sure he's using DADGBE in this : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xInuesYrUPA
the capo 3 putting him in F.
And also in this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=McsaezPtsRI
However, many guitarists using Dropped D would often use standard as well. In my own case I use mostly standard, but also Open D and Open A, and very occasionally Dropped D. My main dislike of Dropped D for accompaniment are the adjustments needed to finger G, A, and E Minor chords. The advantage is you get a full D Chord with low D bass.
Tony, I've had a glimpse and I'm 99% sure that on the first link you've provided Steve C. is playing double-drop D. I can't make out anything of the second one visually but to my ear, as well as judging by the fact that Steve is Jim Murray's teacher and sound inspiration (and Jim Murray definitely plays in double-drop D) makes my bet on this tuning more than probable.
On this clip, to my best observation, Tim E. plays in double-drop D.
A few years ago I spent two days with Tim exchanging guitar tips and he was playing double drop D; but at that time he was also messing around with other tunings.
I don't have any documents for that, just word of mouth - so if I'm wrong, my apologies.
Double drop d - used for sure by Jim Murray and Donogh Hennessy. I play it a bit myself and was judging from the sound and chord shapes. You're free to disbelieve me
its widly said that he did, but jim has said himself that everyone thinks cooney thought him, but he didnt, he only encouraged him to play nylon string guitar, it was one of his teachers at school who was a great guitar player that used to give him lessons.
He might not have formally taught him but his style is that of Cooney and Cooney formulated this music originally and he was a total complete original and still is. Edey is also a product of the Cooney school but his sheer enthusiasm and downright joy in playing as well as his incredible knowledge of the instrument sets him up there with the Masters.
And also, below, is an article about Steve which I wrote for fRoots magazine almost a decade ago. My evil editor's eye spots many things which I wouldn't write now, so, please, take this in the spirit it was intended back in 2002. 'Accordeonist', by the way, is the fRoots preferred spelling and much of the personal information is out of date, but I still feel this piece captures Steve's enthusiasm. I'm not sure what happened to the FACE projects.
________________________________________________
It’s not often that a musician sees his career laid out before him, but here we are, perched in front of Steve Cooney’s laptop as he takes me through the whole shebang. We’re sitting in a spacious meeting room in the London Irish Centre where Steve had just completed a two-hour workshop on accompaniment as part of the hugely successful Return to Camden Town festival. Naturally, this being a Cooney session, the music so absorbed him that the class overran and, unsurprisingly, he needed a break and a cup of tea before we began. Now he’s dancing his mouse around the computer screen, having been compelled to draw up his musical CV for a new publishing venture. As he scrolls through the file familiar names from the Irish music scene (Mary Black, Altan, Sharon Shannon, Liam Ó Flynn, Martin Hayes, The Chieftains, even The Dubliners) whirl by and I’m left wondering how this man, probably a contender for Ireland’s Busiest Person, has even had the time to compile the information.
The night before, Steve had played with Sliabh Notes, sitting in for the band’s regular guitarist, Tommy O’Sullivan who was away in the USA promoting his new album with the uilleann piper Paddy Keenan. It was a riveting and invigorating gig. Sliabh Notes play the music of the Sliabh Luachra region, a small area covering parts of counties Cork, Kerry and Limerick, whose music, as the band’s fiddler, Matt Cranitch, says “starts and finishes with polkas” though they also play a fair number of slides (an originally local form of the single jig, but played rather more quickly). While Tommy’s a splendid guitarist in his own right, both Matt and the band’s third member, accordionist Dónal Murphy, reckon that Steve’s the acme of accompanists when it comes to the polka. Matt and Dónal, both naturally quiet men, had played with apparent effortless ease, but at the far end of the stage Steve had bounced around on his chair, feet pulsating to the rhythm, his hands a whirl of string-strumming frenzy, but with never a note nor a chord out of place. It was definitely music for dancing and some couples could not resist the temptation, forming a half-set in front of the stage. The grin on Steve’s face, as a consequence, would have made the Cheshire Cat envious.
