I am very curious to know how everyone got started on this long musical road. What/who made you pick up your instrument for the first time or changed your direction to Irish Music.
When I was a teenager ( about 200 years ago ) I desperately wanted to be an electric bass player. Played it badly for about 2 years untill I was given a tape that changed my life. I never liked Irish music at all until then, but now it is a huge part of my life. Read more here if you like http://www.chinatogalway.com/how%20it%20all%20started.htm
Now play the mandolin, and bouzouki, a thousand miles from the bass. Can't imagine my life with out it all now........
So what got you on the long musical journey of Irish music, instrument playing and session addiction ?
Re: what started you on this long musical road....
Good topic, Kieran, and one we haven't had for a very long time. Me, I got started through the dancing to be able to play at shows, it seemed a logical progression, except that now it's sort of spread over until it's taken over my life...my husband is upstairs working on one of the Crowley's right now, and we're talking about a guy who was a goth/alternative/industrial dj until he met me...
Re: what started you on this long musical road....
I was edging into it sideways, having grown up hearing Irish and Scots tinged Appalachian songs like Old Joe Clark and worked them out on 5-string banjo, and then mandolin. As a teenager, I lived in suburban Philadelphia and used to listen to public radio on WXPN. Mick Moloney had a program on late at night, and I started listening to it after teaching bluegrass lessons all evening. I liked the music, but one night it leapt out of the radio and grabbed me by the proverbial....heartstrings (git yer minds out of the gutter . I was making a midnight snack, slicing a tomato, and nearly cut my thumb in half when Mick introduced a new cd by the Bothy Band (this was in 1975 or '76), and they launched into Farewell to Erin. I remember running to grab my banjo and trying to play along--how hopeless that was, though I got the basic chord structure.
A few weeks later I was teaching myself guitar and started flatpicking some tunes--Flowers of Edinburgh, Drowsy Maggie, Rights of Man. But what I wanted was the growl of the fiddle on that opening bit of Farewell to Erin. A pawnshop fiddle, a few intro lessons from a local old timey player, and 29 years later Farewell to Erin is still one of my favorite tunes....
Re: what started you on this long musical road....
I wasn't exposed to the music, being in the ITM isolated area that I am, so I didn't even discover it until I was 13 or so (about 2.00 years ago). It was just a recording that I heard, and I really liked it, and I found out more and more about the music, and here I am. I suppose one of the biggest reasons that I love the music so much is due to some freinds of mine, the Wood Family. They have six kids, and all but the baby play fiddle and dance, and one of their boys plays mandolin/octave mandolin. They love it so much, and seeing how much they loved it really encouraged me to pick it up more, and learn even faster. And I now I find myself loving it as much if not more than do. I really think that discovering this music was one of the best things that ever happened to me. I might also add that I started learning a lot more when I found the session.org. That was a huge pick-up point for me. I don't really post that much, but I do a lot of lurking, which is sometimes the best way to learn stuff. I have also learned a whole bunch by emailing members that I met through this site, and I made a bunch of freinds (even though we've never "met") at the same time! I think that the ITM community is really awesome. I mean, I can ask people dumb questions, and they'll go way out of their way to help me out. And we all have something in common. The music. Even though we might have totally diferent views, we always have the music to fall back on. I think that's really cool.
Re: what started you on this long musical road....
Oh on to my story about music first off without music my life would be pointless wait a minuet (ha ha) music *is* my life. Well my first instrument I could say was Bass Guitar when I was very young but I didn't really play so forget about that part. When I was in 6th grade I decided to play Bassoon in the school band I also played Bass then like actually played but didn't I got good later. So later I picked up guitar and drums just cause I felt like it. In the summer before 8th grade I got into Dropkick Murphys but that will come later. So it was early in 8th grade and I really liked the band the Mighty Mighty BossTones (they are a ska band and I am wearing a shirt with the logo right now) so I was in thier website and followed a link to the record labels site. One this site I was listening to bands and I low and behold there was Flogging Molly I heard them and was amazed so I bought there CD. So it is the summer last year and I am at this music camp and on one day as we do every week (it is a week at a time) we were at a music store I had a $10 gift certificate because they give you one. So I see a tin whistle know what it is beacuse of Dropkick and Flogging they both have them. IT was a Sweetone so it was about $10 I decide to buy it I didn't learn how to play right away though. So a few months later I am in a town in Mexico and see a Mandolin in a music shop beg my parents to get it for me they did I also didn't learn how to play till I got into fiddlin' a while later. So it was September last year and I buy a tin whistle book and it just comes naturally to me cause I played many instruments already. I made a goal to lay most session instruments by the time I am 21 it is going pretty well.
Re: what started you on this long musical road....
I was lucky enough to be around in Ireland during the "revival" of the seventies, and to go to concerts by the Bothies, Planxty, De Dannan, Stockton's Wing, and all the rest of the bands that were starting out around that time. I loved the music, and that love stayed with me ever since.
However, back then I really wanted to be a folk/blues/ragtime guitarist, and spent all my time learning the styles of people like John Renbourne, Stefan Grossman, and Guy Van Duser. I had a grand time of it and even got some minor paying gigs.
Only in the last few years - in my forties, and living in Canada - did I get the bug to actually try and play the stuff I grew up with, and now I'm having more fun and satisfaction with music than ever. I sometimes find myself wishing I'd taken up ITM many years ago when I lived close to the well, so to speak. But no, I think these things work out for the best. I'm "ready" to learn to play ITM now.
I suspect it's easier for someone living outside Ireland to be a late starter. It doesn't feel like I'm an adult trying to squeeze into a kindergartener's chair.
Re: what started you on this long musical road....
I was listening to Baroque music at first. I loved the chamber music of Bach, Couperin, Telemann, etc. (Actually I'm still listening.) Then.... See the rest of the story at http://slainte.web.infoseek.co.jp/profile_en.html It always needs revising though.
Re: what started you on this long musical road....
Hello All, Back in 1984,2 years into an Irish traditional folk radio show(now in its 23rd year)I was falling in love with flutes.Since I simply could'nt afford one,I settled on a 6 dollar'Feadog in D to see if there was any music in me.Guess what? There was and my playing friends now tell me I'm coming out from the shadow of my late friend and mentor,Gordon Cote,the best Cape Breton fiddler I've ever heard.Irish music moves me like no other.Learning to play is the single best thing I've ever done.In fact,I've just ordered a seery D flute.I think I'm ready
Paul
Re: what started you on this long musical road....
I was diagnosed with diabetes about 4 years ago and my doctor asked me what kind of music I liked. I had bought just bought a CD by The Irish Decendents and loved it, so I told him I liked Irish. Since I was in the hospital the next day he brought me some Van Morrison and Chieftains cds. When I first heard it, it was the first time I had truly been happy since being in the hospital. After that, I pursued it more and more, and now its a huge part of my life.
Re: what started you on this long musical road....
i was a singer-songwriter playing at the same club as a fiddle-guitar duo who played irish, first time i'd ever heard anything like it....so i started learning it,, that was 1979, i still struggle with: Should i be doing my own stuff or should i continue down this path called "learn this one now, now this one, hey have you ever heard this one? times 6,000, no wait, times 17,348.001
Re: what started you on this long musical road....
I first heard ITM back in 1975 after being connected a new thing called "Cable TV" I didn’t have a TV so I hooked it up to my radio and turned the dial to KPFA broadcasting out of Berkeley and happened upon a show called "The Cat In The Corner" that was playing something by a group called, “The Chieftains.” Not even realizing it was Irish music, I was instantly swept away with it, and I promptly taped my dial where it was so I wouldn’t lose it. On this same show they played “The Bothy Band,” “Planxty,” “Stockton’s Wing,” “De Dannan” etc., and I was hooked.
Up until that time I was a music major in college and was performing medieval and renaissance music in "The Woods So Wylde Consortium". I also played piano in a Latin Jazz band called "Incognito" and I was the music director for the "Chimera Dance Troupe" and played a variety of Middle Eastern wind and percussion instruments. (Yes, even shaky-eggs)
To me, the music of "The Chieftains" sounded very similar to the Early music I was playing at the time, except it sounded like it was alive and kicking and not being resurrected from the dead. I soon found out that the difference I heard was the fact that ITM is a living musical art form. With that in mind, (and just the fact that the music was so great), in 1980 I gave up the medieval and renaissance music, turned in my turban, parted with my jazz band, and turned my interests towards this strange little box with bellows and buttons on it. (Luckily it was anglo smirk)
Living in the Central Valley proved to be too far away from the music to properly learn how it's played, so I turned my life upside down and moved to San Francisco in 1985. As it happened the following year Noel Hill showed up in San Francisco to play at "The Plough” with James Kelly. I organized concertina workshops for him and began taking private lessons that occurred about every 6 months when Noel came to town with James. I also had acquired a flute and organized flute workshops for players that came through the city, the late great Frankie Kennedy among them. It soon became very clear that moving to San Francisco was a good move indeed. After arriving in SF I joined a group called "Out Of The Rain" for a couple of years, and from about 1989 to 1998 fiddler, Scott Renfort and I were the sole hosts of the Sunday night session at "The Plough". We also formed a group called “Tipsy House” that I still keep busy to this day.
I’ve made a handful of trips to Ireland over the years that proved to solidify my desire to continue following the ITM muse. And I have a feeling that I’ll be following it to my grave as well. It’s far too late for me… all you newbes take heed… run now while you still can!
Re: what started you on this long musical road....
Ah, now there's a tale.
I used to be a high-flying, stinking rich bastard you see, who hob-nobbed with the rich, the famous and the royal. Until that fateful day, at that crossroads in the middle of the desert, where I had my limo driver pull over so I could stretch my legs.
There I was accosted by a wretched old woman who asked me for a drink of water.
