Kevin Burke is relishing the raw bar and the tune stripped to the bone on his latest album, with Cal Scott, he tells Siobhán Long.
'A lot of people came to traditional music back in the 1970s via Planxty, The Chieftains, De Danann and The Bothy Band," Kevin Burke declares, "but what many of them might have forgotten is that originally, this music was typically a solo music." These days, Kevin Burke has stripped the music back down to its underwear, and let it speak for itself.
Raised in London, of Sligo parents, Burke honed a keen Sligo fiddle style that carried some of the echoes of his childhood hero, Michael Coleman, as he parachuted upon some of traditional music's most seminal collectives. Over the years, his musical identity has been inextricably linked with The Bothy Band, Micheál Ó Domhnaill, Jackie Daly, Patrick Street, The Celtic Fiddle Festival and Open House, and lately he's been trading tunes with Cal Scott, a composer and musician living in Burke's adopted home town of Portland, Oregon.
Their debut as a duo, Across the Black River, is a master class in eclectic musicianship, coloured by a restraint born of experience and a fluidity that surely owes much to their comfort in one another's company. Burke acknowledges that reaching that point of mutual engagement entailed a languorous and protracted series of encounters, and wasn't the product of some heady, fleeting encounter in the studio.
"Working with Cal was a bit like what I'd imagine it must be like for actors in rehearsal," Burke offers. "You know the words, you know the plot, but sometimes an actor can express anger by jumping up and down and screaming, and sometimes it's a lot more sinister and aggressive if he drops his voice and talks real quietly. That can be a lot more effective. That's what we talked about a lot: how we deliver the tunes. Cal's execution of my ideas is stunning. You know how it is: when you talk about wine, you use all these vague terms, and most people don't know what the hell you're talking about. But Cal can actually do it. He knows what I'm getting at. He can bring those images to the fore right away.
"A lot of it is juxtaposition, like the double bass. It's been used in Irish music before but not in the music I play. I wanted to make it not only compatible, but to sound like it belongs. I wanted to get it to a point where it wouldn't sound right without it. To be truthful, this is a very tailored record, where we tried to bring our very separate skills and made them compatible with each other."
Anchored by The Long Set, a sextet of reels that swing effortlessly from The Boys Of The Lough to Seán Sa Cheo and Paddy Ryan's Dream, Across the Black River is a snapshot of Kevin Burke at a time in his career when he's relishing the raw bar, the tunes stripped bare. These days he plays quite a lot of solo fiddle concerts, particularly in the US, and the level of audience interest in hearing the music in all its naked glory suggested that a recording, focused on spacious arrangements of the tunes against a minimalist backdrop, might be timely.
Alongside this blistering set piece of The Long Set sit Vincent Broderick's sublime Last Train From Loughrea, Bill Monroe's Evening Prayer Blues, Scott's The Lighthouse Keeper's Waltz and Burke's eponymous tune, Across the Black River. The thread that unites them all is a shared appetite for exploring the shadowy corners of the music, shedding light on notes that might have languished previously in the dark, and exploring the lyrical potential of the music.
BURKE IS CONVINCED OF the inherent personality of a tune. It suggests itself to him, insinuating itself beneath his skin. "I'm a great believer that the wildest reel could have a hint of sadness, and some of the slower tunes have jolly parts too," he says.
"Nothing is totally sad or totally happy. When I was playing Vincent Broderick's tune, Last Train From Loughrea, I felt that, in some ways, it sounds very simple, almost naive, as if it could have been written by a child - or else by someone very wise and experienced. It has the stamp of a very old style of tune, which I really like. Cal was able to put enormous gentleness into the arrangement, because there's a wistfulness about it that I didn't want to lose."
The Bothy Band revolutionised Irish music. Burke joined the band upon Tommy Peoples' departure in 1976, and together with Tríona and Micheál Ó Domhnaill, Paddy Keenan, Matt Molloy and Dónal Lunny, launched a collective weapon of mass seduction upon the listening public. There followed a trio of timeless recordings: Old Hag You Have Killed Me in 1976, Out Of The Wind Into The Sun in 1977 and a live recording from Paris, After Hours, in 1978. Music spine-tinglingly of its time and timeless, basking in the tunes of the tradition and bathing them in rich, earthy arrangements that put fire in their bellies and pep in their step.
