TOUCHLINE MAY, THE YEAR NINE.

Whilst the months that elapsed since the last “Touchline” may not have been the happiest in my life, for all kinds of reasons, there were roses too amongst the thorns. A winter month in Ireland is always is blessing, despite the weather, because the weather in America is far from perfect too unless like myself, you are one of the lucky people living in Delightful Dunedin, Florida where it’s always summer. A clatter of Yanks, myself included, descended upon Cork City for the marriage of my colleague, my handsome apprentice Máirtín de Cógáin and his lovely bride Mitra. Having received de luxe hospitality and support in America during the current transition years especially from the patron saint of New York, Donie Carroll, Fr Mick Carroll (no relation) and the wonderful people from the band Legacy, to wit, Valerie Plested and Don Penzien, I said, Crowley boy, the shoe is on the other foot, horse! I must go all out to host and toast these Yanks in the beautiful city of Cork. Well, ladies and gentlemen! Such sport we had! For devilment I took Don and Val, Scottie (Scott Cole) and his wife Aimee and the redoubtable Noel Reid from New Orleans and the irrepressible Doyle Jeter and his wife Yvette who have spoiled us all with kindness and patience and support anytime we play at their friendly festival and bar at Munroe Louisiana, I took them to the quaintest of places in the Beautiful City. We went to the Old Butter Exchange in the Northside, met poets and topers, politicians and talkers, the highlight was John McCarthy who kidnapped us and brought us off to tea somewhere where we discussed Socrates, Kant and James Connolly not to mention Biffo, our ballad -singing Taoiseach or Prime Minister, who in fact is a fine traditional singer. There was a magical night in Clonakilty with John Spillane, Doyle being a gig fan of John’s We went to breakfast at the Uptown Grill, my favourite diner in Cork; had sessions with the local musicians at the Corner House and it took us about two hours to “do Pana” (walk Patrick Street) because like Americans, Corkonians are nosey too and they do be wondering how things are going for me “over”.

The wedding was fierce traditional with all kinds of sets, waltzes and polkas and marvelous music and food- I’m sure it’s still going on! Next day, Jan 1, we went out sailing on a delightful cruise in Cork Harbour on my friend Curly’s yacht Annie. We took the Yanks out to the mouth of the harbour to give them their first sketch of the broad Atlantic and to watch for dolphins. We then tacked and ran for East Ferry under all plain sail, pointing out the poignant icons of Irish history like Spike Island, the Holy Ground, The Cove of Cork, St Coleman’s cathedral in Cobh which duly came abeam of us. We tied up at the little jetty in East Ferry, safe and sound without shudder or scrape and repaired to the famous “Dirty Murphy’s “ pub for a session of music and porter that lasted four or five hours. It’s a fine clean establishment, well loved by sailors, but it’s older names endures in the vernacular. I’m still “on the wagon” and enjoying every minute of it and I had as good a time as if I had a gallon of porter. ‘Twas fine and darkish for our return journey to Crosshaven, but that’s part of the magic. I hung on for a month in Ireland visiting all the family members, having the craic with my son James and visiting Olive, my mother at the nursing home and generally making up for the months away. Despite all the doom and gloom recessions etc, it wasn’t a bad month at all where gigs were concerned.

Back in Amerikay beginning of February, my dear friend Mick Moloney paid me a visit in the Sunshine State and we laughed a lot and played a lot of music together. We did a few nice concerts together which included a magical night at the state capitol of Tallahassee and Mick has taken up the bouzouki and is already giving me a good run for my money! , The next exciting Spring event was the launching of our new band, Captain Mackey’s Goatskin and Stringband which included me and Máirtín de Cógáin and we “borrowed “ Val Plested’s fiddling skills from the band Legacy and likewise her sweetheart Don Penzien on guitar. March was a nice busy month and we cut a tour of the beautiful South playing in Memphis, Jackson, Lake Charles and many more places, all necessary to work the new band in .It was a pleasure and a great comfort to have the creativity, the friendship and the fun that exudes from Val and Don on the road and I look forward to our gig at the Milwaukee festival in August. In between I have been working flat out trying to finish the first volume ofSongs from the Beautiful City: Urban Cork Ethnography collected by yours truly. Val has consented to score the dots; I’m not bad at it but I’m butt slow and another pair of ears won’t hurt the project.

The Muses have visited me and some firm songwriting possibilities have thankfully been recorded. I believe in the concept of the ancient Greeks: that the Muses have a time to visit us and woe betides the artist who reneges or is too lazy or stupid to feel the surge or divine the inspiration. I hope, please God, to have another album of me own songs soon, like “Tall Ships”, reflecting my American experience as well.

