If it’s fall in New York City, it means that a new season of Don Meade’s Blarney Star concert series is about to get underway. Hosted by Meade and presented at the New York Irish Center in Long Island City, Queens, the Blarney Star concerts feature the finest music around and are must-see events on the City’s traditional music calendar.
The 2024-2025 season kicks off this Friday, Sept. 13, with Siobhán and Willie Kelly. They will be joined by their incredibly talented children, in-laws, and notable friends. The Kellys are superb musicians with immaculate taste, so this concert promises to be a real treat.
Willie and Siobhán Kelly.
The Blarney Star concerts that follow will surely delight, too. On Oct. 18, Meade will feature the great Máire Ní Chathasaigh and Chris Newman, and then on Nov. 22, the featured artists will be Gerry "Fiddle" O'Connor & Kevin McElroy. lots of great stuff in store this fall! Visit https://www.blarneystar.com/ for more on Meade and his various activities and for tickets to the Blarney Star shows, visit https://www.newyorkirishcenter.org/.
In other live music news, it was announced this week that traditional music supergroup Solas will reunite after an eight-year hiatus to celebrate their 30th anniversary. Leading the charge this time around are Seamus Egan, Winifred Horan, John Williams, Nuala Kennedy, and Alan Murray – it’s an incredible crew.
So far, they’ve announced tour dates for February thru April 2025, with stops in Durango, Colo., Pocatello, Idaho, Boise, Idaho, Chippewa Falls, Wisc., Milwaukee, Wisc., Chicago, Ill., Madison Wisc., Minneapolis, Minn., Scituate, Mass., Old Saybrook, Conn., Portsmouth, N.H., Barre, Vt., Groton, Mass., Homer, N.Y., Pittsburgh, Pa., Philadelphia, Pa., Frederick, Md., Waynesboro, Va., Williamsburg, Va., Santa Barbara, Calif., Sacramento, Calif., Berkeley, Calif., and Henderson, Nev. Solas is not to be missed! For more information, visit https://solastheband.com/.
In the media player this week is “Traditional Singing from Dublin,” by Macdara Yeates. A true solo singing effort, and a fabulous one at that, I think this is the sort of album that will attract the traditional singerati, not just because of it’s high artistic quality, but because it represents the efforts of a scene that makes interesting songs and versions of songs a priority.
Yeates is a fascinating and very active musician. He’s been behind a number of noteworthy community events over the years, including making the appealing documentary about the great Liam Weldon for the 20/20 Visionaries film series. He was also a member of the Skipper’s Alley, a great band as well as something of an incubator of traditional music, as it yielded more than its fair share of acclaimed and award-winning young musicians, including (but certainly not limited to) John Francis Flynn, Eoghan Ó Ceannabháin, Caoimhín Ó Fearghail, and Pahto Cummins.
But I’d say the most consequential aspect of Yeates’s career so far is his role in “The Night Before Larry Got Stretched,” the singing club at Dublin’s Cobblestone Bar, that he had a hand in founding in 2012. Following Sinéad Lynch’s lead, Yeates, Ruth Clinton, Ian Lynch and others set up the singing collective especially for young folks. It soon became an elite session with intergenerational participation that led to the emergence of important groups like Landless, Lankum, Ye Vagabonds, and OXN, and individuals like Lisa O’Neill, and John Francis Flynn, all of whom now comprise the backbone of Dublin’s singing scene. (Incidentally, this is the very scene Will Hermes touched on in 2023 in his high profile New York Times article called “What’s Driving a Fresh Wave of Irish Music? Tradition.”)
The “uncluttered, unadorned” style that Yeates embraces here is presumably rooted in the way songs are rendered at “Larry” sessions and it’s the thing that gives this album its strength. The character in Yeates’s voice shines right through in songs like “Blue Tar Road” (which comes from the singing of Liam Weldon) and “Kerry Recruit” (from the singing of Luke Kelly), both of which are powerfully rendered. Yeates’s take on Dominic Behan’s gem “Our Last Hope” gives it a fresh life that I think will compel the ear of many. And then there are tracks like “One Starry Night,” another tune that comes from the singing of Weldon, on which Yeates uses acoustic guitar to accompany himself. The approach imparts a “lonely” element to his expression that stands in stark contrast to the tracks I mentioned above. Gorgeous stuff.
There’s something great about the music on “Traditional Singing from Dublin.” Yeates has a deep, confident voice, a superb sense of phrasing and dynamics, and excellent taste in song selection. All this adds up to a strong, interesting collection of music. But because this album comes from Dublin’s traditional singing scene, it sets an excellent example for singers elsewhere. The ethos behind this music seems to be one that constantly reaches for and truly values the novelty of a great song and the expressive nuances that the oral tradition yields. It’s balladry in action and in that sense in the tradition of singers like Frank Harte, Liam Weldon and Luke Kelly – singers, really, that anyone interested in Irish music should be on board with. Great stuff, highly recommended. To learn more and to purchase, visit https://macdarayeates.bandcamp.com/.