Guitars are an extension of Steve’s language, and, when I mention Matt and Dónal’s compliment, he picks one up to demonstrate the style which has influenced so many of Ireland’s traditional music accompanists. ‘Energetic’ and ‘percussive’ are the most commonly used descriptions (and the box’s lack of varnish bears tribute to both adjectives), but, even combined, these are insufficient to conjure up the sheer driving passion of his playing. And, then, of course, there are the infamous nylon strings.
Though he does also employ steel-strung guitars, when Steve fetched up in West Kerry in 1985, beginning a twelve-year musical partnership with accordeonist and singer Séamus Begley, the only guitar kicking around the Begley household had nylon strings and Steve was simply “too broke to afford steel ones”. Before Steve and Séamus teamed up nylon-strung guitars had been largely associated with the Irish ballad groups which appeared following the emergence of The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem in the 1960s. Séamus has been quoted as saying that he “doesn’t see much point in playing music unless there’s somebody dancing to it” and, in his company, Steve set out to “incorporate the rhythms of set dancers into his playing”.
But how had this dreadlocked man from Melbourne, Australia come to fetch up in the tiny coastal village of Baile na bPoc on the Dingle peninsula? That, as they say, is a long story and in Steve’s case, an eventful one.
He first picked up the guitar at the age of four, learning from his father and brothers, and became a professional musician and music teacher at seventeen. Soon, however, his opposition to his country’s involvement in the Vietnam war saw him head off to the USA to avoid conscription. On his return he worked as a studio musician while also touring with the highly successful band Matchbox (not the English rockabillies of the same name). It was at this time that his passionate support for the rights of native Australians saw his adoption into the Maiali language group who live in the country’s Northern Territory. While Steve has maintained this involvement (and, indeed, is the Irish attaché for the European diplomatic mission of the Sovereign Aboriginal nations of Australia), it also resulted in his learning the didgeridoo.
This contact encouraged him to explore his own roots (two great-grandparents came from Tipperary and Cavan respectively) and he bought a one-way ticket to Ireland, first stopping over in London, where he was arrested for busking with his didgeridoo and appeared before the beak at Marylebone Magistrates Court, before arriving in Dublin. After a stint of busking there too and the discovery that there were apparently very few bass players in Ireland, Cooney joined Stockton’s Wing. The previously all-traditional band was at a cross-over point and Steve’s fretless bass became an ideal addition for their most successful album, Light in the Western Sky, which became a mammoth pop success in Ireland. Despite this, Steve moved back to Oz after a couple of years, joining the band Redgum in time for a number one single, the anti-Vietnam song I Was Nineteen, and played in a roots reggae band before heading back for Ireland in 1984.
Rejoining Stockton’s Wing he now began to harness the skills first acquired as a studio musician by producing the first of a succession of albums, the band’s own Celtic Roots Revival, though it was his work on the rock band In Tua Nua’s single, Take My Hand, which first drew the plaudits. After the Wing, he sat in with other bands, including one of Dublin’s most legendary, The Fleadh Cowboys, led by Johnny Moynihan, the man credited with introducing the bouzouki into Irish music, before ending up in West Kerry with the Begleys.
As Steve says, at that time Kerry was “the poor relation of Irish music”, but his partnership with Séamus certainly improved its credibility. While the accordeonist had a tendency to apply wild nicknames to the pairing (‘Hairy and Squarey’ being one of the more flattering), Steve set about the business of applying rock techniques to the accompaniment of traditional music. Reaching for his guitar to demonstrate, he lays down a blues groove with the bass strings while ably picking a jig on the trebles. “I can adapt it to the way I want to play it,” he says, adding “and rock suits polkas” before showing me exactly how.