There was another little jaunt around the Frozen Northland, as I call Lake Woebegone, Michigan, Minnesota and generally M for misery “up there” in the winter. But no, I’m being too hard on those “M’ places! I took off with a folk circus for about two weeks in Michigan, which is a gorgeous place, in the jovial company of Val, Don, Ziggy and Susan from the band Stone Cross, and bless you all, although there wasn’t enough of ye, who turned up to support our Folk Circus. Here again is yet another wonderful blessing: for me to be able to see secret parts of America where tourists seldom go, meet the real people, the guys out of work from the wounded automobile industry and fellow musicians like Brian Miller, Jim Perkins from Finbarr’s Wren and Jamie-Sue Seal who kindly organized the tour which included several TV and radio appearances. I was mesmerized, transfixed, captivated, enthralled by Elderly Instruments in Lansing, Michigan, where Val and Don and myself taught bouzouki, mandolin, guitar and fiddle workshops. It is a sweet shop with lashings of gorgeous stringed instruments that would make your mouth water! Mellow, ruddy Gibson A4’s; twirling, serpentine A5’s and Val played a dreadful trick on me! When I took Mary Coffee, my gorgeous coffee and cream 1917 Gibson A4 mand0lin out for the workshop, wasn’t there an Elderly tag hanging off the neck with a fair price! It looked like I might have stolen the instrument or worse still: maybe Mary Coffee was sold in error to some Bluegrasser! Justin Murphy who completes the band Legacy, the second best flute player in America (the best is now dead), joined us and Val and he were hilarious doing all kinds of accents: they have the Dublin cant down to a tee with all the colloquialism. An ineffable talent, I had a pain in my stomach from laughing at them and oh! to have the wherewithal to “take people off.” I’d never stop, and to quote Con Fada, “twould be the price of me!

There were some magical restive days staying with Don’s cousins Mark and Cyndi on their lovely lakeshore cottage in Northern Michigan. Mark is a fine guitarist and he showed me some bossa nova rhythms and chords, my fancy and fascination for a long time. We were wined and dined and killed with kindness and Michigan cooking.

Then it all suddenly ended and ‘the lads’ headed back to Mississippi and Florida and I headed over to Minnesota to rejoin my handsome apprentice Mairtin de Cogain and his wife Mitra for a few gigs and house concerts and to stay in their new home in Rochester. Mairtin took me to some quaint diners in St. Paul and Minneapolis, where they shot a scene from the movie version of A Prairie Home Companion, which, with the possible exception of Sunday Miscellany on RTE radio, is probably the best radio show in the world. I was still exhausted after the Circus jobby- I’m far too old for all this caper and I should be doing a bit of quiet fly-fishing now on some tranquil stretch of the river Lee at this hour of me life and quit me gallivanting! But as Andy Irvine says, “Never Tire of the Road”, and the road is rejuvenating.

I’m back in Dunedin where the sea is like wine. In a couple of days I’ll be home in my beloved Beautiful City of Cork for the “season” but returning for Milwaukee Irish Festival and a Captain Mackey’s Goatskin and Stringband tour thereafter. Keep a weather eye on the site, folks, we’ll do our best to keep it up to date. Will let you know about the date for the official launch of our album,” Soldiers’ Songs: The Irish Abroad and Soldiering” in New York in October.

Met some flash pussycats over the last few months: hard to beat Finnegan, a gorgeous, good-natured ragdoll of a tom owned by Ziggy and Susan of Stone Cross. Finnegan was as happy and as amiable as ever I’ve seen a cat; he positively smiled, I tell you, when you tickled his tummy or played with him. -and remember: there are grouchy, ornery cats too, but Finnegan isn’t one of ‘em. I’ll feature him some time in our Cat’s Gallery.

The Cat of the Month is a Dublin jackeen of a cat called Tiger but he has a well-deserved Latin title, Testicalus Maximus- or something dreadful like that. Met him when I picked up an instrument case at Mike Mullen’s workshop in Dublin last January. Mike is a fantastic craftsman and has protected the instruments of the musicians of Ireland with quality casemaking. My “steerina” as I call the “twin perambulator” that he designed for my bouzouki and guitar (together) is the talk of America and turns more heads than a leggy blonde.

I’ll see ye, to quote Andy Moore, “all of a sudden.”

