f28


year has pursued them with earnest vigour) and formidable guttural Dublin accents sug- gest a band intent on ripping your throat out, kicking the floor from under you and changing the landscape of music.


Yet none of these things are in their DNA. Sure, there is more than a scent of dis- affection and alienation in their most cele- brated song, Cold Old Fire, written by Daragh Lynch and Cian Lawless about a Dublin draped in despair and hopelessness when music seemed the only lifeline (“We always sing even when we’re losing/ ’cos Dublin’s drone is hard enough/Especially when you’re down and you’re boozing”). But it’s a song of sorrow rather than rage, philosophy rather than sloganeering, care rather than fury and, delivered with under- stated emotion from their seated positions, its deliberate tones cut through all the nor- mal paraphernalia of modern music to cre- ate the elusive sound of sincerity and authenticity.


They have rip-roaring choruses a-plenty in their armour: Henry My Son, Father Had A Knife, Daffodil Mulligan, Salonika et al to summon the names of the Clancy Brothers, Dubliners, Sweeney’s Men, Pogues, Planxty and indeed every other great Irish folk band of past times… but scratch them and you will find a plethora of serious intent and a surprisingly soothing soul.


immersed in the punk scene, the brothers Lynch have earned their spurs in a trillion informal sessions, organising music nights at the Grand and no shortage of study into the history of the tradition. Ian Lynch has a masters in folklore and worked at the Irish Traditional Music Archive. Boombastic, marauding, kicking-out-the-traces, sloga- neering musical revolutionaries these are not. Thoughtful, considered, honest, craft- ed, harmonising artisans breathing vibrant new life into a trusty old style rooted in songs of the people they certainly are.


R


Those who come anticipating a cross between the Dubliners and the Sex Pistols are amazed to encounter a band playing sensitive, quiet, beautiful affecting music, albeit in voices of rare rawness.


There was a time not so long ago when the height of their ambition was to get paid to play. Radie says “My main goal was to make an album of which we could be proud. And we’d say like ‘Jeez, I wonder what it would be like to make money off gigs.’ We’d charge ridiculously low amounts and thought we were being really cheeky at the time.”


In 2003 an early version of Lynched fea-


turing Ian and Daragh Lynch recorded an album of mostly self-written songs Where Did We Go Wrong? They only printed off 300 copies, mostly distributed among mates, but an American label took it up when they toured there and they still get odd requests for tracks from it, usually for Sign On – a par- ody of Christy Moore’s Ride On – or a bizarre novelty track about a glam rock anarchy army in the style of David Bowie.


Ian: “My first introduction to this music would be bands like The Dubliners, stuff like that. Which is the case for a lot of people in Ireland who eventually dug deeper and got


adie Peat and Cormac Mac Diar- mada (fiddle, straggly hair, laconic smile, measured tones) are steeped in traditional music while, apart from a period


into the purer drop. It’s something I got into in my teenage years and developed over the years and eventually I became obsessed with, especially the singing and the songs. You can totally lose yourself in that world of ballad scholarship and academia and all that stuff. I find it fascinating.”


The more he got into it, the more he felt it loosened feet that had previously been firmly set in punk, hence the ‘tradi- tional music is more punk than punk’ quote.


“It wasn’t just the content of the songs but the whole community aspect that drew me in. The way the music is played, bringing people together, the whole social side to things. The same DIY aspect which had orig- inally drawn me to punk. People getting up and doing it for themselves. Making music for themselves by themselves without the need for the music industry and all that. That’s what I first saw when I started going to traditional music sessions and that’s what blew me away.”


After completing his Irish folklore mas- ters degree (“it’s based more on legends and narratives and folk tales than the music itself”) he became an intern at the Irish Traditional Music Archive and went on to spend a pivotal year doing field record- ings, travelling around the country going to festivals, meeting musicians and devel- oping his passion.


“I haven’t looked back since. I can hap- pily spend six or seven hours going through the archives, looking at books and listening to old field recordings.”


They champion the urban folk tradition and talk fondly of Frank Harte, the emi- nently quotable Dublin singer and street ballad collector who made the observation “those in power write the history, those who suffer write the songs”.