Of course, traditional purists were outraged by not only this alien styling, but also Steve’s use of the didgeridoo (even down to spelling it phonetically in Irish as ‘dijeridú’), even though Begley and Cooney won the prestigious National Entertainment Award in 1997 . So how did he get away with it? “Maybe, they gave me more leeway because I’m Australian,” he shrugs, but, perhaps also it was because his skills became demanded by other musicians. Appearing in Sharon Shannon’s first touring band certainly helped, as did his immersion in Irish culture, learning the language and exploring the old Gaelic arts, but it was his establishment of a studio in Naas, Co. Kildare to record traditional music which had a lasting impact.
While he has just relocated with his partner, the harper Laoise Kelly, to Teelin in County Donegal, an Irish-speaking area, in the interim period Steve has been involved in the production of more than one hundred albums, either as engineer, producer, arranger or accompanist. The latest in this long line of production projects is an album by Pádraigín Ní Uallacháin (wife of Len Graham) drawn from her collection of South-East Ulster songs, although this busy man has also found time to produce educational Irish language CDs in conjuction with a Limerick college. Yet, strangely, so far the only album to bear his own name is Meitheal, the one CD to emerge from his partnership with Begley.
This leads us onto his present projects and Steve almosts pops with enthusiasm. He wants to write more songs (Island Girl on Altan’s Another Sky is probably the best known) and pen more tunes (Skidoo has been recorded by Sharon Shannon and Ashley McIsaac amongst others) and maybe even “get into electric guitar again in a band context”. But it’s his work with children that most excites him, for Steve has actually formulated a new notation system for teaching music to kids. “It’s all based on the clockface. If they’re old enough to tell the time, then they’ll be able to read music this way.”
It’s all to do with Cooney’s keenness to assist in the preservation, enhancement and strengthening of the culture. “It’s about the restoration of the Gaelic arts and getting kids interested in Irish culture. If they’re interested, if they like the grooves, they’ll get a love for the music.” With such enthusiasm, it’s hard to doubt it.
Nevertheless, while Steve has also been busy editing his first collection of poems and song lyrics, ready for publication, he has also been at the forefront of another attempt at preservation. This is the formation of FÁCÉ (Filí, Amhránaithe agus Ceoltóirí na h-Éireann), a network of traditionally-based Irish musicians, singers and poets, with luminaries such as Dónal Lunny (Planxty, the Bothy Band, Moving Hearts) and Liam Ó Maonlaí (Hothouse Flowers). Already recruiting approaching 200 members, FÁCÉ aims, in Steve’s words, “to promote and safeguard the rights of those working as creators within the Irish traditional arts of poetry, singing and music”. Such support includes providing access to legal advice, efforts to reduce car insurance for musicians (astonishingly high in Ireland), assistance with visas, examining the quality of venues and maintaining a website at www.face.ie. Three compilation CDs are in the pipeline to support the organisation through sales (and you can guess who’s the driving force behind that project!).
As our time together draws to a close, I ask Steve how he actually became interested in Irish music. The answer is startling. “Mary O’Hara,” he states unequivocally and picks up the guitar once again to pick out that old Children’s Favourite classic, The Frog Song - “There was a frog lived in the well, ‘Hi-ho’, said Rowley”. I’m gobsmacked, especially when Steve adds that Mary remains one of his major influences, but he explains that it was simply the first Irish music he ever heard, thanks to a brother’s possession of the harper-singer’s Down by the Glenside LP. The album first appeared on Patrick Clancy’s Tradition label and most of Steve’s early musical icons were part of the 1960s folk revival before he immersed himself in rock music in the following decade. He did once see The Chieftains in Melbourne, but it was hearing a tape of a Planxty album, loaned by a student, that invigorated his interest in the late 1970s. And, seemingly, it’s never waned and led, not only, to his myriad achievements, but also appearances playing before Irish Presidents Robinson and McAleese and even Prince Andrew (though Steve just managed to resist leading the musicians into an impromptu rendition of The Grand Old Duke of York and chuckles at the thought).