Now, I only had a refrigerator full of the stuff (next to the really expensive champagne), but it was mine all mine so I told the old crone to sod off: "Sod off, old crone"
Oooooh... my arrogance and hubris were about to get bitch-slapped all the way to the dirty desert floor. She cursed me, that wyrd old woman did, she cursed me good: "You will fall from fortune and fame, and flute instead for the folk until your fingers fall off".
Wretched and dirty, yes, but what a flair for alliteration!
And since that day I've lost my many millions, my chateau in the South of France, my island in the Caribbean, my fleet of helicopters and my bevy of admirers. Worse still! I've not been able to go more than an hour or two without picking up the damn diddle-stick and tooting at people, or animals, or small houses. And my fingers are starting to fall off.
Re: what started you on this long musical road....
As to the music - I don't remember. Possibly my ITM tastes were extracted from my interest for World Music (God forgive me) in early teens. Then I've listened to Polish bands of ITM - we had two. And to the "Folk Hour" on the Polish radio, picking Irish and Scottish tunes from among Arabian, Persian, Latin and Chinese music. At that time I didn't play ITM yet.
The guy's name was Fergal, he was playing on Fridays in the Monrose Tavern in Galway. Taught me the basics of DADGAD guitar, like three or four lessons; after that it went on by itself. And the Galway University Traditional Music Society was my starting zone, I wouldn't have dreamt of a better start. If only the follow up was not so miserable, *sigh*
Re: what started you on this long musical road....
Q, sometimes you are truly whacked out!
Jonathan, you had one very cool doctor to take the time to bring music into the hospital for you, let alone that it was *Irish* music!
Will, which suburub of Phila did you grow up in? And that's back in the day when WXPN was good. It's mostly all singer-songwriter stuff now, and they play the same "hits" over and over. (I am forced to listen to it all day at work!)
My story, like most is not completely linear. But I'll give you the short version.
Well, I was starting to re-explore some early and medieval music. I was hoping to join the SCA. (I never did by the way...) This somewhow led to stuff like Loreena McKennit and then to a few "Celtic" harpers like Kim Robertson. I remembered my friend had a couple old cassettes of Alan Stivell and Patrick Ball. I taped them from her, and another friend taped a couple Clannad Cd's for me.
I got this idea that I should learn to play Celtic harp. (I was in a really dry period creativity wise. I wasn't painting anymore.) I didn't really know the term "Irish music" yet. It took me 2 years of researching and thinking about it and looking at a few harps in a dusty old shop in Phila. which was open only by appointment. (the shop no longer exists.) I found my teacher one day while looking through one of the local Irish- American newspapers. There she was with 2 harp students who just placed at the Fleadh. There was a phone number and I called.
I have been taking lessons every Saturday with her (Kathy DeAngelo) now for almost 8 years. I switched to fiddle with my teacher 2 and a half years ago.
My bio says it, the music has changed my life. As you all can attest to as well.....
Re: what started you on this long musical road....
I was playing bass in a Zep style rock band when I was 15 and I clocked a photo on the back of one of my dad's LPs. It was Donal Lunny on the back of Planxty's The Well Below the Valley and I thought, "He looks cool, I love his cheeky leather waist coat and his hair is only a little bit longer than mine. I want to be him. I'm gonna ask my dad for a bazouki for my 16th birthday."
Re: what started you on this long musical road....
A couple of years ago I was house sitting for someone in Brittany, and one afternoon with nothing to do I happened upon an old fiddle and a book and CD of Irish music (the book was the Roche collection, I don't remember what the CD was, it was a compilation of something). Seeing as at the time I played (and still do to an extent) viola, and remebering that the fiddle hadn't been played for years, I figured that I'd "have a go". Then later on in the week a friend of mine took me to see a band with one of his friends playing, and they turn out to be playing a mixture of Irish, Shetland and Breton music, and that sealed it.
Someone lent me Planxty's The Well Below the Valley. The first track I put on was Cunla. Hooked on the music. That was 1974 I think.
Someone else showed me the fingering for the whistle, two or three years later. Hooked on *playing* the music.
Another year or 2 passed. I heard some of After The Break on radio, with Molloy on flute. Hooked on flute, but another year or two passed before I could afford one.
About the same time I started taking the whistle out to sessions in Sheffield - hooked on playing sessions.
I don't practice anywhere near enough nowadays - never seem to have time. But make up for it at sessions.
Re: what started you on this long musical road....
I was on my way to a fancy dress party, driving across a stretch of desert, when my car broke down, so my only hope was to start walking and try to find help.
I was dressed as an old woman.
When I came near to a crossroad a big posh limo pulled up, and a rich man got out to stretch his legs, so I went to ask him for a drink of water . . .
Re: what started you on this long musical road....
My parents noticed I had an ear for music when they observed me playing tunes on anything that would make discernable notes, such as Pepsi bottles filled to varying heights with water. I got a guitar when I was 10 and they made me take lessons. I did impressively well, looking at the page in the lesson book, but playing the tune by ear. My ruse was discovered, of course, when I got to a song I didn't know. Anywho, my well-meaning but misled older brother tried to turn me on to rock music and he bought me lots of records that had limited appeal for me. It was accoustic music I liked. I didn't want to listen to any instrument that needed to be plugged in. As a teen I listened to folk music, and all my friends started playing and singing folk songs. Playing music gave our get-togethers a purpose, and that is how it still is with me today. The music is the reason I leave my home.
When I was in my mid-twenties I left Chicago for Allegan, Michigan. A guy put a fiddle in my hands and talked me into giving him $150 for it. It is an interesting looking instrument, made with bird's eye maple. I got into a crowd of southern musicians and learned to play southern style. Eventually my circle of friends included Irish musicians. At a party I picked up a mandolin for the first time, and my bass-playing buddy Spike said "We're gonna get you a mandolin." His wife loaned me the money and I went to Elderly Instruments in Lansing to get my mandolin. My current fiddle came to me from Jan Bloom, a luthier in Kalamazoo, who said I could have it if I would give him fiddle lessons. In 1984 I moved to Vermont and fell in with the contra dance crowd and now I play a lot of Canadian tunes, along with the Irish and southern.
The story of my life. Wanna hear about my kids?
Kate
Re: what started you on this long musical road....
Goderich Celtic Roots Festival - August 2000.
Went there for a motorcycle ride/camping trip/general drunken boondoggle with an old roomate of mine.
Wound up imbibing heavy quantities of alcohol at that little bar next to the festival grounds with Jonny Hardie of the Old Blind Dogs, got drug off to a house session in the middle of the night, where I was exposed to this music for the first time. I didn't know it then, but in that kitchen was Julie Schryer, Joe Grady, John Carty, Patrick Orceau, Peter Horan, Pat O'Gorman, and others I cannot name. I remember looking through a haze of smoke and intoxication at the clock around 5AM, wondering if I was really seeing it and really there.
I was so jazzed up about the whole deal I came home and bought a fiddle, found a teacher, and the rest is fairly interesting history.
Re: what started you on this long musical road....
Probably in this order is how i got hooked. Horslips the "Tain" album, then Kevin Burke "If the Cap Fits", Noel Hill and Tony Linnane, then seeing all three of them at a festival in the mid seventies in Belfast. Going to Tom Kellys in the Short Strand. Tommy Peoples High part of the Road then one week workshop with the same man.Bothy Band Live Album, then first visit to Miltown and that was it. Sessions in London with the likes of Bobby Casey, Brendan Mulkere, Ormond Waters Brendan Ring. Sessons in Birmingham with very young but scaringly good Kevin Crawford, Mick Conneely, Bredan Boyle, Enda and Joe Molloy, John McEvoy. Then back home to the black north and very occasional but inspirational sessions with Andy Dixon, Micheal Clarkson, Spike, Martin McGinley, Aidan Walsh, Ruari O`Kane, the McSherrys, Buzz, John Creaven, Oggie, Meabh O`Hare and many others. Visits to Glencolmkille lessons from Peter Tracy and tunes with James Byrne, Morris Bradley and Siobhan Peoples. Now every Tuesday with Brendan,Mark Mulligan, Stevie and Stevie Mulholland, Kirsten, Big Chris and Brian. The odd divergence down to Westport to meet the Muddleys or Mick Conneeely and trips to Tubber,Drumshambo what more does it take to keep you at it.
Re: what started you on this long musical road....
I kind of took the roundabout way into things. I took lessons from Chris Norman long before I knew what Irish music was, but he exposed me to some of the basic techniques like cuts and rolls. A number of years after I took from him, my family went to Cape Breton, and the first thing I heard on the island was the Chieftain produced "Fire in the Kitchen" CD. I then heard several Cape Breton fiddlers play, and picked up a few of their CDs. Shortly after the Nova Scotia trip, the Corrs came about, and I bought their recordings, and the stuff I liked best was the instrumentals. I then went to a few Irish/Scottish festivals, and bought a few CDs. After hearing that stuff, I decided I wanted to put classical music off to the side and try my hand at Irish music. A semester abroad in Galway afforded me a great opportunity with the music, and it was then that I realized that after all of these years (I sound like an old man-- really, only about 8 years elapsed during this entire story), I was playing the kind of stuff that Chris had taught me when I was a bit younger. Guess the music has always sort of been there, but really, this journey is about 3 years old. That's my story.
Re: what started you on this long musical road....
*double splorf @ Q & Dave*
Q, can he just let you keep the fingers?
Myself, during nursing school in the late 90s, my aunt Maureen asked if I would fill in for her playing flute in our family plastic paddy band Relatively Irish -- she was pregnant & couldn't handle the smokey venues. I played silver flute & actually cut the dots for Drowsy Maggie out of O'Neill's & taped it to the mike stand. I still shudder at the thought of those goofy gigs, when I actually looked forward to playing Wild Rover, etc.
