Islands of Song Friday

Islands of Song 4

After Hugh came Ger Wolfe. Ger's manner reminded me of the guy who played the Son of the Pink Panther. Remember how gentle and soft-spoken he was? I have mentioned this to several people - they looked at me as if I had two heads. So - maybe you should take that statement with a grain of salt.

He began his set with "a tune I wrote for a small young fellow." Forgive me, I didn't get the name written down. What I did notice was that Ger sings with quite the Irish accent. You could cut his accent with a butcher knife, it was so thick. This was definitely part of his charm though. The rest of his charm was an innocence and a genuineness and a gentleness about him. Meeting and talking to him would make an impression on anyone.

The next song was titled, "Call Me Down" and I'd love to know the particulars about it. As the last line was "the singing moon is wearing now a ragged crown, for Cork City is the palace of a paper clown."
Following that, a song took hold of everyone there and wormed its way into our psyches, never letting go. It was the one song you'd be humming all weekend when you weren't doing anything else. A magical journey down a road in the summertime in Ireland. What I didn't know then, but found out later, was that this particular song had been recorded several times by other people in Ireland! It is called "The Curra Road" and is a most amazing song. "There is music in the river, listen to it dancing, underneath the bridge...In the summer we'll go laughing, hand in hand together, down the Curra Road."
I'm also delighted to learn that Jim and company are recording this wonderful song for Jim's, soon to be released album, "RIVERS AND ROVERS"
I'll be sure to report in on that one also.

The next song was sung in Gaelic. I have no idea what the real title was, but what I heard was "Spahl pi na Ron." Ger introduced it by stating that the song had 37 verses and was a love song till the 1798 Rebellion when they added a verse or two about that. LOL! I remembered sitting at the Gaelic College in St. Ann's, Cape Breton, listening to a fellow student sing in Gaelic. She explained to me that 99% of the songs in Gaelic were about love...lost, cut short, unwisely pursued.

The song that followed was, as Ger put it, "my effort at a country song." Jim heckled him, "Which country?" It would make me wonder in awe about Ger. It was called "Heaven Paints Her Holy Mantle Blue." Obviously a religious song, it didn't make me cringe. I normally don't subscribe to blatant religious songs for public consumption because I feel it leaves out too many people. This was different. Despite the religious nature of it, it was welcoming in its feeling. "Heaven holds the sweetest notes they'll sing."

I can't believe I am writing so much about Ger. Geez! I guess he really DID impress me!

The penultimate song had a religious reggae beat to it! Is there anything this man doesn't do? Jim was grinning - he's my source of all things reggae these days. "Oh my Lord, help me carry your weight," caught my ear. I was thinking about singing on Good Friday at church. Alan, the bass player ended up playing BOTH piano and bass at the same time for this song!

Hugh came out after that and he and Ger performed a song they wrote together called "You're Our Hope." While they were getting ready to do that, we chatted with the young men who had sat down next to us. They were from Dublin and had only ever seen Ger playing at "the local." They were surprised we had come from Philadelphia to see the Festival. They also were very happy with his performance at the Triskel.

Intermission found us chatting with Siobahn again. We kidded each other about saving seats for the next night.

Ron Hynes, songwriter extraordinaire, was an acquired taste for me. I had first seen him at the Folk Festival in St. John's, Newfoundland in 2000 and was not hooked by his music then. Later, I began to enjoy his songs, listening to compilations that included him. Well, people, he blew me away this week! I cannot stress how talented this man is and how well he puts it out there on stage! He is a master at what he does. He takes a song and weaves it into a flawless pattern of sound that just catches you up and transports you to another plane. Each person in the audience was caught up tonight and they showed their appreciation by giving him quite the reception and quite the send-off.

Ron was warmly welcomed by the audience, many of whom already were familiar with his songs, especially Sonny's Dream. Wearing his trademark hat, he stated, "The muses gave me this song in September 1976, but I didn't record it until 1984" and he launched right into "Sonny's Dream!" The band sounded great as they accompanied him on this most touching song. I am enjoying listening to the songwriters tell how they came up with songs, where they were, etc. It's better than a Songwriter's Circle because we are getting more music, and we still get the tales. Ron knew that the people here already were familiar with Sonny's Dream, he had an odd encounter here with some teenagers singing it, who didn't believe that Ron was the one who wrote it. Gave us a good laugh!

After the band played the last chords, they disappeared into the back wall through a hidden door. Ron turned around to say something just as the last one was entering the space behind the wall. "A band that disappears into the wall? Man, I need to move over here!" Ron chortled.

"1962" was the next song and I enjoyed all the little remnants of that '60's music he referred to in lyrics and sound. This was one of those songs that grew on me the more I heard it.

Ron explained that Newfoundlanders were no strangers to disasters at sea. The disaster described in this next song happened on Valentine's Day in 1982 when the Ocean Ranger oil platform sunk in a storm off the coast of Newfoundland. At the time it was the world's mightiest drilling rig. All hands died - 56 out of 84 were Newfoundlanders. It is considered Canada's worst ocean disaster since World War II.
The song is Atlantic Blue and like Sonny's Dream, it is well known in sea-faring communities. The line I was stuck by? "What shade of memory never fades?"

Atlantic Blue.

"Like all true blue Newfoundlanders, I am in touch with my female side. The next one is a love song written in Dublin."

With that intro, we heard "From Dublin, With Love." Nice song - it was my first time hearing it. I must have been pretty intent on listening because I didn't write anything down about it, but I know I enjoyed it.