As he begins to pack up I ask about his plans for his move to Donegal and the reason for choosing a relatively isolated place like Teelin. Steve rightly focusses on the stunning scenery (the village lies below the massive sea-cliffs of Sliabh League), but he’s also keen to record some of the older inhabitants’ music and language. The fact that Mairéad Ní Mhaonaigh and Dermot Byrne of Altan are part-owners of the local pub is another attraction, so, if you happen to be in the area in the summertime, look out for some mighty sessions.
Mac Cruiskeen, Thank you for that. Its a great article and you show a huge understanding and compassion for this complicated but fine man. A man that has changed the sound of Traditional music as only O'Riada and Lunny had done before him. I enjoyed very much every word of this article .
Cooney and Edey tunings?
Cooney and Edey tunings?
What tuning do Steve and Tim use?
# Posted on January 29th 2011 by big_tab
Re: Cooney and Edey tunings?
What Guitar tuning does Steve Cooney and Tim Edey use?
What Guitar tuning does Steve Cooney and Tim Edey use?
What Guitar tuning does Steve Cooney and Tim Edey use?
Thanks
# Posted on December 28th 2010 by dodgey11
Re: What Guitar tuning does Steve Cooney and Tim Edey use?
dropped d.
# Posted on December 28th 2010 by ofearghail7
Re: What Guitar tuning does Steve Cooney and Tim Edey use?
any vid of cooney I ever saw he seems to use standard tuning but maybe I just didn't look closely enough
# Posted on January 3rd 2011 by harmonic miner
Re: What Guitar tuning does Steve Cooney and Tim Edey use?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=McsaezPtsRI&feature=rec-LGOUT-real_rev-rn-1r-4-HM
watch the 2nd tune. e minor ...first chord ...
# Posted on January 4th 2011 by ofearghail7
# Posted on January 29th 2011 by Oeidipus
AP
I suddenly dont have an urge to cut & paste an entire webpage.
# Posted on January 29th 2011 by Ben Steen
Re: Cooney and Edey tunings?
Wow.. Its great to be back among the elite of Irish music.. Andy Pandy I think you might have helped me and I thank you in advance if so. Ben ..you have not helped me.
# Posted on January 30th 2011 by big_tab
Re: Cooney and Edey tunings?
I looked at the clip. Dodgy audience at the oireachtais in 1994. Cooney is a great man and had a lot of silent prejudice to put up with before he was accepted as a changing force within the tradition. However the reason I posed the question is that I cant figure what tuning he uses even when i am looking at him!
# Posted on January 30th 2011 by big_tab
Re: Cooney and Edey tunings?
Do you prefer I feed you fish or have you learn where to catch them?
http://www.thesession.org/discussions/display/26349
# Posted on January 30th 2011 by Ben Steen
Re: Cooney and Edey tunings?
Here's a few morsels;
Re: Standard tuning
June 29th 2005 by BegF
http://www.thesession.org/discussions/display/7002/comments#comment149189
July 5th 2005 by BegF
http://www.thesession.org/discussions/display/7002/comments#comment150102
Re: Guitar tuning DADGAD or EADGBE?
December 15th 2008 by irisnevins
http://www.thesession.org/discussions/display/20052/comments#comment419444
# Posted on January 30th 2011 by Ben Steen
Re: Cooney and Edey tunings?
Thank you for all that Ben. Can I now ask you a simple question.. What tuning do Cooney and Edey use?
# Posted on January 30th 2011 by big_tab
Re: Cooney and Edey tunings?
BegF (& others) would know more about that than I do.
Did you read the comment by BegF regarding what he thinks is the tuning Steve Cooney uses? There are also comments saying Cooney has changed his tuning.
# Posted on January 30th 2011 by Ben Steen
Re: Cooney and Edey tunings?
Exactly. That is why I posed the question. There is differing opinion whether dropped D or standard is used.
# Posted on January 30th 2011 by big_tab
Re: Cooney and Edey tunings?
Which tuning do you choose, big_tab?
# Posted on January 30th 2011 by Ben Steen
Re: Cooney and Edey tunings?