Fast forward to the Navajo Indian reservation where I started working as a nurse in November 2001. Took all the language & culture classes, but then realized, Wow I'm not Navajo & I never will be. Even the Native American flute held little interest for me. Enter Julie, beginner fiddle player from Boston, she's a doctor with long red hair, family in Donegal. Once she passed her boards, she had 3 hours a day to do something else & her husband suggested she pick up the fiddle. (What else do you do in the middle of nowhere?) She heard I had played flute at the Christmas concert & tracked me down one day in the newborn nursery. "Are you Emily? I hear you play flute, I play fiddle, Irish mostly, I want someone to play tunes with!" Didn't start learning by ear til that summer (about the same time I joined this blessed website), got my blackwood flute September 2002, first workshop June 2003 with Kevin Crawford, & that's why he'll always be my musical hero. Shoot, if you could locate & read all my posts on here, it will basically tell you the whole story & how I've now ended up in Baltimore surrounded by top drawer players & sessions almost every night of the week & more flute lessons than you can shake a stick at. If it wasn't for Julie & Jeremy, I'd never be where I am now, so I'm extremely grateful to both of them.
& believe it or not, that's the *short* story. We won't even discuss the black widows, single digit humidity or tupperware.
Re: what started you on this long musical road....
...and now that you've "ended up" in Baltimore, Emily it's time to come up to Phila for a visit with me and some tunes with some really good players, here, too!
Re: what started you on this long musical road....
My true story is that I was in business with my father, making pots of money, my first child had just been born and one day Mrs Dave came in from shopping with a big yellow ONiells and a whistle, and said "You need another interest". She showed me how a scale of D looked on paper, and how this corresponded to the fingers on the whistle. I remembered my music teacher at school saying "Tone Tone Semitone Tone Tone Tone Semitone".
That was about 20 years ago now.
At that time I was doing the record/cassette sleeves for Traditional Sound Recordings, and also some print for Tony Sullivan (Sully). So I had various resources for hearing and learning tunes
About 6 weeks later I met Pied Piper - whom I have met about twice since then (and it was downhill all the way).
I gave up making pots of money, cos there's no happiness in it, and went to be a gardener, living in a caravan (that's a trailer to our US brothers) but stuck to playing music cos theres fun there.
So really Q, your story nearly fits me (except that I wouldn't call Mrs Dave a wretched old woman - in case she got to hear of it).
Ah well - posters advertising artificial ankle joints to print now - must go.
Re: what started you on this long musical road....
Great stories!
I was trying to reconnect with my family roots. My mother's parents were both born in Caernarvon, and came to the States about 1900 (separately, my grandfather a boy of 16 and my grandmother a 2-yr old). My mom was the child of Grandpa's middle age and I was the child of hers, so he died age 86 when I was only 9. But I remembered the music he used to listen to and sing, and a few words and phrases of Welsh (Grandma wasn't fluent, her folks stopped speaking it when they emigrated). Looking for that, I ran into Robin Huw Bowen, Fernhill, Rag Foundation, etc. Shortly after that a friend gave me his little 17-string harp, which I'd always wanted to learn to play (he upgraded to a bigger harp; so have I since, although I still have, and still play, the little one).
Then I encountered the Tannahill Weavers and Silly Wizard, and bought Green Linnet's 25-yr sampler CD. Drooled over several tracks on that, and got to Kevin Burke's version of The Butterfly and literally sat there and cried through the whole track. That and Johnny Cunningham's work got me back into fiddle. Now my folk cd collection outnumbers my jazz and classical collections combined, and is threatening to overtake my husband's Wagner collection into the bargain. And I practice every night!
Irish, Welsh, & Scottish music grab my guts the way nothing else does --- not even the Karfreitagszauber in Parsifal. I'm here to stay, and there's enough to occupy me for several lifetimes at least. ;)
Sara
Re: what started you on this long musical road....
You didn't come across as such Emily. Seemed cool to me. Now I've got the urge to meet more thesession people. Perhaps Catskills-- I'm still working on plans for that though-- guess that's a different thread. I'm done now.
Re: what started you on this long musical road....
I sort of grew up with folk singing, through my mother and grandfather, and then was attracted to Dylan/Baez/Woody guthrie/Pete Seeger etc. There were occasional references to ITM here and there in my world, I guess. I always played music of some kind on piano, guitar, recorder etc.
By 1976 I was seriously dabbling in THAT kind of folk and also fairly seriously playing early music on recorder and guitar. I got married to a guy of Irish extraction and his sisters gave me a copy of O'Niells and a Chieftans album for Xmas. (I think they were getting sick of hearing early music through the wall.)
While I've continued to play various sorts of music over the years Irish music has always been very important to me since then. (I long since divorced the husband, but the copy of O'Niells has never left my side!)
- Kris
Re: what started you on this long musical road....
I'm actually a deep undercover IRS agent working for the Tax man. I didn't really start playing flute until I signed up for this job which seemed to be an odd, but rather interesting assignment.
Only joking (thanks to the person who gave me the idea)
Re: what started you on this long musical road....
My dad and my uncle had been playing trad (fiddle and flute, respectively) since before I entered the world, so I was absorbed in the sounds in utero and surrounded by sessions as a toddler on up. I realized soon enough that when I wanted a peanut butter sandwich, but my dad was playing "just one more" tune, I had might as well give up. Then I started playing the piano to keep him company, because the sandwiches were not forthcoming. Now I mostly play a flute crafted by that uncle, and my five younger siblings all play, as well as many cousins and more aunts. Family gatherings are beyond delight.
Re: what started you on this long musical road....
Thi is just to add: that playing music with my dad has added the greatest closeness to our relationship: the closeness of the hardcore geekfest. I couldn't be more grateful than I am for such a great opportunity to spend time with my dad over the thing he loves most (other than family!)
Also, _Steph_, my family was at Goderich that year... as well as every other year since its inception! The sessions with Peter and John and Joe were powerful, powerful stuff, I agree. Will I see you there this year?
Re: what started you on this long musical road....
Well, for me it started many years ago when I was but 5 years old. My mum, who was at the time becoming a born-again Jew, had bought a casette of "Fiddler on the Roof".I really liked it (well, at 5, I was happy and enthusiastic about everything, so this was no different). Anyway, I asked for a violin, and my mum, having just cursed some rich bastard with music for not giving her any water (just joking), thought this was a great idea and happily obliged.
Anyway, 2 or 3 years later, my violin teacher was preparing me for a mini-concert of all her students, and seeing as my dad was Irish, decided to teach me "Down by the Sally Gardens" to please him. It worked, and since then,the tunes have just been getting faster and faster.
Re: what started you on this long musical road....
I got a guitar when I graduated from a California high school in 1971. Then I worked in a music shop after college in 1975 and got a pretty good classical guitar from Union Grove Music in Santa Cruz. I made some tapes off KFAT radio and drove a 1966 Volkswagen beetle, no radio, to Florida in 1976 listening to those tapes. There I traded the guitar for a banjo and a mandolin. Used to play the banjo on the covered porch leaning back in a chair on the old “Florida cracker” style house.
Sixteen years later, in 1991, I learned the names of some of the tunes. “Boys of Blue Hill” fingerpicked on a steel string guitar and a fast, echoing, haunting version of “Sailor’s Bonnet” on fiddle. Only after I got the fiddle did I learn the names of these and other tunes, many old time tune, on the tapes I had made in 1975. But those tunes formed a reference for years in my memory from listening, associated with locations and events like driving across country. I would never have learned the names of the tunes, especially the fiddle tunes if I had not gotten a fiddle in 1991 on whim to try something without frets. I have since digitized, .wav ed and .mp3 ed many of those taped tunes.
Here in Florida we have sessions and contra dances which supplied more named and nameless tunes, which I’m trying to fiddle away, but I think it all relates back to driving around listening. I still do not listen to the radio in the car, almost only CD’s.
Re: what started you on this long musical road....
You had to ask... In a galaxy far, far away... oops wrong movie...
It all started in the mid 60s in High School (anyone remember Hootenanny???) with Leadbelly,Pete Seeger, Doc Watson, Mike Seeger, Dillards (huh?) and Mississippi John Hurt. I hung out with the guitar players at lunch time. Learned La Bamba. Graduated to the Beatles, Byrds, Dylan, Baez, Airplane, the Dead, et all during the Summer of Love.
By the early 70s and after Sticky Fingers, R&R seemed to decline for me. Started listening to Baroque and early music because it didn't sound so over produced and dubbed. I was listening to John Davis on KPFK and heard, ta-da, defining moment, Fairport Convention doing Tam Lin and the Deserter. Thinking I remembered those tunes, I dug up some old song books and found some nifty songs. I was soon looking for Fairport records. On a lark, I went to the Ash Grove one nite and heard a group named Steeleye Span. I went back for the rest of their shows, 3-4 in all. Now I started looking for SES stuff as well.
Having decided to get married, I wanted a band with a fiddle or two for the music at our marriage. I found a band from a long gone pub in Los Angeles ( drinks all around for those who can remember the pub in the ARCO towers), and they introduced me to the Chieftains and Planxty ( circa 1974 ish). Saw the Chieftains (their first tour here in the states) in 1975 or so at UCLA, 3rd row and was hooked on the sound of Paddy Maloney's pipes. Worked up in the bay area for a bit, hung out at the Plough and Stars and the Starry Plough. Met Dennis Brooks at one of the first Lark in the Morning music camps.
I eventually got a mandolin, a fiddle, two whistles and a practice Uilleann Pipe set as a result, but not all at once. The practice set ultimately died here in California, but not before going to Irleand and meeting Matt Kiernan. Do you know how hard it was to find an Uilleann Piper in Southern California in 1977??