Darrell Power joined Ron for the next song, "Get Back Change." Some Great Big Sea fans have heard Darrell sing that in encore I think, but it was a first for me. Of course he did a decent job! At the end of the song, Darrell bows to the Master.

The finale had as many musicians on stage as possible that evening. Ron dedicated the song to "all the Cork songwriters." Ger came out and Darrell remained on stage to perform "Man of A Thousand Songs" with the band. A touching tribute to musicians everywhere who are plugging along. Ron introduces it as a man who says he doesn't sing love songs but ...

Everyone seemed happy and there was definitely some synergy there.

The night ended on a high note and everyone left happy. I was planning to go to a reggae club with Jim and Lillian and the gang and stood in the lobby waiting. Darrell grabbed me and told me that he wanted to introduce me to someone. Darrell seemed to think I should meet him because we've taken some good shots of Newfoundland and this guy is a photographer who has been to NFLD 35 times. "He's seen things I've never seen in my lifetime! Things and places most Newfoundlanders haven't seen!" said Darrell. He gushed about Peter's photos and told Peter that I should put a link to his site on my website.

Peter and I spoke for a while about Newfoundland and where he had been. He's been to the places that were resettled and taken 1400 photos that he had to narrow down to 50 to submit to the publisher. And then publishers had to narrow them down to 4 for travel magazines. I don't envy trying to narrow 1400 photos to 50. I'd be agonizing all week. I cannot wait to see his stuff! Darrell had suggested linking Peter's work with my site. I don't think that's what Peter had in mind but now that we've exchanged email addys, that can be up for discussion, I suppose.

After my conversation with Peter, I looked around to find Jim and Lillian gone. Vic said they had already gone to Nancy Spain's to listen to some reggae music. I thought it hilarious that here I was in Ireland on St. Patrick's weekend, seeking out reggae music! Something wrong there! LOL! But off we went. It was quite a walk to get there but we managed to find it and walked in. The music was NOT reggae. Realizing there must be another room, I asked the bartender and he said I wanted to be upstairs. As we walked into the alley to the upstairs door, I bade goodbye to Vic who had walked me to the venue.

I wound my way up the rough-hewn stairs to the place I wanted to be. The long narrow room was very dark and I barely made out Jim and Lillian's figures over in the corner by the DJ. Hugh was also there as well as some of the band members who backed up Hugh, Ger and Ron this evening. It was my first time in a venue where the music of choice was reggae. I had heard this music of course at home (son Marcus is a reggae fan) and from Jim, who used to be a member of a successful reggae band, Pressure Drop,way back when. The room was filled with dancing people. It was an odd sort of dancing. As Hugh put it - "a little like country line dancing, but NOT." I laughed so hard when he said that because that's exactly what was going on! The dancers were lined up in rows, separated by an arm's length in all directions. Pretty much, they were moving in whatever way the spirit moved them. Sort of like Pentecostal dancing. There was this older guy just enjoying the heck out of himself - dancing in a '60's kind of way but no one minded.

The DJ was from Antigua and had a sax player with him and an engineer. They called themselves, Rootical Sound System. He played some of the songs but more often sang along, karoake-style with what music was playing. His lyrics were pretty cool and Jim enjoyed the evening immensely. he explained to me that this was "old school" reggae, the kind he enjoyed. They had these two HUGE sets of speakers, one at each diagonal corner. It was quite intense. The DJ said it was half their usual system! I couldn't imagine the sound from FOUR sets of those speakers! You probably could have heard the music in Jamaica!

Check out the beams in the ceiling. It was so cool. Everything was made of rough-hewn wood, even the tables, benches and bar. The DJ stopped at 12:30 AM and we tumbled out into the street with the rest of the partiers.

As Jim had a smoke, we stood in the alley. We had to flatten ourselves against the wall when a car suddenly appeared! Alan had his melodica with him and Jim tried it out. Then, in talking about Jim's performance the next night, the generation gap reared itself. Jim explained to Alan that he should play a Paul Simon riff in one of the songs he was going to do. Alan says, "Who is Paul Simon?" I had a good laugh and felt very old. I was 12 when I heard my first Paul Simon song.

Grabbed a cab back to the hotel and peeked into the lounge to see who was there. Colleen and Hugh were there so we hung out and talked for a while. Lillian introduced me to Port and Brandy. She said it'd fit me well because it'd take all night to finish it. I usually nurse a drink a good long time so it seemed like a good choice. She was right. It was good in tiny sips. There was a wedding party there at the lounge - 6 kilted guys were a nice sight and their ladies were a bit tipsy. One was throwing confetti and flower petals up in the air and trying to catch them on her bosom. The women had these little dominatrix whips that they were using on whatever man happened by.

After a while, Darrell, Clare, Ger and Ron walked in, frozen. They had ended up at the pub across the street from Nancy Spain's and had not been able to get a cab back. It was a long cold walk back to the hotel! I told Ger how much I had enjoyed his set last evening and we got into a conversation about kids. He's got three kids and he and Darrell and I spoke about how kids learn to read and about different approaches in schools for learning. I took out Flat Stanley and had Ger's photo taken with him after I explained who he was. He also took my photo with Stanley so he'd have it on his digital. LOL! It was 4 AM by the time I trundled upstairs. The gang from Newfoundland stayed up way longer than that though! I was not meant to keep musician's hours.