Now if I knew the answer to that Ben I would not need to be asking here!
# Posted on January 30th 2011 by big_tab
Re: Cooney and Edey tunings?
It's must be late. I think you said you're not sure how your guitar is tuned.
Definitely time, for me, to logoff.
Later ...
# Posted on January 30th 2011 by Ben Steen
Re: Cooney and Edey tunings?
Nobody mentioned MY guitar.
# Posted on January 30th 2011 by big_tab
Re: Cooney and Edey tunings?
http://tinyurl.com/6hbgzrh
# Posted on January 30th 2011 by Jumper
Re: Cooney and Edey tunings?
ROFLMAO, Jumper.
Brill.
# Posted on January 30th 2011 by Ben Steen
Re: Cooney and Edey tunings?
Whoa. That's amazing. Wha.....
I'm gonna get me one of those goggles.
# Posted on January 30th 2011 by Michele Sims
Re: Cooney and Edey tunings?
Strange place this. I ask a fairly straightforward question that should have as its answer ...dropped d..standard or dadgad. I get shown links that dont answer the question and then some genius googles the question and there is still no definitive answer. Maybe I was never meant to know.
# Posted on January 31st 2011 by big_tab
Re: Cooney and Edey tunings?
big_tab, BegF did say what he thought might be the tuning used by Steve Cooney. It's different from those you listed. But, I do not know.
# Posted on January 31st 2011 by Ben Steen
Re: Cooney and Edey tunings?
Ben,with due respect,as I have to be a good boy on this board, if you dont know why do you keep answering..?
# Posted on January 31st 2011 by big_tab
Re: Cooney and Edey tunings?
Right or wrong this is the most conclusive answer either of us have found ~
Re: Standard tuning
DGADAE I think - worth a try.
Posted on July 5th 2005 by BegF
It may not be right, but what else do you have?
# Posted on January 31st 2011 by Ben Steen
Re: Cooney and Edey tunings?
I have nothing.
# Posted on January 31st 2011 by big_tab
You have more than you realize.
# Posted on January 31st 2011 by Ben Steen
Re: Cooney and Edey tunings?
I'm almost sure he's using DADGBE in this :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xInuesYrUPA
the capo 3 putting him in F.
And also in this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=McsaezPtsRI
However, many guitarists using Dropped D would often use standard as well. In my own case I use mostly standard, but also Open D and Open A, and very occasionally Dropped D. My main dislike of Dropped D for accompaniment are the adjustments needed to finger G, A, and E Minor chords. The advantage is you get a full D Chord with low D bass.
# Posted on January 31st 2011 by Tony O'Rourke
Re: Cooney and Edey tunings?
Tony, I've had a glimpse and I'm 99% sure that on the first link you've provided Steve C. is playing double-drop D. I can't make out anything of the second one visually but to my ear, as well as judging by the fact that Steve is Jim Murray's teacher and sound inspiration (and Jim Murray definitely plays in double-drop D) makes my bet on this tuning more than probable.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOwn50fAwKw
On this clip, Steve C. plays in double-drop D.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCLVOsKKfWc
On this clip, to my best observation, Tim E. plays in double-drop D.
A few years ago I spent two days with Tim exchanging guitar tips and he was playing double drop D; but at that time he was also messing around with other tunings.
# Posted on January 31st 2011 by Janek
Re: Cooney and Edey tunings?
And sorry for faulty grammar.
# Posted on January 31st 2011 by Janek
Re: Cooney and Edey tunings?
drop d and for the record cooney didnt teach murray!
# Posted on January 31st 2011 by mise
Re: Cooney and Edey tunings?
Thanks .Never heard of double dropped d ..Sounds interesting. If Cooney didnt teach Murray Murray sure as hell learned off Cooney.
# Posted on January 31st 2011 by big_tab
Re: Cooney and Edey tunings?
"...and for the record cooney didnt teach murray!
I don't have any documents for that, just word of mouth - so if I'm wrong, my apologies.