And just who are these guys, Sean O'Raida, the Bothy Band, Na Fili, Tomas O'Cannan, Seamus Ennis, Leo Rowsome, Michael O' Sullivan (keyboards), the Boys of the Lough, Allastair Frazier, Brian McNamara?? Went to the Renn Faire and listened to Sylvia Woods play O'Carolan (kudos to the other thread that reminded me).
Kids, work, bicycle racing intervened and I gradually had less interest in playing ( but not buying CDs).
A few years ago, one of my work mates started bringing his guitar to work. I brought mine ( did I tell you that I still have a Gibson 12 string that my mom got me in high school?? Sounds and plays great but is truck to play fast). We played. I bought a Martin. I dumped the mandolin and cleaned and retuned the fiddle. I took fiddle lessons. The internet found me and I bought a 1/2 set of Uilleann Pipes about a year ago. A trip to Cork City to meet my daughter who was at UCC for a year ensued, where I re-met Dennis Brooks of the Starry Plough fame in Berkeley, CA after 20+years.
I started looking for sessions I could feel comfortable playing. I started hanging out on this site and C&F. I started looking for pipers to instruct me-Southern California Uilleann Pipers Club to the rescue.
And that, as they say, is why I'm learning the Humors of Ballyloughlin as played by David Powers.
Writing this felt like the Billy Joel song, We didn't light the Fire-your personal music history in 25 paragraphs or less.
Please xcuse the spelling errors...Your pick for the next tune... how about ...?
Re: what started you on this long musical road....
this is a good thread witk good stories, peopel are talking about themselves in open ways. I think we all wonder sometimes, how it came to be, that we spend every spare moment pursuing such a singular passion.......
Re: what started you on this long musical road....
My older brother got a guitar in 1969 when I was 15, fell out with my dad and left the farm and the guitar. I got the guitar.
A friend who owed me money bought a mandolin in 1975. I got the mandolin.It must have been November, because he had ducked into Mick Lewis's music shop in Melbourne while we were out on a huge demonstration protesting the sacking of Gough Whitlam.
Not as simple as that of course - I already wanted a guitar, I already wanted a mandolin,
inspired by local players such as Louis McManus http://www.louismcmanus.com/ and Kerryn Tolhursthttp://www.quilltolhurst.com/kerryn_tolhurst_biography.html
and sounds I heard on record like Ry Cooder, Rory Gallagher and the mandolin bits on Rod Stewart's early records. Seeing Gallagher do "Going to My Hometown" in Melbourne circa 1974 was a real eye/ear-opener.
Somehow the idea of traditional music, Irish music mainly, was always around. At gatherings in the bush, weddings, funerals, whatever, there would be someone with an accordion, playing songs mostly, Botany Bay, Wild Colonial Boy etc. People would say "Oh, your great-uncle Dan or Paddy or Con or whoever was a great fiddler." But it seemed that no one in subsequent generations played- why had it petered out? Where had it gone? I still don't know. Perhaps life in Australia was too comfortable.
Irish music then meant the Clancy brothers and Dubliners records we would play at parties, or out in the mining camps at night. I liked the wildness in their sound. I liked the fiddle tunes in the folk-revival "Bush Bands" of the 70s, not realising that about 75% were cribbed straight off Irish records! I thought they were Australian. Later I heard the Chieftains and Planxty. I was smitten by the mandolin in "Well Below the Valley" which I think I bought mainly because of its beautiful cover.
I ended up in Scotland and met a load of Orcadians and Shetlanders through my wife's friends - their slant on music seemed to be exactly what I had in mind with a few surprises as well. I've been bit of a musical magpie on my travels, picking up tunes as I go, and don't have a particular fixation on Irish music. Did I say I also spent time in Texas?
"What a long strange trip it's been" and the journey continues.
Re: what started you on this long musical road....
I took up guitar because I was envious of the ability of friends to impress women by late-night bedsit performances of soulful singer-songwriter stuff (blech). I proved miserable at the guitar and even worse at soulful singing but didn't want to admit it and took to hanging around in folk clubs.
On the way home from one folk-club night having consumed a skinful of beer I stopped in at the local chippy where I met a bigmouth guitarist who told me all he needed was a fiddler to complete the lineup of his supergroup. "I can play fiddle," I remember assuring him through the haze of my drunkenness and the steam in the chipshop. I couldn't to save my life, but I had had a few desultory years of violin lessons at school.
So I dusted off the violin and joined a "folk group". A few months later I shared a flat with a Frenchman who had Bothy Band and Planxty records and "le virage irlandais" began in earnest.
A few months after that I heard Martin Byrnes and my fate was sealed.
A few months after that I moved to London and started hanging around sessions where Danny Meehan, Michael Hines and many of the other great musicians there in the 1970s played. It's been nearly 30 years now and I still love the music to bits.
Re: what started you on this long musical road....
It was a case of being in the right place at the right time. The time was the mid-seventies, the place my university where an ITM group played at some party. I liked what they did, they wanted a guitarist. I had been into folk music in a more general sense since my early teens.
Re: what started you on this long musical road....
Don't sneer - Jimmy Shand, John Kirkpatrick and Alistair Anderson. They turned me into a (in)human metronome and dance tune database.
Along the way, the towering Chieftans, helped by Planxty, De Dannan and the Bothy, set me on the ITM trail.
Re: what started you on this long musical road....
What interesting roads to Damascus you all have! After two or three years of violin lessons at school, my teacher told me to go out and buy O'Neill's 1001. When we next met, I was told to open at no. 662, Drowsy Maggie. I learnt two things that day, a cracking tune and that the dots were an aid, not Holy Writ. Until then I had been taught to play exactly what was on the sheet. The teacher, Eddie Foley, had me keeping my 1st finger on the D string for the first 3 bars. I didn't do much for the next few years until I bought the Bothy Band 1975 album. So, blame Drowsy Maggie and the Kesh Jig set.
Re: what started you on this long musical road....
I guess for me it was looking around my chaotic work office life and wanting something constant like my right arm going back and forth constantly. A benchmark.
Plus I figured living in the American South for so many years I would need something to show for it if I ever left.
Re: what started you on this long musical road....
well, lets crank up the ole mental database. i can hardly believe i've been "into" ITM for ten years now.
played trumpet before i jumped on the itm wagon. symphonic bands, orchestras, jazz bands, quintets...loved that. but had my trumpet stolen during the last year of college, and so there was a musical void in my life. took a trip after graduation to ireland, encountered doolin among other lovely places, and got a whistle. upon returning to chicago, i decided to take some whistle lessons for fun to break the 9-5 monotony (okay, to pick up chicks...) Well, the teacher happened to be Larry Nugent. Didn't know him from adam, but i was absolutely completely blown off my freaking rocker. Larry was really into teaching at that time too, had great stories, great tunes, had just won his first all-ireland. in short, was hooked. aaaah, remember those days fondly. Really i'm in awe that that connection happened; i mean it changed my life.
now...i happen to be living in mexico. the one irish pub in this town called "celts" which serves the guiness "on tap in the can" i noticed just last weekend had closed shop. was hopin to pick up some latin babes on st. paddy's day, but oh well.
anyway, i play every day. wouldn't even call in practice....just a habit of living. my vecinos probably think its hell....but i'm not in a mexican jail...yet.......
what started you on this long musical road....
what started you on this long musical road....
I am very curious to know how everyone got started on this long musical road. What/who made you pick up your instrument for the first time or changed your direction to Irish Music.
When I was a teenager ( about 200 years ago ) I desperately wanted to be an electric bass player. Played it badly for about 2 years untill I was given a tape that changed my life. I never liked Irish music at all until then, but now it is a huge part of my life. Read more here if you like
http://www.chinatogalway.com/how%20it%20all%20started.htm
Now play the mandolin, and bouzouki, a thousand miles from the bass. Can't imagine my life with out it all now........
So what got you on the long musical journey of Irish music, instrument playing and session addiction ?
KS
http://www.chinatogalway.com/
# Posted on May 24th 2004 by KS
Re: what started you on this long musical road....
Good topic, Kieran, and one we haven't had for a very long time. Me, I got started through the dancing to be able to play at shows, it seemed a logical progression, except that now it's sort of spread over until it's taken over my life...my husband is upstairs working on one of the Crowley's right now, and we're talking about a guy who was a goth/alternative/industrial dj until he met me...
# Posted on May 24th 2004 by Zina Lee
Re: what started you on this long musical road....
I was edging into it sideways, having grown up hearing Irish and Scots tinged Appalachian songs like Old Joe Clark and worked them out on 5-string banjo, and then mandolin. As a teenager, I lived in suburban Philadelphia and used to listen to public radio on WXPN. Mick Moloney had a program on late at night, and I started listening to it after teaching bluegrass lessons all evening. I liked the music, but one night it leapt out of the radio and grabbed me by the proverbial....heartstrings (git yer minds out of the gutter
. I was making a midnight snack, slicing a tomato, and nearly cut my thumb in half when Mick introduced a new cd by the Bothy Band (this was in 1975 or '76), and they launched into Farewell to Erin. I remember running to grab my banjo and trying to play along--how hopeless that was, though I got the basic chord structure.
A few weeks later I was teaching myself guitar and started flatpicking some tunes--Flowers of Edinburgh, Drowsy Maggie, Rights of Man. But what I wanted was the growl of the fiddle on that opening bit of Farewell to Erin. A pawnshop fiddle, a few intro lessons from a local old timey player, and 29 years later Farewell to Erin is still one of my favorite tunes....
# Posted on May 24th 2004 by Will CPT
Re: what started you on this long musical road....
Hah, I wrote a profile for exactly this purpose. Now all I have to say is: "click on the red Dow".
# Posted on May 24th 2004 by Dow
Re: what started you on this long musical road....
