2 posts tagged “bothy band”
Paddy Keenan. No clue what it's called; one of the comments says it's one Keenan wrote for his late brother. Keenan, of course, used to play in the Bothy Band back in the 1970s. Creepy stuff here.
He's pretty good.
The Bothy Band, 1977! These are both from Out of the Wind into the Sun, their last album. Some trad Irish music critic of the day wrote that the first time he ever saw them, they sounded like a jet taking off. Piper Paddy Keenan lives in metro Boston now, and some of the others ended up in the Chieftains, doing academic/touristy Oirish music. But this stuff, this is great. It's not terribly "authentic"; the groove is more rock'n'roll than trad Irish. They met the wider listening public somewhere not all that far short of halfway, which as a member of the WLP I appreciate. And that Tríona Ní Dhomhnaill, this chick singing here, she could sing, kinda, you think? Fairport Convention recorded a variation of "The Sailor Boy" as "A Sailor's Life" on Unhalfbricking, which ain't bad. The band is nifty and psychedelic on their version, but Tríona crushes Sandy Denny like a bug. A BUG. No comparison. But to be fair, all of the Fairports stuff I've heard with Denny was poorly, murkily recorded, and this Bothies stuff here is recorded magnificently.
"Rip the Calico" isn't one tune, it's a medley of several, one of which is called "Rip the Calico". Or was called that by whoever taught it to whoever in the band it was who learned it; it seems that traditional Irish dance tunes appear in endless variation under endlessly varying names.