Double drop d - used for sure by Jim Murray and Donogh Hennessy. I play it a bit myself and was judging from the sound and chord shapes. You're free to disbelieve me
# Posted on January 31st 2011 by Janek
Re: Cooney and Edey tunings?
its widly said that he did, but jim has said himself that everyone thinks cooney thought him, but he didnt, he only encouraged him to play nylon string guitar, it was one of his teachers at school who was a great guitar player that used to give him lessons.
# Posted on February 1st 2011 by mise
Re: Cooney and Edey tunings?
He might not have formally taught him but his style is that of Cooney and Cooney formulated this music originally and he was a total complete original and still is. Edey is also a product of the Cooney school but his sheer enthusiasm and downright joy in playing as well as his incredible knowledge of the instrument sets him up there with the Masters.
# Posted on February 1st 2011 by big_tab
Re: Cooney and Edey tunings?
Here's one of my favourite Cooney clips -http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUTwJSzVqAc.
And also, below, is an article about Steve which I wrote for fRoots magazine almost a decade ago. My evil editor's eye spots many things which I wouldn't write now, so, please, take this in the spirit it was intended back in 2002. 'Accordeonist', by the way, is the fRoots preferred spelling and much of the personal information is out of date, but I still feel this piece captures Steve's enthusiasm. I'm not sure what happened to the FACE projects.
________________________________________________
It’s not often that a musician sees his career laid out before him, but here we are, perched in front of Steve Cooney’s laptop as he takes me through the whole shebang. We’re sitting in a spacious meeting room in the London Irish Centre where Steve had just completed a two-hour workshop on accompaniment as part of the hugely successful Return to Camden Town festival. Naturally, this being a Cooney session, the music so absorbed him that the class overran and, unsurprisingly, he needed a break and a cup of tea before we began. Now he’s dancing his mouse around the computer screen, having been compelled to draw up his musical CV for a new publishing venture. As he scrolls through the file familiar names from the Irish music scene (Mary Black, Altan, Sharon Shannon, Liam Ó Flynn, Martin Hayes, The Chieftains, even The Dubliners) whirl by and I’m left wondering how this man, probably a contender for Ireland’s Busiest Person, has even had the time to compile the information.
The night before, Steve had played with Sliabh Notes, sitting in for the band’s regular guitarist, Tommy O’Sullivan who was away in the USA promoting his new album with the uilleann piper Paddy Keenan. It was a riveting and invigorating gig. Sliabh Notes play the music of the Sliabh Luachra region, a small area covering parts of counties Cork, Kerry and Limerick, whose music, as the band’s fiddler, Matt Cranitch, says “starts and finishes with polkas” though they also play a fair number of slides (an originally local form of the single jig, but played rather more quickly). While Tommy’s a splendid guitarist in his own right, both Matt and the band’s third member, accordionist Dónal Murphy, reckon that Steve’s the acme of accompanists when it comes to the polka. Matt and Dónal, both naturally quiet men, had played with apparent effortless ease, but at the far end of the stage Steve had bounced around on his chair, feet pulsating to the rhythm, his hands a whirl of string-strumming frenzy, but with never a note nor a chord out of place. It was definitely music for dancing and some couples could not resist the temptation, forming a half-set in front of the stage. The grin on Steve’s face, as a consequence, would have made the Cheshire Cat envious.
Guitars are an extension of Steve’s language, and, when I mention Matt and Dónal’s compliment, he picks one up to demonstrate the style which has influenced so many of Ireland’s traditional music accompanists. ‘Energetic’ and ‘percussive’ are the most commonly used descriptions (and the box’s lack of varnish bears tribute to both adjectives), but, even combined, these are insufficient to conjure up the sheer driving passion of his playing. And, then, of course, there are the infamous nylon strings.