I wasn't exposed to the music, being in the ITM isolated area that I am, so I didn't even discover it until I was 13 or so (about 2.00 years ago). It was just a recording that I heard, and I really liked it, and I found out more and more about the music, and here I am. I suppose one of the biggest reasons that I love the music so much is due to some freinds of mine, the Wood Family. They have six kids, and all but the baby play fiddle and dance, and one of their boys plays mandolin/octave mandolin. They love it so much, and seeing how much they loved it really encouraged me to pick it up more, and learn even faster. And I now I find myself loving it as much if not more than do. I really think that discovering this music was one of the best things that ever happened to me. I might also add that I started learning a lot more when I found the session.org. That was a huge pick-up point for me. I don't really post that much, but I do a lot of lurking, which is sometimes the best way to learn stuff. I have also learned a whole bunch by emailing members that I met through this site, and I made a bunch of freinds (even though we've never "met") at the same time! I think that the ITM community is really awesome. I mean, I can ask people dumb questions, and they'll go way out of their way to help me out. And we all have something in common. The music. Even though we might have totally diferent views, we always have the music to fall back on. I think that's really cool.
OK, shutting up. Sorry to rant.
-Max
# Posted on May 24th 2004 by Max Becher
Re: what started you on this long musical road....
Like Dow's, my bio tells all - well not quite, but I have no intention of out-Dowing Dow
Trevor
# Posted on May 24th 2004 by lazyhound
Re: what started you on this long musical road....
Oh on to my story about music first off without music my life would be pointless wait a minuet (ha ha) music *is* my life. Well my first instrument I could say was Bass Guitar when I was very young but I didn't really play so forget about that part. When I was in 6th grade I decided to play Bassoon in the school band I also played Bass then like actually played but didn't I got good later. So later I picked up guitar and drums just cause I felt like it. In the summer before 8th grade I got into Dropkick Murphys but that will come later. So it was early in 8th grade and I really liked the band the Mighty Mighty BossTones (they are a ska band and I am wearing a shirt with the logo right now) so I was in thier website and followed a link to the record labels site. One this site I was listening to bands and I low and behold there was Flogging Molly I heard them and was amazed so I bought there CD. So it is the summer last year and I am at this music camp and on one day as we do every week (it is a week at a time) we were at a music store I had a $10 gift certificate because they give you one. So I see a tin whistle know what it is beacuse of Dropkick and Flogging they both have them. IT was a Sweetone so it was about $10 I decide to buy it I didn't learn how to play right away though. So a few months later I am in a town in Mexico and see a Mandolin in a music shop beg my parents to get it for me they did I also didn't learn how to play till I got into fiddlin' a while later. So it was September last year and I buy a tin whistle book and it just comes naturally to me cause I played many instruments already. I made a goal to lay most session instruments by the time I am 21 it is going pretty well.
Music is what I love, all I do is play it.
# Posted on May 24th 2004 by Goblicious
Re: what started you on this long musical road....
*splorf* I outdow --- I outdowd --- I have outdown
# Posted on May 24th 2004 by Dow
Re: what started you on this long musical road....
No dowt...
# Posted on May 24th 2004 by Will CPT
Re: what started you on this long musical road....
D'ow!
# Posted on May 24th 2004 by Dow
Re: what started you on this long musical road....
I was lucky enough to be around in Ireland during the "revival" of the seventies, and to go to concerts by the Bothies, Planxty, De Dannan, Stockton's Wing, and all the rest of the bands that were starting out around that time. I loved the music, and that love stayed with me ever since.
However, back then I really wanted to be a folk/blues/ragtime guitarist, and spent all my time learning the styles of people like John Renbourne, Stefan Grossman, and Guy Van Duser. I had a grand time of it and even got some minor paying gigs.
Only in the last few years - in my forties, and living in Canada - did I get the bug to actually try and play the stuff I grew up with, and now I'm having more fun and satisfaction with music than ever. I sometimes find myself wishing I'd taken up ITM many years ago when I lived close to the well, so to speak. But no, I think these things work out for the best. I'm "ready" to learn to play ITM now.
I suspect it's easier for someone living outside Ireland to be a late starter. It doesn't feel like I'm an adult trying to squeeze into a kindergartener's chair.
# Posted on May 24th 2004 by grego
Re: what started you on this long musical road....
Git Dow'n wit'it!
but seriously, folks, music has always been a big part of my life. I just can't imagine a life without it.
When I discovered ITM a few years ago, it was an epiphany...I'm still saying to myself, "this is the music I was meant to play" and sing.
# Posted on May 24th 2004 by ketida
Re: what started you on this long musical road....
I was listening to Baroque music at first. I loved the chamber music of Bach, Couperin, Telemann, etc. (Actually I'm still listening.) Then.... See the rest of the story at http://slainte.web.infoseek.co.jp/profile_en.html It always needs revising though.
# Posted on May 24th 2004 by slainte
Re: what started you on this long musical road....
Hello All, Back in 1984,2 years into an Irish traditional folk radio show(now in its 23rd year)I was falling in love with flutes.Since I simply could'nt afford one,I settled on a 6 dollar'Feadog in D to see if there was any music in me.Guess what? There was and my playing friends now tell me I'm coming out from the shadow of my late friend and mentor,Gordon Cote,the best Cape Breton fiddler I've ever heard.Irish music moves me like no other.Learning to play is the single best thing I've ever done.In fact,I've just ordered a seery D flute.I think I'm ready
Paul
# Posted on May 24th 2004 by Musicofireland
Re: what started you on this long musical road....
I was diagnosed with diabetes about 4 years ago and my doctor asked me what kind of music I liked. I had bought just bought a CD by The Irish Decendents and loved it, so I told him I liked Irish. Since I was in the hospital the next day he brought me some Van Morrison and Chieftains cds. When I first heard it, it was the first time I had truly been happy since being in the hospital. After that, I pursued it more and more, and now its a huge part of my life.
Johnathan
# Posted on May 24th 2004 by Harper_Lad
Re: what started you on this long musical road....
My tuppence worth is here, on Aidan's "Fork in the Road" thread:
http://www.thesession.org/discussions/display.php/2354/
# Posted on May 24th 2004 by Tish
Re: what started you on this long musical road....
i was a singer-songwriter playing at the same club as a fiddle-guitar duo who played irish, first time i'd ever heard anything like it....so i started learning it,, that was 1979, i still struggle with: Should i be doing my own stuff or should i continue down this path called "learn this one now, now this one, hey have you ever heard this one? times 6,000, no wait, times 17,348.001
# Posted on May 24th 2004 by vboyd100
Re: what started you on this long musical road....
I first heard ITM back in 1975 after being connected a new thing called "Cable TV" I didn’t have a TV so I hooked it up to my radio and turned the dial to KPFA broadcasting out of Berkeley and happened upon a show called "The Cat In The Corner" that was playing something by a group called, “The Chieftains.” Not even realizing it was Irish music, I was instantly swept away with it, and I promptly taped my dial where it was so I wouldn’t lose it. On this same show they played “The Bothy Band,” “Planxty,” “Stockton’s Wing,” “De Dannan” etc., and I was hooked.
Up until that time I was a music major in college and was performing medieval and renaissance music in "The Woods So Wylde Consortium". I also played piano in a Latin Jazz band called "Incognito" and I was the music director for the "Chimera Dance Troupe" and played a variety of Middle Eastern wind and percussion instruments. (Yes, even shaky-eggs)
To me, the music of "The Chieftains" sounded very similar to the Early music I was playing at the time, except it sounded like it was alive and kicking and not being resurrected from the dead. I soon found out that the difference I heard was the fact that ITM is a living musical art form. With that in mind, (and just the fact that the music was so great), in 1980 I gave up the medieval and renaissance music, turned in my turban, parted with my jazz band, and turned my interests towards this strange little box with bellows and buttons on it. (Luckily it was anglo smirk)
Living in the Central Valley proved to be too far away from the music to properly learn how it's played, so I turned my life upside down and moved to San Francisco in 1985. As it happened the following year Noel Hill showed up in San Francisco to play at "The Plough” with James Kelly. I organized concertina workshops for him and began taking private lessons that occurred about every 6 months when Noel came to town with James. I also had acquired a flute and organized flute workshops for players that came through the city, the late great Frankie Kennedy among them. It soon became very clear that moving to San Francisco was a good move indeed. After arriving in SF I joined a group called "Out Of The Rain" for a couple of years, and from about 1989 to 1998 fiddler, Scott Renfort and I were the sole hosts of the Sunday night session at "The Plough". We also formed a group called “Tipsy House” that I still keep busy to this day.
I’ve made a handful of trips to Ireland over the years that proved to solidify my desire to continue following the ITM muse. And I have a feeling that I’ll be following it to my grave as well. It’s far too late for me… all you newbes take heed… run now while you still can!
# Posted on May 24th 2004 by Phantom Button
Re: what started you on this long musical road....
Ah, now there's a tale.
I used to be a high-flying, stinking rich bastard you see, who hob-nobbed with the rich, the famous and the royal. Until that fateful day, at that crossroads in the middle of the desert, where I had my limo driver pull over so I could stretch my legs.
There I was accosted by a wretched old woman who asked me for a drink of water.
Now, I only had a refrigerator full of the stuff (next to the really expensive champagne), but it was mine all mine so I told the old crone to sod off: "Sod off, old crone"
Oooooh... my arrogance and hubris were about to get bitch-slapped all the way to the dirty desert floor. She cursed me, that wyrd old woman did, she cursed me good: "You will fall from fortune and fame, and flute instead for the folk until your fingers fall off".
Wretched and dirty, yes, but what a flair for alliteration!
And since that day I've lost my many millions, my chateau in the South of France, my island in the Caribbean, my fleet of helicopters and my bevy of admirers. Worse still! I've not been able to go more than an hour or two without picking up the damn diddle-stick and tooting at people, or animals, or small houses. And my fingers are starting to fall off.
Won't be long now...
# Posted on May 24th 2004 by Q
Re: what started you on this long musical road....
