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those days recording was pretty sparse, and I never saw her with a tape recorder. So I don’t know how she could remember it all. Any time I’d ask her ‘Where does that come from?’ She’d say ‘Oh that’s something I used to hear when I was a girl’. That’s all I’d get – unless she was specific about the person, mainly people from East Galway. She knew Paddy Fahey very well, and Paddy Carty, and she played in the Ballinakill Ceilidh Band, back in the ’30s I think. I got a bunch of tunes from her.”
Though the sessions were informal they had a strict, unspoken code of etiquette. “You wouldn’t just join in. You’d wait ‘til you were asked, or if you knew the people you might ask ‘Is it OK to join in?’ If I walked in and Roger [Sherlock] and Raymond [Row- land] were playing, even though I knew them well I wouldn’t dream of sitting down and playing alongside them until I was asked. It wouldn’t cross my mind. Sometimes I wouldn’t even bring the fiddle in, you’d scope things out first. That idea was ‘If you’re not going to make it better, you don’t play’. There was very little of ‘I want to play so I’m going to’ [he laughs]. People would be asked to play and they’d say no, and they’d be asked again and again, and finally they’d get up and play. The etiquette was to say no a few times.”
Fiddler Bobby Casey from West Clare is remembered on An Evening With Kevin Burke in the introductory words for the set Tuttle's Reel, The Bunch Of Green Rushes and The Maids Of Mitchelstown – all tunes that Kevin says he learned from him, “but maybe not”. “I heard a lot about Bobby, and the first few times I heard him myself I didn’t find him that impressive. Musicians like Sean McGuire or Brendan McGlinchey had a very strong clear sound, so you’d hear them even if there were four or five other people playing. Bobby wasn’t like that, his music was a lot gentler – not as brilliant a sound. But I remember after a dance – he was playing in the band at the Galtymore in Cricklewood – we were all sitting around in the bar and someone asked Bobby to play a tune on his own, and I thought it was absolutely staggering.”
“I couldn’t believe it was so involved and expressive. How could you pour so much music into one tune and one instrument? At the same time it felt really laid back. So I found it very intrigu- ing. It was a different kind of energy. Power was not involved, there was no attempt to make it sound strong or precise. It was the opposite, floating and blending and suggesting and hinting. I always found Bobby difficult to talk to, because whenever you asked him something he’d make some kind of a joke completely off the subject. And then he’d laugh and play another tune. So I never got to talk with him about where his music came from, or how he learned to play. But after that night I became a big fan, and I was always delighted to hear him. It made me realize what I should be listening for.”
ting around in the corner, playing – but there was a microphone. It struck me as a bit odd. Not so long after that I walked in and someone had built a stage – with microphones. It was a step clos- er to being a performance, though in the time I’m talking about they never made that leap. Then in the late ’60s – early ’70s I started to notice people showing up who weren’t Irish – some of the English folkies.”
T
“I was probably about 14 or 15 when I discovered the English folk club. Kate Bush’s brother Paddy introduced me to Dave and Toni Arthur, a husband and wife duo who sang traditional English music and brought me to a few clubs. Compared to the Irish ses- sion it seemed so formal. I was also taken with the fact that it was kind of studied, even a bit academic. A guy would sing, say, a shep- herd’s song from East Anglia though he had no link to shepherds or sheep, had never been to East Anglia, and was a lawyer’s clerk in Richmond! When I heard the Irish guys sing about emigration, or eviction, or 1916, maybe they hadn’t been there but their mum and dad were there. It just felt much more personal. At the same time I thought it was very interesting that there was this genuine effort to make people aware of a tradition that was close to dying out – or maybe had died out.”
“With Ireland there was no question. Four or five pubs in Ful- ham had music four or five times a week. Apart from The King’s Head, The White Hart, and The Swan there was The Balloon, up the road closer to Chelsea, and there was another called The Red
he Irish pub sessions in London in the ’60s may have felt suspended in time and space, but major changes were in the air. “When I started going there were no microphones. I remember walking into the White Hart one night and it was the same as ever – everyone sit-
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