I'm a frequenter at the link's mothersite.....No Depression, which is a music site devoted to Americana.
I read the entry on the music of Ireland and filed it away in my head until we decided to go to Ireland to see what we would see. I wanted to make the Connemara one of the places we hiked and hoped to happen upon some music in the small towns of the area.
I have a firm rule when traveling for pleasure and that’s to
go in the off season. When my
girlfriend and I decided to go to Ireland in December we got nothing but “it’s
their rainiest month of the year. Why are you going then?”
We go then because 95% of the time we went into a pub
outside the big cities in Ireland
we were the only non locals in the place.
We had spent the day hiking in the mountains of Connemara
with winds of biblical proportions and got to Clifden around 4. We park the car and start to walk
around looking for a good cup of hot Americano…maybe 4 or 5 minutes.. and go by
a pub. My girlfriend spots a
couple of people playing inside and I say “let’s go in for a pint”.
Inside, it’s all old men and women. The two players are a young man who we
later find out grew up down the road aways in Cleggan along with his wife from
Sweden, and an older guy on squeeze box we later find out is brother of the owner
of the pub. The young couple live
in Sweden now but his wife tells us he misses the Irish music scene so much
that they come back here whenever they can.
The scene quickly takes upon a surreal almost film-like
quality of people coming off their bar stools to sing a verse or two, us
interacting with everybody in the place once they find out we’re from San
Francisco….you can feel the energy starting to build. The young guy puts down his guitar and picks up his banjo,
the owner of the bar comes around and picks up the guitar and sits down, an old
guy pulls out a flute from his pocket and sits down and the music really takes
off. Thomas, the old guy sitting
next to me is doing a running commentary in my ear on the history and
significance of the songs. One
woman gets up and sings a cappella….she holds her Guinness in her hand, eyes
closed…Thomas is telling me (I think, his accent is difficult for me to pick
up) how important this song is to the Irish people….Damn, it was sending
shivers up my spine.
They start to do a song with a nice beat and I get up to
dance. Everybody’s jaws drop,
fingers are pointing. Afterward
the oldest of the old comes over slapping my back and yelling “That was
fantastic!” They want to know
where I learned that. I tell them
my mother who grew up way back yonder in the hills of Kentucky taught me that.
Kevin, the squeezebox player says “You dance in Shadow style...at least I think
he said Shadow….he says that’s the very old style of dancing. After getting back to the US and rereading the No Depression thread I realize he was saying "Sean-nós" or "Old Style"
A couple songs later, Kevin says I should dance to the next
number…Old guys are trying to kiss my girlfriend, the crowd even gets her to
sing a song…she settles on “This Land is Your Land”. We buy a round of pints for the band, Thomas the whole time
is still doing a running commentary in my ear. At one point he sort of whispers “Do you know what this
is? It’s a session, fucker”. For some reason he’s been calling me a
fucker the whole time. “You’re lucky to be here”…I tell him the reason we came
to Ireland was for the music…and to meet him. He likes this.
By the end of the evening, we’ve met and made friends with
each and everybody in the place.
I’m smitten…with the land that we hiked, with the pubs and the music
within and especially with the very warm and gentle people.