There's the helicopter reference again. Must be a bodhran player thing.
# Posted on May 24th 2004 by Phantom Button
Re: what started you on this long musical road....
As to the music - I don't remember. Possibly my ITM tastes were extracted from my interest for World Music (God forgive me) in early teens. Then I've listened to Polish bands of ITM - we had two. And to the "Folk Hour" on the Polish radio, picking Irish and Scottish tunes from among Arabian, Persian, Latin and Chinese music. At that time I didn't play ITM yet.
The guy's name was Fergal, he was playing on Fridays in the Monrose Tavern in Galway. Taught me the basics of DADGAD guitar, like three or four lessons; after that it went on by itself. And the Galway University Traditional Music Society was my starting zone, I wouldn't have dreamt of a better start. If only the follow up was not so miserable, *sigh*
# Posted on May 24th 2004 by EastPole
Re: what started you on this long musical road....
Q, sometimes you are truly whacked out!
Jonathan, you had one very cool doctor to take the time to bring music into the hospital for you, let alone that it was *Irish* music!
Will, which suburub of Phila did you grow up in? And that's back in the day when WXPN was good. It's mostly all singer-songwriter stuff now, and they play the same "hits" over and over. (I am forced to listen to it all day at work!)
My story, like most is not completely linear. But I'll give you the short version.
Well, I was starting to re-explore some early and medieval music. I was hoping to join the SCA. (I never did by the way...) This somewhow led to stuff like Loreena McKennit and then to a few "Celtic" harpers like Kim Robertson. I remembered my friend had a couple old cassettes of Alan Stivell and Patrick Ball. I taped them from her, and another friend taped a couple Clannad Cd's for me.
I got this idea that I should learn to play Celtic harp. (I was in a really dry period creativity wise. I wasn't painting anymore.) I didn't really know the term "Irish music" yet. It took me 2 years of researching and thinking about it and looking at a few harps in a dusty old shop in Phila. which was open only by appointment. (the shop no longer exists.) I found my teacher one day while looking through one of the local Irish- American newspapers. There she was with 2 harp students who just placed at the Fleadh. There was a phone number and I called.
I have been taking lessons every Saturday with her (Kathy DeAngelo) now for almost 8 years. I switched to fiddle with my teacher 2 and a half years ago.
My bio says it, the music has changed my life. As you all can attest to as well.....
# Posted on May 24th 2004 by Andee
Re: what started you on this long musical road....
I was playing bass in a Zep style rock band when I was 15 and I clocked a photo on the back of one of my dad's LPs. It was Donal Lunny on the back of Planxty's The Well Below the Valley and I thought, "He looks cool, I love his cheeky leather waist coat and his hair is only a little bit longer than mine. I want to be him. I'm gonna ask my dad for a bazouki for my 16th birthday."
# Posted on May 24th 2004 by llig leahcim
Re: what started you on this long musical road....
A couple of years ago I was house sitting for someone in Brittany, and one afternoon with nothing to do I happened upon an old fiddle and a book and CD of Irish music (the book was the Roche collection, I don't remember what the CD was, it was a compilation of something). Seeing as at the time I played (and still do to an extent) viola, and remebering that the fiddle hadn't been played for years, I figured that I'd "have a go". Then later on in the week a friend of mine took me to see a band with one of his friends playing, and they turn out to be playing a mixture of Irish, Shetland and Breton music, and that sealed it.
Anders
# Posted on May 24th 2004 by weefreefidler
Yaketty Dakendy Dai... De Dakendy
Someone lent me Planxty's The Well Below the Valley. The first track I put on was Cunla. Hooked on the music. That was 1974 I think.
Someone else showed me the fingering for the whistle, two or three years later. Hooked on *playing* the music.
Another year or 2 passed. I heard some of After The Break on radio, with Molloy on flute. Hooked on flute, but another year or two passed before I could afford one.
About the same time I started taking the whistle out to sessions in Sheffield - hooked on playing sessions.
I don't practice anywhere near enough nowadays - never seem to have time. But make up for it at sessions.
# Posted on May 24th 2004 by Key Maniac Lad
Re: what started you on this long musical road....
I was on my way to a fancy dress party, driving across a stretch of desert, when my car broke down, so my only hope was to start walking and try to find help.
I was dressed as an old woman.
When I came near to a crossroad a big posh limo pulled up, and a rich man got out to stretch his legs, so I went to ask him for a drink of water . . .
# Posted on May 24th 2004 by showaddydadito
Re: what started you on this long musical road....
My parents noticed I had an ear for music when they observed me playing tunes on anything that would make discernable notes, such as Pepsi bottles filled to varying heights with water. I got a guitar when I was 10 and they made me take lessons. I did impressively well, looking at the page in the lesson book, but playing the tune by ear. My ruse was discovered, of course, when I got to a song I didn't know. Anywho, my well-meaning but misled older brother tried to turn me on to rock music and he bought me lots of records that had limited appeal for me. It was accoustic music I liked. I didn't want to listen to any instrument that needed to be plugged in. As a teen I listened to folk music, and all my friends started playing and singing folk songs. Playing music gave our get-togethers a purpose, and that is how it still is with me today. The music is the reason I leave my home.
When I was in my mid-twenties I left Chicago for Allegan, Michigan. A guy put a fiddle in my hands and talked me into giving him $150 for it. It is an interesting looking instrument, made with bird's eye maple. I got into a crowd of southern musicians and learned to play southern style. Eventually my circle of friends included Irish musicians. At a party I picked up a mandolin for the first time, and my bass-playing buddy Spike said "We're gonna get you a mandolin." His wife loaned me the money and I went to Elderly Instruments in Lansing to get my mandolin. My current fiddle came to me from Jan Bloom, a luthier in Kalamazoo, who said I could have it if I would give him fiddle lessons. In 1984 I moved to Vermont and fell in with the contra dance crowd and now I play a lot of Canadian tunes, along with the Irish and southern.
The story of my life. Wanna hear about my kids?
Kate
# Posted on May 24th 2004 by rocking bow
Re: what started you on this long musical road....
Great stuff, and very interesting putting stories to names! Keep em coming
# Posted on May 24th 2004 by KS
Re: what started you on this long musical road....
Old woman, er, man, no wait... Dave! If I buy you a drink do you promise not to lift the curse?
# Posted on May 24th 2004 by Q
Re: what started you on this long musical road....
Goderich Celtic Roots Festival - August 2000.
Went there for a motorcycle ride/camping trip/general drunken boondoggle with an old roomate of mine.
Wound up imbibing heavy quantities of alcohol at that little bar next to the festival grounds with Jonny Hardie of the Old Blind Dogs, got drug off to a house session in the middle of the night, where I was exposed to this music for the first time. I didn't know it then, but in that kitchen was Julie Schryer, Joe Grady, John Carty, Patrick Orceau, Peter Horan, Pat O'Gorman, and others I cannot name. I remember looking through a haze of smoke and intoxication at the clock around 5AM, wondering if I was really seeing it and really there.
I was so jazzed up about the whole deal I came home and bought a fiddle, found a teacher, and the rest is fairly interesting history.
# Posted on May 24th 2004 by _Steph_
Re: what started you on this long musical road....
What I am thinking - August 2001...just feels like it's been longer than that...
# Posted on May 24th 2004 by _Steph_
Re: what started you on this long musical road....
Probably in this order is how i got hooked. Horslips the "Tain" album, then Kevin Burke "If the Cap Fits", Noel Hill and Tony Linnane, then seeing all three of them at a festival in the mid seventies in Belfast. Going to Tom Kellys in the Short Strand. Tommy Peoples High part of the Road then one week workshop with the same man.Bothy Band Live Album, then first visit to Miltown and that was it. Sessions in London with the likes of Bobby Casey, Brendan Mulkere, Ormond Waters Brendan Ring. Sessons in Birmingham with very young but scaringly good Kevin Crawford, Mick Conneely, Bredan Boyle, Enda and Joe Molloy, John McEvoy. Then back home to the black north and very occasional but inspirational sessions with Andy Dixon, Micheal Clarkson, Spike, Martin McGinley, Aidan Walsh, Ruari O`Kane, the McSherrys, Buzz, John Creaven, Oggie, Meabh O`Hare and many others. Visits to Glencolmkille lessons from Peter Tracy and tunes with James Byrne, Morris Bradley and Siobhan Peoples. Now every Tuesday with Brendan,Mark Mulligan, Stevie and Stevie Mulholland, Kirsten, Big Chris and Brian. The odd divergence down to Westport to meet the Muddleys or Mick Conneeely and trips to Tubber,Drumshambo what more does it take to keep you at it.
# Posted on May 24th 2004 by johnny
Re: what started you on this long musical road....
I kind of took the roundabout way into things. I took lessons from Chris Norman long before I knew what Irish music was, but he exposed me to some of the basic techniques like cuts and rolls. A number of years after I took from him, my family went to Cape Breton, and the first thing I heard on the island was the Chieftain produced "Fire in the Kitchen" CD. I then heard several Cape Breton fiddlers play, and picked up a few of their CDs. Shortly after the Nova Scotia trip, the Corrs came about, and I bought their recordings, and the stuff I liked best was the instrumentals. I then went to a few Irish/Scottish festivals, and bought a few CDs. After hearing that stuff, I decided I wanted to put classical music off to the side and try my hand at Irish music. A semester abroad in Galway afforded me a great opportunity with the music, and it was then that I realized that after all of these years (I sound like an old man-- really, only about 8 years elapsed during this entire story), I was playing the kind of stuff that Chris had taught me when I was a bit younger. Guess the music has always sort of been there, but really, this journey is about 3 years old. That's my story.
# Posted on May 25th 2004 by Jason G
Re: what started you on this long musical road....
*double splorf @ Q & Dave*
Q, can he just let you keep the fingers?