SONGS OF CORK: ECHO SERIES 339: LAND AHOY

The fleet of Ceol faoi Shéol (Music Under Sail) reached Crosshaven safely and in time for that sweet village’s Traditional Boat Festival last weekend. I’m not sure if there is a nicer way of spending a week’s holiday than amongst sea-faring, musical friends with the gift of the gab and a passion for the people and the pubs along the fabled coast Cork. This June beano is now as fixed in our cosmos as the North Star; and while cynical coves will scoff at our simplicity as we trudge down the gangplank towards the pub, a gadget, perhaps, or a fiddle under your oxter; I am reminded of what the great East Galway practitioner of Irish music, Joe Burke, told me some years back. Joe said that around Loughrea in the fifties you’d have to hide your melodeon in case the people would be laughing at you; tinkers’ music, they called it, which is doubly disrespectful, as our traveling community is amongst the most authentic tradition bearer. Now, Joe tells me, traditional musicians have to conceal their instruments such is the incredible interest in the music.

Amongst the coterie of musicians and singers on board the mother ship, Ron Kavana, as he spells his name, stood out like a beacon of contemporary light, candescent, vital, yet all of his songs while treating of present-day events like reconciliation in the North or between Ireland and England are firmly fixed upon traditional navigation. I was delighted to include two of Ron’s songs on my new album Soldiers’ Songs with Máirtín de Cógáin and our new band, “C aptain Mackey’s Goatskin and Stringband”, both on the fortunes of Irish soldiers caught in the vortex of history. Kavana can reach back and sing the unsung, champion the tenor of their lives and more importantly, assuage their lonesome, wandering souls, because, as I read somewhere, the dead long to be remembered.

I’m delighted Ron has deigned to compose a new sea shanty about our humble coastal navigations; thought he has pitched his song far higher and to far loftier latitudes than those of Carberrry’s Hundred Isles and turned us all miraculously into blue water sailors, which some of our dauntless navy certainly are, like our redoubtable Rear-Admiral Dave Hennessy.

Last week’s ballad which Ron also kindly contributed to the column was handed to me as we rounded the Fastnet, on the back of a Players cigarette box (navy cut, of course); today’s was shouted into my ears as we tacked across Clonakilty Bay.
In the old days of sail, the shanty was a means of keeping the sailors in tandem and in time as they reached aloft or turned the capstan or straightened the yards. Because like most good things in life, communal team work is nearly always the most enjoyable, productive and noble. They intone it well in the Mother Tongue: i dteannta a chéile a mhairimid (in each other’s company we live best).
Monkstown Traditional Sail Festival is on this weekend and I’ll see ye all at their delightful,cosy Sailing Club on Sunday afternoon for a selection of maritime songs.

From Oileán Cléire we have come,
Land ahoy, land ahoy.
Across the broad Atlantic foam,
Land ahoy, me sailor boys.

Chorus after each quatrain:
Land ahoy, land ahoy,
Land ahoy, me bonnie boys;
We’ll soon be with the girls we love,
Land ahoy, me sailor boys.

The season’s o’er, the music’s done;
Land ahoy, land ahoy.
The Holy Ground we’ll soon walk on,
Land ahoy, me sailor boys.

Is that the Head of Old Kinsale?
Land ahoy, land ahoy.
Soon into Queenstown we will sail.
Land ahoy, me sailor boys

There’s Captain Tanner at the wheel,
Land ahoy, land ahoy.
And Seanie Driscoll playing a reel
Land ahoy, me sailor boys.

Tonight we’ll sail right up the Lee,
Land ahoy, land ahoy.
Captain Dave, the crew and me,
Land ahoy, me sailor boys.

Let Ado strum that old guitar,
Land ahoy, land ahoy.
And play The Coast of Malibar,
Land ahoy, me sailor boys.

Is that the cove of Cork I see?
Land ahoy, land ahoy.
We’ll sup tonight with our family,
Land ahoy, me sailor boys.

We’ll Trim the Velvet, Speed the Plow
Land ahoy, land ahoy,
Play all the tunes we know somehow,
Land ahoy, me sailor boys.

Perhaps we’ll shed a tear or two,
Land ahoy, land ahoy,
For shipmates taken from our crew,
Land ahoy, me sailor boys

SONGS OF CORK:ECHO SERIES 338: CITY OF SONG.