Though he does also employ steel-strung guitars, when Steve fetched up in West Kerry in 1985, beginning a twelve-year musical partnership with accordeonist and singer Séamus Begley, the only guitar kicking around the Begley household had nylon strings and Steve was simply “too broke to afford steel ones”. Before Steve and Séamus teamed up nylon-strung guitars had been largely associated with the Irish ballad groups which appeared following the emergence of The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem in the 1960s. Séamus has been quoted as saying that he “doesn’t see much point in playing music unless there’s somebody dancing to it” and, in his company, Steve set out to “incorporate the rhythms of set dancers into his playing”.
But how had this dreadlocked man from Melbourne, Australia come to fetch up in the tiny coastal village of Baile na bPoc on the Dingle peninsula? That, as they say, is a long story and in Steve’s case, an eventful one.
He first picked up the guitar at the age of four, learning from his father and brothers, and became a professional musician and music teacher at seventeen. Soon, however, his opposition to his country’s involvement in the Vietnam war saw him head off to the USA to avoid conscription. On his return he worked as a studio musician while also touring with the highly successful band Matchbox (not the English rockabillies of the same name). It was at this time that his passionate support for the rights of native Australians saw his adoption into the Maiali language group who live in the country’s Northern Territory. While Steve has maintained this involvement (and, indeed, is the Irish attaché for the European diplomatic mission of the Sovereign Aboriginal nations of Australia), it also resulted in his learning the didgeridoo.
This contact encouraged him to explore his own roots (two great-grandparents came from Tipperary and Cavan respectively) and he bought a one-way ticket to Ireland, first stopping over in London, where he was arrested for busking with his didgeridoo and appeared before the beak at Marylebone Magistrates Court, before arriving in Dublin. After a stint of busking there too and the discovery that there were apparently very few bass players in Ireland, Cooney joined Stockton’s Wing. The previously all-traditional band was at a cross-over point and Steve’s fretless bass became an ideal addition for their most successful album, Light in the Western Sky, which became a mammoth pop success in Ireland. Despite this, Steve moved back to Oz after a couple of years, joining the band Redgum in time for a number one single, the anti-Vietnam song I Was Nineteen, and played in a roots reggae band before heading back for Ireland in 1984.
Rejoining Stockton’s Wing he now began to harness the skills first acquired as a studio musician by producing the first of a succession of albums, the band’s own Celtic Roots Revival, though it was his work on the rock band In Tua Nua’s single, Take My Hand, which first drew the plaudits. After the Wing, he sat in with other bands, including one of Dublin’s most legendary, The Fleadh Cowboys, led by Johnny Moynihan, the man credited with introducing the bouzouki into Irish music, before ending up in West Kerry with the Begleys.
As Steve says, at that time Kerry was “the poor relation of Irish music”, but his partnership with Séamus certainly improved its credibility. While the accordeonist had a tendency to apply wild nicknames to the pairing (‘Hairy and Squarey’ being one of the more flattering), Steve set about the business of applying rock techniques to the accompaniment of traditional music. Reaching for his guitar to demonstrate, he lays down a blues groove with the bass strings while ably picking a jig on the trebles. “I can adapt it to the way I want to play it,” he says, adding “and rock suits polkas” before showing me exactly how.
Of course, traditional purists were outraged by not only this alien styling, but also Steve’s use of the didgeridoo (even down to spelling it phonetically in Irish as ‘dijeridú’), even though Begley and Cooney won the prestigious National Entertainment Award in 1997 . So how did he get away with it? “Maybe, they gave me more leeway because I’m Australian,” he shrugs, but, perhaps also it was because his skills became demanded by other musicians. Appearing in Sharon Shannon’s first touring band certainly helped, as did his immersion in Irish culture, learning the language and exploring the old Gaelic arts, but it was his establishment of a studio in Naas, Co. Kildare to record traditional music which had a lasting impact.
While he has just relocated with his partner, the harper Laoise Kelly, to Teelin in County Donegal, an Irish-speaking area, in the interim period Steve has been involved in the production of more than one hundred albums, either as engineer, producer, arranger or accompanist. The latest in this long line of production projects is an album by Pádraigín Ní Uallacháin (wife of Len Graham) drawn from her collection of South-East Ulster songs, although this busy man has also found time to produce educational Irish language CDs in conjuction with a Limerick college. Yet, strangely, so far the only album to bear his own name is Meitheal, the one CD to emerge from his partnership with Begley.