Myself, during nursing school in the late 90s, my aunt Maureen asked if I would fill in for her playing flute in our family plastic paddy band Relatively Irish -- she was pregnant & couldn't handle the smokey venues. I played silver flute & actually cut the dots for Drowsy Maggie out of O'Neill's & taped it to the mike stand. I still shudder at the thought of those goofy gigs, when I actually looked forward to playing Wild Rover, etc.
Fast forward to the Navajo Indian reservation where I started working as a nurse in November 2001. Took all the language & culture classes, but then realized, Wow I'm not Navajo & I never will be. Even the Native American flute held little interest for me. Enter Julie, beginner fiddle player from Boston, she's a doctor with long red hair, family in Donegal. Once she passed her boards, she had 3 hours a day to do something else & her husband suggested she pick up the fiddle. (What else do you do in the middle of nowhere?) She heard I had played flute at the Christmas concert & tracked me down one day in the newborn nursery. "Are you Emily? I hear you play flute, I play fiddle, Irish mostly, I want someone to play tunes with!" Didn't start learning by ear til that summer (about the same time I joined this blessed website), got my blackwood flute September 2002, first workshop June 2003 with Kevin Crawford, & that's why he'll always be my musical hero. Shoot, if you could locate & read all my posts on here, it will basically tell you the whole story & how I've now ended up in Baltimore surrounded by top drawer players & sessions almost every night of the week & more flute lessons than you can shake a stick at. If it wasn't for Julie & Jeremy, I'd never be where I am now, so I'm extremely grateful to both of them.
& believe it or not, that's the *short* story. We won't even discuss the black widows, single digit humidity or tupperware.
# Posted on May 25th 2004 by emily_bmore
Re: what started you on this long musical road....
& I met Jason recently! Hi Jason, sorry for being cranky Thursday.
# Posted on May 25th 2004 by emily_bmore
Re: what started you on this long musical road....
...and now that you've "ended up" in Baltimore, Emily it's time to come up to Phila for a visit with me and some tunes with some really good players, here, too!
# Posted on May 25th 2004 by Andee
Re: what started you on this long musical road....
My true story is that I was in business with my father, making pots of money, my first child had just been born and one day Mrs Dave came in from shopping with a big yellow ONiells and a whistle, and said "You need another interest". She showed me how a scale of D looked on paper, and how this corresponded to the fingers on the whistle. I remembered my music teacher at school saying "Tone Tone Semitone Tone Tone Tone Semitone".
That was about 20 years ago now.
At that time I was doing the record/cassette sleeves for Traditional Sound Recordings, and also some print for Tony Sullivan (Sully). So I had various resources for hearing and learning tunes
About 6 weeks later I met Pied Piper - whom I have met about twice since then (and it was downhill all the way).
I gave up making pots of money, cos there's no happiness in it, and went to be a gardener, living in a caravan (that's a trailer to our US brothers) but stuck to playing music cos theres fun there.
So really Q, your story nearly fits me (except that I wouldn't call Mrs Dave a wretched old woman - in case she got to hear of it).
Ah well - posters advertising artificial ankle joints to print now - must go.
Dave
# Posted on May 25th 2004 by showaddydadito
Re: what started you on this long musical road....
Great stories!
I was trying to reconnect with my family roots. My mother's parents were both born in Caernarvon, and came to the States about 1900 (separately, my grandfather a boy of 16 and my grandmother a 2-yr old). My mom was the child of Grandpa's middle age and I was the child of hers, so he died age 86 when I was only 9. But I remembered the music he used to listen to and sing, and a few words and phrases of Welsh (Grandma wasn't fluent, her folks stopped speaking it when they emigrated). Looking for that, I ran into Robin Huw Bowen, Fernhill, Rag Foundation, etc. Shortly after that a friend gave me his little 17-string harp, which I'd always wanted to learn to play (he upgraded to a bigger harp; so have I since, although I still have, and still play, the little one).
Then I encountered the Tannahill Weavers and Silly Wizard, and bought Green Linnet's 25-yr sampler CD. Drooled over several tracks on that, and got to Kevin Burke's version of The Butterfly and literally sat there and cried through the whole track. That and Johnny Cunningham's work got me back into fiddle. Now my folk cd collection outnumbers my jazz and classical collections combined, and is threatening to overtake my husband's Wagner collection into the bargain. And I practice every night!
Irish, Welsh, & Scottish music grab my guts the way nothing else does --- not even the Karfreitagszauber in Parsifal. I'm here to stay, and there's enough to occupy me for several lifetimes at least. ;)
Sara
# Posted on May 25th 2004 by sara g
Re: what started you on this long musical road....
You didn't come across as such Emily. Seemed cool to me. Now I've got the urge to meet more thesession people. Perhaps Catskills-- I'm still working on plans for that though-- guess that's a different thread. I'm done now.
# Posted on May 25th 2004 by Jason G
Re: what started you on this long musical road....
I sort of grew up with folk singing, through my mother and grandfather, and then was attracted to Dylan/Baez/Woody guthrie/Pete Seeger etc. There were occasional references to ITM here and there in my world, I guess. I always played music of some kind on piano, guitar, recorder etc.
By 1976 I was seriously dabbling in THAT kind of folk and also fairly seriously playing early music on recorder and guitar. I got married to a guy of Irish extraction and his sisters gave me a copy of O'Niells and a Chieftans album for Xmas. (I think they were getting sick of hearing early music through the wall.)
While I've continued to play various sorts of music over the years Irish music has always been very important to me since then. (I long since divorced the husband, but the copy of O'Niells has never left my side!)
- Kris
# Posted on May 25th 2004 by kris
Re: what started you on this long musical road....
kris, as an O'Neill myself I can't restrain myself from asking you to look at the spelling on the cover.
However, I do compliment you on including the second "l"
Sorry, I know I have issues with this... :>(
# Posted on May 25th 2004 by grego
Re: what started you on this long musical road....
I'm actually a deep undercover IRS agent working for the Tax man. I didn't really start playing flute until I signed up for this job which seemed to be an odd, but rather interesting assignment.
Only joking (thanks to the person who gave me the idea)
Joyce
# Posted on May 25th 2004 by JMH
Re: what started you on this long musical road....
My dad and my uncle had been playing trad (fiddle and flute, respectively) since before I entered the world, so I was absorbed in the sounds in utero and surrounded by sessions as a toddler on up. I realized soon enough that when I wanted a peanut butter sandwich, but my dad was playing "just one more" tune, I had might as well give up. Then I started playing the piano to keep him company, because the sandwiches were not forthcoming. Now I mostly play a flute crafted by that uncle, and my five younger siblings all play, as well as many cousins and more aunts. Family gatherings are beyond delight.
# Posted on May 25th 2004 by dances with swords
Re: what started you on this long musical road....
Thi is just to add: that playing music with my dad has added the greatest closeness to our relationship: the closeness of the hardcore geekfest. I couldn't be more grateful than I am for such a great opportunity to spend time with my dad over the thing he loves most (other than family!)
Also, _Steph_, my family was at Goderich that year... as well as every other year since its inception! The sessions with Peter and John and Joe were powerful, powerful stuff, I agree. Will I see you there this year?
# Posted on May 25th 2004 by dances with swords
Re: what started you on this long musical road....
Well, for me it started many years ago when I was but 5 years old. My mum, who was at the time becoming a born-again Jew, had bought a casette of "Fiddler on the Roof".I really liked it (well, at 5, I was happy and enthusiastic about everything, so this was no different). Anyway, I asked for a violin, and my mum, having just cursed some rich bastard with music for not giving her any water (just joking), thought this was a great idea and happily obliged.
Anyway, 2 or 3 years later, my violin teacher was preparing me for a mini-concert of all her students, and seeing as my dad was Irish, decided to teach me "Down by the Sally Gardens" to please him. It worked, and since then,the tunes have just been getting faster and faster.
# Posted on May 25th 2004 by Joe CSS
Re: what started you on this long musical road....
I think I started playing this music because I realised I could.
Now I can't stop.
# Posted on May 25th 2004 by granama
Re: what started you on this long musical road....
I got a guitar when I graduated from a California high school in 1971. Then I worked in a music shop after college in 1975 and got a pretty good classical guitar from Union Grove Music in Santa Cruz. I made some tapes off KFAT radio and drove a 1966 Volkswagen beetle, no radio, to Florida in 1976 listening to those tapes. There I traded the guitar for a banjo and a mandolin. Used to play the banjo on the covered porch leaning back in a chair on the old “Florida cracker” style house.
Sixteen years later, in 1991, I learned the names of some of the tunes. “Boys of Blue Hill” fingerpicked on a steel string guitar and a fast, echoing, haunting version of “Sailor’s Bonnet” on fiddle. Only after I got the fiddle did I learn the names of these and other tunes, many old time tune, on the tapes I had made in 1975. But those tunes formed a reference for years in my memory from listening, associated with locations and events like driving across country. I would never have learned the names of the tunes, especially the fiddle tunes if I had not gotten a fiddle in 1991 on whim to try something without frets. I have since digitized, .wav ed and .mp3 ed many of those taped tunes.
Here in Florida we have sessions and contra dances which supplied more named and nameless tunes, which I’m trying to fiddle away, but I think it all relates back to driving around listening. I still do not listen to the radio in the car, almost only CD’s.
# Posted on May 25th 2004 by dogmageek
Re: what started you on this long musical road....
You had to ask... In a galaxy far, far away... oops wrong movie...
It all started in the mid 60s in High School (anyone remember Hootenanny???) with Leadbelly,Pete Seeger, Doc Watson, Mike Seeger, Dillards (huh?) and Mississippi John Hurt. I hung out with the guitar players at lunch time. Learned La Bamba. Graduated to the Beatles, Byrds, Dylan, Baez, Airplane, the Dead, et all during the Summer of Love.