They have also been heavily influenced by the music of the travellers. “They kept alive a lot of the songs, Child ballads and the like, long after the settled communities had lost interest in them. The tradition is greatly indebted to the travelling community – they brought so many tunes with them and it would be nice to see that acknowledged.”


I


an Lynch’s conversion from the punk environment into traditional music obsessive intensified when he became infatuated with uilleann pipes, initially after hearing Liam


O’Flynn with Planxty. He decided he had to learn to play them after hearing the pipes on The Wicker Man soundtrack – unaware at the time these were actually Northum- brian pipes – enrolled on an uilleann pipe course and set about learning to play one of the most infamously challenging instru- ments in the world.


“I got a set of pipes on loan, paid a deposit and rolled up for this course. I was this big freak with a shaved head and dreads and piercings and all and they were like ‘Aye, how are ye, come in’. They were very friendly and welcoming. My first teach- er was Gabriel McKeon, who gave me a great introduction to the instrument.”


“I love Johnny Doran – his piping blows


me away, but my favourite piper is probably Tommy Reck – he’s a bit more laid-back in a lot of ways, a bit more reserved. Really nice, gentle playing. He brought out an LP, The Stone In The Field, in the late ’70s but he recorded stuff much earlier, in the ’50s too.


The recording going around is Tommy Reck playing in Paddy O’Loughlin’s kitchen, which is phenomenal. It’s up there with Willie Clancy and Seamus Ennis – some real- ly soulful, beautiful playing.”


And at what stage is your own playing right now? “I keep falling back because I have a son and a job and other stuff so it’s hard to go out and play sessions. I have the pieces I play with the band all the time but I don’t go out and just play tunes. I’m waiting until my son is eighteen and then I’m going out to play every session and pick it back up again. I go through phases of getting mad into the singing and then I get mad into the piping, but for the past two years it has all been the singing. I’ve put a lot more effort into that.”


Ian’s brother Daragh describes himself “nowhere near as nerdy”, more consumed by the practical side and the uplifting social aspect of the music, ignited by the late night sessions and family singsongs.


Cormac, the fiddle player, meanwhile, grew up in a family of musicians listening to his older brothers playing in bands and was well versed from an early age in the art of session playing. When it comes to fiddle playing, he names Martin Hayes as one of his primary inspirations.


“Seeing him live was… he’d play three or four tunes for fifteen minutes solid and he just locked into it. It was just…mesmerising.”


As for Radie, the name of Noel Hill is prominent as she talks about her concertina heroes, though she has to think long and hard about the singers who have shaped her. “One of the best singers I ever heard is a girl who is the same age as me, who taught me how to sing when I was a teenager and her name is Roisin Chambers. She doesn’t record stuff or anything and she’s a doctor now, but she’s fantastic. And Nellie Weldon, who comes into the Cobble- stone and sings on Sundays, but again I don’t think she’s recorded anything com- mercially. I think Elizabeth LaPrelle has an amazing voice too. But a lot of the people I find most inspiring are field recordings. The likes of Mary Delaney. But I love June Tabor too. And Shirley Collins…”


“I never expected to be a singer. I gave it up for a long time and was just playing instrumental concertina tunes. That was the main thing I was interested in. I did a lot of singing as a teenager and then I stopped and have only been getting back into it in the last five or six years. I’ve always been very aware of tunes though…”


It leads to an interest discussion on the nature of singing.


Daragh: “There’s something that when you listen to those old singers that you don’t really hear in more mainstream music nowadays, which is a bit more rounded and polished. Certainly the singers I would listen to have an element of rawness I really like.”


Radie: “Mary Delaney was very punk. They’d be singing in their own voices but also with an emphasis on power, kind of singing it out. I think something has hap- pened with female singers where they’ve become very polished and sweet and very feminine whereas if you listened to the older recordings they’d be singing like the men – there was no difference. It wasn’t meant to be a prettier voice. They just sang in their own voices.”


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66  |  Page 67  |  Page 68  |  Page 69  |  Page 70  |  Page 71  |  Page 72  |  Page 73  |  Page 74  |  Page 75  |  Page 76  |  Page 77  |  Page 78  |  Page 79  |  Page 80  |  Page 81  |  Page 82  |  Page 83  |  Page 84