It’s the end of March, on the last night of a 35-gig tour, and McGoldrick, McCusker, and Doyle are clearly enjoying themselves up there on the stage of the Irish Cultural Centre. John McCusker apologises to his daughter for missing her 16th birthday a a couple of days ago, and the band strikes up ‘Happy Birthday’ for her. (The audience joins in.) John Doyle dedicates a couple of songs to his wife, who has been travelling with them. Sitting between them on stage, Mike McGoldrick is listening and enjoying their playing. After one number he leans towards Doyle, whose guitar playing has been outstanding, and says, audibly, “Nice”.
They’ve been on the road since mid-January, starting with the Transatlantic Sessions tour, where they are stalwarts of the ‘house band’. The three musicians—described in some of their coverage as “a trad supergroup”—have been playing together as a trio for fifteen years. Mike McGoldrick brings pipes, flute and whistle, McCusker violin, whistle, and occasional harmonium, and John Doyle plays guitar, electric and acoustic, and sings.
The gig starts off at a breathless pace. After a short air played by McGoldrick, whose tone is exquisite, they launch into a set of reels; another set of fast tunes follows without any audience chat, and then Doyle sings, in best shanty style, the chorus of Billy O’Shea, about an Irish sailor who dies at sea—just to give us the words and the tune so we can join in—before launching into a version of the song that’s definitely a lot faster than their recorded version.
And this is pretty much how the gig goes: some tunes, interspersed by a song from John Doyle, and then some more tunes. If that sounds routine, it’s anything but. These are all trad players at the top of their game, and the quality is exceptional.
Although Doyle was born and bred in Ireland, he lives in Asheville, North Carolina, and has been resident in the States for some years. One of the Doyle’s songs, Little Bird, was written while he was in a US band called The Immigrant Band (which also included some Italians). He mused on having a band with that name in the current political climate in the US. “ICE would be waiting in the car park to round up the audience”, he said, referencing America’s now notorious Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. He got a bit more trenchant after that, before McGoldrick moved him on. The song, on the other hand, is lovely, though sadly not to be found on Youtube.
McGoldrick also had some stories to tell, although his were more benign. His father was born in Galway, and was a musician who had a huge collection of records. McGoldrick, though, was brought up in Manchester, and he’d taken the opportunity of the tour to go into his old primary school and play some tunes for them, including an air on a flute which he also played for us.
At the start of his primary school performance he’s explained that the flute was a hundred years old. At the end he asked the kids if they had any questions. One boy put his hand up. “Can you not afford a new flute?”
McCusker and McGoldrick have spent some years touring with Mark Knopfler, and during the set they also play some of the tunes they use to showcase with Knopfler. There’s a clip of a McGoldrick solo with Knopfler’s band online: you can see McCusker at the left hand edge of the stage.
There are a few curveballs in the set. In the second half, Doyle announces that he’s going to play Alexander, a song they haven’t performed together for ten years. He tells the other two what key it is in, and the instructions for the middle sequence and the close. (I’d thought this might be a bit of concert fun, but when I was at the merch stall afterwards, Mike McGoldrick told me they really hadn’t played the song for a decade.) But this was also a reminder of the shared language that traditional musicians have. “Once he’d given us the outline, we could just fill in”, McGoldrick said to me.
Doyle always sports a trademark cap, and when the tour van had broken down on the motorway, one of the policemen who came to held mistook him for The Edge, U2’s guitarist. This wasn’t, apparently the first time: the same thing had happened once when he was boarding the Dublin ferry. As McGoldrick was telling this story, Doyle cut in: “As if The Edge would be going to Dublin on the ferry.”
It’s a tight, high energy show. Their fifteen years playing together means that they all understand what they’re doing when they’re on stage. And they still seem to be talking to each other, even after three months on the road together.
And there’s even a bit of their Hammersmith set on YouTube:
After an encore, the audience at the Irish Cultural Centre gives them a standing ovation, which doesn’t happen often. They certainly deserved it.
—
Do join our growing Salut! Folk Facebook group at https://www.facebook.com/groups/2902595146676633/. You’ll get there straightaway if you’re already on Facebook.
Leave a Reply