This leads us onto his present projects and Steve almosts pops with enthusiasm. He wants to write more songs (Island Girl on Altan’s Another Sky is probably the best known) and pen more tunes (Skidoo has been recorded by Sharon Shannon and Ashley McIsaac amongst others) and maybe even “get into electric guitar again in a band context”. But it’s his work with children that most excites him, for Steve has actually formulated a new notation system for teaching music to kids. “It’s all based on the clockface. If they’re old enough to tell the time, then they’ll be able to read music this way.”
It’s all to do with Cooney’s keenness to assist in the preservation, enhancement and strengthening of the culture. “It’s about the restoration of the Gaelic arts and getting kids interested in Irish culture. If they’re interested, if they like the grooves, they’ll get a love for the music.” With such enthusiasm, it’s hard to doubt it.
Nevertheless, while Steve has also been busy editing his first collection of poems and song lyrics, ready for publication, he has also been at the forefront of another attempt at preservation. This is the formation of FÁCÉ (Filí, Amhránaithe agus Ceoltóirí na h-Éireann), a network of traditionally-based Irish musicians, singers and poets, with luminaries such as Dónal Lunny (Planxty, the Bothy Band, Moving Hearts) and Liam Ó Maonlaí (Hothouse Flowers). Already recruiting approaching 200 members, FÁCÉ aims, in Steve’s words, “to promote and safeguard the rights of those working as creators within the Irish traditional arts of poetry, singing and music”. Such support includes providing access to legal advice, efforts to reduce car insurance for musicians (astonishingly high in Ireland), assistance with visas, examining the quality of venues and maintaining a website at www.face.ie. Three compilation CDs are in the pipeline to support the organisation through sales (and you can guess who’s the driving force behind that project!).
As our time together draws to a close, I ask Steve how he actually became interested in Irish music. The answer is startling. “Mary O’Hara,” he states unequivocally and picks up the guitar once again to pick out that old Children’s Favourite classic, The Frog Song - “There was a frog lived in the well, ‘Hi-ho’, said Rowley”. I’m gobsmacked, especially when Steve adds that Mary remains one of his major influences, but he explains that it was simply the first Irish music he ever heard, thanks to a brother’s possession of the harper-singer’s Down by the Glenside LP. The album first appeared on Patrick Clancy’s Tradition label and most of Steve’s early musical icons were part of the 1960s folk revival before he immersed himself in rock music in the following decade. He did once see The Chieftains in Melbourne, but it was hearing a tape of a Planxty album, loaned by a student, that invigorated his interest in the late 1970s. And, seemingly, it’s never waned and led, not only, to his myriad achievements, but also appearances playing before Irish Presidents Robinson and McAleese and even Prince Andrew (though Steve just managed to resist leading the musicians into an impromptu rendition of The Grand Old Duke of York and chuckles at the thought).
As he begins to pack up I ask about his plans for his move to Donegal and the reason for choosing a relatively isolated place like Teelin. Steve rightly focusses on the stunning scenery (the village lies below the massive sea-cliffs of Sliabh League), but he’s also keen to record some of the older inhabitants’ music and language. The fact that Mairéad Ní Mhaonaigh and Dermot Byrne of Altan are part-owners of the local pub is another attraction, so, if you happen to be in the area in the summertime, look out for some mighty sessions.
# Posted on February 1st 2011 by MacCruiskeen
Re: Cooney and Edey tunings?
Mac Cruiskeen, Thank you for that. Its a great article and you show a huge understanding and compassion for this complicated but fine man. A man that has changed the sound of Traditional music as only O'Riada and Lunny had done before him. I enjoyed very much every word of this article .
# Posted on February 2nd 2011 by big_tab