We are on the whale’s path, on that watery road that has no ending. Our fleet is not insubstantial being the sum of four stout, sturdy vessels still outward bound as I write. This is no ordinary flotilla; being the singular association of sea-faring musicians who flourish in each other ‘s company when the cuckoo’s song is nearly run and now known around the coast of Cork as Ceol faoi Sheol (music under sail). My own official holidays, this is the week the thought of which has sustained me through lonesome times in America; like when I ran into that snowstorm in Michigan or I was pulled over by the Texsas Rangers or when lightening flashed like dancing dragons and blanched the sky, I’d say to myself, Hang in there, Crowley, in a four weeks you’ll be off the Galley Head with a fleet of faithful tars heading for Mary Casey’s cosy tavern overlooking Glandor Harbour; the yellow moon pulling a yellow swathe towards herself in the firmament across the placid sea.

After a cosy “home” night at the Moonduster, Crosshaven last Wedensday the fleet weighed early on Thursday morning heading out the harbour under all plain sail, a propitious wind filling our canvas. Soon the Old Head is weathered, a fair wind off the land and with a fine academic commentary from my cousin “Bosun” Bill Daly who knows the topography and archaeology of this coast to the finer details. His intonation waxes slow and languid as he drones on about sunken ships off lonesome Rainey’s Bay, poor Chinese slaves who were once wrecked and imprisoned in sheds along the coast; distressed American steamers during World War One and more recent adventures or friends and associates.We make that lovely board towards Courtmacsherry where Billy Fleming’s cosy Anchor Bar is our first port of call for the session. A cashless, communist association, Seol fe Sheol bargains thus with benign coastal landlords: “How would you like to have the cream of musicians all jamming away together in your pub and there’s no transmission of cash even!” I can tell you, many publicans in retrospect would fare fiscally far fairer if a normal fee were stipulated ; because the barells of stout, the unquinshable thirst of those strumming mariners is inexorable .

We have an extraordinary team of chanters and traditional musicians which includes the reboubtable Admiral of the fleet Dave Hennessy, the best melodeon player between here and Shreveport, Louisiana. There’s his lovely wife Katrina on the timber flute, Gerry Harrington from Kenmare on a sweet Kerry fiddle that Padraig O’ Keefe would salute, the most subtle banjo player in Christendom , Seanie Driscoll, Captain Tanner, also on that instrument, the lovely Jessica on the flute and who graces us with sweet sean nos steps of dancing each night and the singers are the redoubtable Dick Hogan from Tipperary, perhaps the best comic singer in Ireland who springs into action each night to the delight of the people. Among other friends like Dr. Dave Nagle who joined us on Sherkin and played lovely fiddle and national steel guitar , our company is rounded off by songwriter Ron Kavana from the town of Fermoy.Ron’s songs (they are many and varied and not confined to the Beautiful City) are beautiful, poignant, didactic and spiritual.

Here is one that is specially suited to our column,written out by himself on the back of a fag box off the Fastnet, being in a plaintive 3-4 and all to do with the things we love about Cork . Can I thank, while I’m at it, all those publicans who hosted this motley crew along the coast for the last week or so, no sailor had to be cautioned or punished in any way, so behaviour was , I hope, not too bad. Thank you Jodie and Joe at the Moonduster in Crosshaven, Billy Fleming at the Anchor bar, Courtmac, Mary Casey in Glandore,William and Valerie and the Corner House, Skibbereen,Mark Murphy at the hotel, Sherkin Island,the people of Hackett’s bar, Schull and young Youen Jacob in Baltimore, for these are the pubs and publicans that will prevail when the westerlies of this recession subdue lesser vessels.

Pairc Ui Chaoimh on the Sundays,
I remember with pride
From the Ferryboat Inn
We crossed the river we’d ride;
The fans sang, We don’t care
If we win , loose or draw,
The Red and White blowin’
In the cold winter squall.

Dear old town by the Lee,
There’s no place I could be
So carefree and happy
As when I’m on your streets;
I can still feel the glow, boys,
Of days long ago, boys,
When you’d hear the Dunne Brothers
Outside Roches’ Stores.

Chorus:

Corcaigh! Corcaigh! Corcaigh abu!
It’s not just when we’re winning
That we sing of you.
A city of beauty, a city of song,
Just fire up the chorus
And we’ll all sing along.

The Danes built your first walls
To keep us at bay;
From the banks and the boglands
We drove them away;
The Tans tried to burn you down
Not too long ago
But never could conquer
Your bold rebel soul.

Well the spires of St. Finbarr’s
Stand regal and tall
While the sweet Bells of Shandon
To prayer call on all
As from high on St.Luke’s
I gaze fondly down
On the waters flowing gently,
Your island surround.

Repeat chorus.