By the early 70s and after Sticky Fingers, R&R seemed to decline for me. Started listening to Baroque and early music because it didn't sound so over produced and dubbed. I was listening to John Davis on KPFK and heard, ta-da, defining moment, Fairport Convention doing Tam Lin and the Deserter. Thinking I remembered those tunes, I dug up some old song books and found some nifty songs. I was soon looking for Fairport records. On a lark, I went to the Ash Grove one nite and heard a group named Steeleye Span. I went back for the rest of their shows, 3-4 in all. Now I started looking for SES stuff as well.
Having decided to get married, I wanted a band with a fiddle or two for the music at our marriage. I found a band from a long gone pub in Los Angeles ( drinks all around for those who can remember the pub in the ARCO towers), and they introduced me to the Chieftains and Planxty ( circa 1974 ish). Saw the Chieftains (their first tour here in the states) in 1975 or so at UCLA, 3rd row and was hooked on the sound of Paddy Maloney's pipes. Worked up in the bay area for a bit, hung out at the Plough and Stars and the Starry Plough. Met Dennis Brooks at one of the first Lark in the Morning music camps.
I eventually got a mandolin, a fiddle, two whistles and a practice Uilleann Pipe set as a result, but not all at once. The practice set ultimately died here in California, but not before going to Irleand and meeting Matt Kiernan. Do you know how hard it was to find an Uilleann Piper in Southern California in 1977??
And just who are these guys, Sean O'Raida, the Bothy Band, Na Fili, Tomas O'Cannan, Seamus Ennis, Leo Rowsome, Michael O' Sullivan (keyboards), the Boys of the Lough, Allastair Frazier, Brian McNamara?? Went to the Renn Faire and listened to Sylvia Woods play O'Carolan (kudos to the other thread that reminded me).
Kids, work, bicycle racing intervened and I gradually had less interest in playing ( but not buying CDs).
A few years ago, one of my work mates started bringing his guitar to work. I brought mine ( did I tell you that I still have a Gibson 12 string that my mom got me in high school?? Sounds and plays great but is truck to play fast). We played. I bought a Martin. I dumped the mandolin and cleaned and retuned the fiddle. I took fiddle lessons. The internet found me and I bought a 1/2 set of Uilleann Pipes about a year ago. A trip to Cork City to meet my daughter who was at UCC for a year ensued, where I re-met Dennis Brooks of the Starry Plough fame in Berkeley, CA after 20+years.
I started looking for sessions I could feel comfortable playing. I started hanging out on this site and C&F. I started looking for pipers to instruct me-Southern California Uilleann Pipers Club to the rescue.
And that, as they say, is why I'm learning the Humors of Ballyloughlin as played by David Powers.
Writing this felt like the Billy Joel song, We didn't light the Fire-your personal music history in 25 paragraphs or less.
Please xcuse the spelling errors...Your pick for the next tune... how about ...?
i_Fel
# Posted on May 25th 2004 by I_Fel
Re: what started you on this long musical road....
this is a good thread witk good stories, peopel are talking about themselves in open ways. I think we all wonder sometimes, how it came to be, that we spend every spare moment pursuing such a singular passion.......
# Posted on May 25th 2004 by vboyd100
Re: what started you on this long musical road....
My older brother got a guitar in 1969 when I was 15, fell out with my dad and left the farm and the guitar. I got the guitar.
A friend who owed me money bought a mandolin in 1975. I got the mandolin.It must have been November, because he had ducked into Mick Lewis's music shop in Melbourne while we were out on a huge demonstration protesting the sacking of Gough Whitlam.
Not as simple as that of course - I already wanted a guitar, I already wanted a mandolin,
inspired by local players such as Louis McManus http://www.louismcmanus.com/ and Kerryn Tolhursthttp://www.quilltolhurst.com/kerryn_tolhurst_biography.html
and sounds I heard on record like Ry Cooder, Rory Gallagher and the mandolin bits on Rod Stewart's early records. Seeing Gallagher do "Going to My Hometown" in Melbourne circa 1974 was a real eye/ear-opener.
Somehow the idea of traditional music, Irish music mainly, was always around. At gatherings in the bush, weddings, funerals, whatever, there would be someone with an accordion, playing songs mostly, Botany Bay, Wild Colonial Boy etc. People would say "Oh, your great-uncle Dan or Paddy or Con or whoever was a great fiddler." But it seemed that no one in subsequent generations played- why had it petered out? Where had it gone? I still don't know. Perhaps life in Australia was too comfortable.
Irish music then meant the Clancy brothers and Dubliners records we would play at parties, or out in the mining camps at night. I liked the wildness in their sound. I liked the fiddle tunes in the folk-revival "Bush Bands" of the 70s, not realising that about 75% were cribbed straight off Irish records! I thought they were Australian. Later I heard the Chieftains and Planxty. I was smitten by the mandolin in "Well Below the Valley" which I think I bought mainly because of its beautiful cover.
I ended up in Scotland and met a load of Orcadians and Shetlanders through my wife's friends - their slant on music seemed to be exactly what I had in mind with a few surprises as well. I've been bit of a musical magpie on my travels, picking up tunes as I go, and don't have a particular fixation on Irish music. Did I say I also spent time in Texas?
"What a long strange trip it's been" and the journey continues.
# Posted on May 25th 2004 by Bren
Re: what started you on this long musical road....
Jason, if you're still reading this thread, come to the Catskills, it'll be so much fun--I'm going with Emily and Danny and Joyce and Susan!
# Posted on May 25th 2004 by Andee
Re: what started you on this long musical road....
I took up guitar because I was envious of the ability of friends to impress women by late-night bedsit performances of soulful singer-songwriter stuff (blech). I proved miserable at the guitar and even worse at soulful singing but didn't want to admit it and took to hanging around in folk clubs.
On the way home from one folk-club night having consumed a skinful of beer I stopped in at the local chippy where I met a bigmouth guitarist who told me all he needed was a fiddler to complete the lineup of his supergroup. "I can play fiddle," I remember assuring him through the haze of my drunkenness and the steam in the chipshop. I couldn't to save my life, but I had had a few desultory years of violin lessons at school.
So I dusted off the violin and joined a "folk group". A few months later I shared a flat with a Frenchman who had Bothy Band and Planxty records and "le virage irlandais" began in earnest.
A few months after that I heard Martin Byrnes and my fate was sealed.
A few months after that I moved to London and started hanging around sessions where Danny Meehan, Michael Hines and many of the other great musicians there in the 1970s played. It's been nearly 30 years now and I still love the music to bits.
# Posted on May 26th 2004 by Jeeves Tones
Re: what started you on this long musical road....
It was a case of being in the right place at the right time. The time was the mid-seventies, the place my university where an ITM group played at some party. I liked what they did, they wanted a guitarist. I had been into folk music in a more general sense since my early teens.
# Posted on May 26th 2004 by kuec
Re: what started you on this long musical road....
Hi grego -
When you get to know me you'll understand that I just have issues with spelling.
# Posted on May 26th 2004 by kris
Re: what started you on this long musical road....
Kris, don't worry! I was just pretending to be grumpy. At least it's not "O'Neal" like that Ryan guy spells it!
# Posted on May 26th 2004 by grego
Re: what started you on this long musical road....
Don't sneer - Jimmy Shand, John Kirkpatrick and Alistair Anderson. They turned me into a (in)human metronome and dance tune database.
Along the way, the towering Chieftans, helped by Planxty, De Dannan and the Bothy, set me on the ITM trail.
# Posted on May 27th 2004 by geoffwright
Re: what started you on this long musical road....
I just have issues in general no I am just jokin'.
# Posted on May 27th 2004 by Goblicious
Re: what started you on this long musical road....
What interesting roads to Damascus you all have! After two or three years of violin lessons at school, my teacher told me to go out and buy O'Neill's 1001. When we next met, I was told to open at no. 662, Drowsy Maggie. I learnt two things that day, a cracking tune and that the dots were an aid, not Holy Writ. Until then I had been taught to play exactly what was on the sheet. The teacher, Eddie Foley, had me keeping my 1st finger on the D string for the first 3 bars. I didn't do much for the next few years until I bought the Bothy Band 1975 album. So, blame Drowsy Maggie and the Kesh Jig set.
Luke
# Posted on May 27th 2004 by lukegarry
Re: what started you on this long musical road....
I guess for me it was looking around my chaotic work office life and wanting something constant like my right arm going back and forth constantly. A benchmark.
Plus I figured living in the American South for so many years I would need something to show for it if I ever left.
-dogma
# Posted on June 2nd 2004 by dogmageek
Re: what started you on this long musical road....
well, lets crank up the ole mental database. i can hardly believe i've been "into" ITM for ten years now.
played trumpet before i jumped on the itm wagon. symphonic bands, orchestras, jazz bands, quintets...loved that. but had my trumpet stolen during the last year of college, and so there was a musical void in my life. took a trip after graduation to ireland, encountered doolin among other lovely places, and got a whistle. upon returning to chicago, i decided to take some whistle lessons for fun to break the 9-5 monotony (okay, to pick up chicks...) Well, the teacher happened to be Larry Nugent. Didn't know him from adam, but i was absolutely completely blown off my freaking rocker. Larry was really into teaching at that time too, had great stories, great tunes, had just won his first all-ireland. in short, was hooked. aaaah, remember those days fondly. Really i'm in awe that that connection happened; i mean it changed my life.
now...i happen to be living in mexico. the one irish pub in this town called "celts" which serves the guiness "on tap in the can" i noticed just last weekend had closed shop. was hopin to pick up some latin babes on st. paddy's day, but oh well.
anyway, i play every day. wouldn't even call in practice....just a habit of living. my vecinos probably think its hell....but i'm not in a mexican jail...yet.......
# Posted on February 23rd 2005 by Brendan