Anyone lucky enough to have crossed the threshold of Omós, the recent concert in memory of the late Micheál Ó Domhnaill at Vicar Street, will have sampled (albeit briefly) the subtlety and finesse of Kevin Burke's fiddle lines. Together with the remaining members of The Bothy Band, whose reunion was long overdue, Burke could hardly contain his delight as the electricity sparking off each of the band members. For many of the punters who packed the venue, it was a breathtaking reminder of the primal power of music.
Interestingly though, Kevin Burke gets even more animated at the prospect of taking the music into uncharted waters, audience-wise, than he is when reflecting on the (admittedly rare) chance he has to play to punters who can recite the tunes, chapter and verse.
"Not many people have gone out of their way to play Irish music in places where there isn't any," he declares. "It's one thing playing it in Camden town, Kilburn and east Clare, but playing it in northern Michigan, or Denmark or Estonia, especially back then [ in the 1970s], was really weird. I remember meeting Paul Butterfield, who used to have the Paul Butterfield Blues Band [ and played with The Band] in Woodstock way back in the 1970s. We were at a party, and I played a Paddy Fahy tune, and Paul said 'Well man, that's the Irish blues'. That made complete sense to me, but I felt: 'Why didn't he know that before I started to play?' - just as I knew as soon as he pulled out his harmonica, what it would sound like. I just couldn't understand why Irish music wasn't 'out there'."
The irony was that Burke saw all kinds of common ground between the rock, folk and pop music of the time, and Irish music, but it seemed that few others did.
"I used to listen to Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, The Beatles, Otis Redding, Manfred Mann and The Stones," he says, "but when I turned on the radio or television, I never heard Irish music. It made sense to me that the emotion I got out of seeing Joe Cocker singing With A Little Help From My Friends was nothing different from hearing Joe Heaney singing Skibbereen.
"When I heard Bob Dylan, I was even more struck by how similar he sounded to what I heard before. I remember hearing The Times They Are A-Changin', and I was struck by the similarities to what I knew: songs of emigration, with the same kind of atmosphere, but with different words. It was a problem for me that Irish music wasn't on the same kind of footing. Of course these days, it's all changed now. In fact, if people in Spain heard a Spanish tune backed by the uilleann pipes, they'd probably think it was Irish."
HAVING TRAVELLED TO DUBLIN for Micheál Ó Domhnaill's memorial concert, Kevin Burke is keen to reflect on the man and his music, and what set him apart.
"Micheál was an inspired musician," he offers, "and a great intellect - not in an academic way, but in an emotional way. He used his intelligence to seek out and to construct inspiring music, and he usually found it within himself. The last time I met Micheál, he gave me a recording of Loch Lomond, a song that's definitely been around the block, but last night I was listening to it again, and his guitar introduction alone was gorgeous. Before he started singing at all, you're won over. It was just beautiful."
When it comes to the business of recording, Burke has come full circle. Following the demise of Green Linnet, a label with which Burke had been signed for many years, he decided to bypass the intricacies of negotiating a new contract with a new label when it came to recording his last album with Ged Foley, In Tandem. From there, releasing his latest recording on his own label again seemed like a natural progression.
"I just like the idea of it being ours," he reveals with childlike glee. "There's a lot of work involved, but with the CD retailing industry in freefall, it made a lot of sense for me to take this on myself. The fact is that I sell nearly all my CDs at my concerts, and this is a record I'm really proud of. We took a lot of time and effort over the entire project. Having done it, I'm delighted, but it's not something I'd lightly recommend. Still, it's a great feeling: having control over your own music."
Across the Black River by Kevin Burke and Cal Scott is out now on Loftus Music. Kevin Burke plays with Patrick Street in Limerick, tomorrow and Thurs, Listowel, Co Kerry, Fri, Clondalkin, Co Dublin, Sat, Cork, July 11, Dublin, July 12 and Donegal, July 13-14. www.kevinburke.com
