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So what do I take from this my third trip? Well firstly, I love my brothers in music. This shared journey cements a bond of music and friendship worth more to me than any other form of wealth. 

Second, the friendships we’ve made in prior trips are now stronger, cemented and more real. As Morgan stated, the friends here that we share with, feel like a part of our every day reality, not like some special area, far removed from the rest of our lives. The sharing of music with Julie Langan, Joe Carey, Pat Eades, Seamus Dean, Adam Shapiro, the Dave’s from Australia, Jackie Small, Padraig McKenna, Johnny Curtis, Tony Reidy, Gary Leahy, Hugh and Eoin Quinn, Richie Tisdall and Billy Archibald. Our new friends we met in Ennistymon, Lisdoonvarna, Kilcrohan, Inch, some new some old its a bond that goes deep. Tommy Neilan said just yesterday, when you can share the music, sit down and play with others it’s like having a secret passport. The smiles, joy and craic crosses every border and forms an international language. This shared experience is borderless. The Foley’s in Inch, Co. Dingle showed their regard by not letting us pay for our rooms that night, we wanted to pay them, they wouldn’t hear of it. We value this kind of generosity and openness more than anything. I carry these friends in my heart, all of them, they live inside of me and are part of me now. John and Maggie McGing taking my wife and daughter and I into their home and showing them and I such generosity, because of our past visits and shared experiences. They’re extended family each and everyone. The world needs so much more of this kind of sharing. Tear down the walls, suspicion, bigotry and hatred. This is the healing our planet needs.

Sculpture, The White House, Kilcrohane, Cork

Sat. May 26

After a good nights sleep we woke to a warm morning that became increasingly cloudy, but the temperature was still nice. After working on a few tunes we drove into Kilcrohane to look up Frank O’Mahonaigh (O’ Manny) only to find he’d taken the day off. We met an Englishman named Alex who sells antiques and other memorabilia. Alex recently turned 60 and seems typical of quite a few English expats we meet here. The Irish in thought and deed are very different than the English and there are some from England seeking something different. They visit Ireland, are charmed and decide to stay. It’s a compliment to the Irish that despite the centuries of cruelty inflicted by England they are able to recognize the qualities of an individual and see them on that basis, and accept them for who they are. We wandered West out of town and stopped at a nice coffee shop/eatery run by a couple originally from Yorkshire, do you see a pattern here? He has thick dreds and they both felt like English hippies, and I don’t mean that as a pejorative, Ally and I were hippies in our day and still carry most of the values we extolled then. Anyway, the Yorkshireman, I forgot to ask his name, told us he’s lived in Ireland for 28 years and the 6 years out here on the Sheepshead have been the happiest. They took an old defunct pub and refurbished it, have cleaned up the property, pruned back some dangerous trees, done some nice landscape work and have a lovely little establishment. The fresh made vegetable soup was excellent and they know how to make great coffee!

Morgan’s first trip to Ireland 22 years ago had been here on the Sheepshead. He wanted to take us over to Ballydehob on the peninsula South across Dunmanus Bay. We looked to see if there were any sessions and there weren’t. We had a pint of Murphy’s at Rosie’s which 22 years ago had been run by an older woman of that name who Morgan really liked. She’s long gone and the pub is in different hands but still has her name. We drove a bit further to Schull where it was quite busy, they were having a film festival and lots of visitors, and also found there were no sessions happening. So, back to Durrus and on to Ahakista where we stopped at the Tin Pub, it’s roof and sides are corrugated steel, to see if we could play there. They were amenable, mentioned that there was a group of people they were expecting, but that should be alright. We continued to Kilcrohane to Eileen’s Bar to find the wedding party from yesterday had regrouped there and there was no chance of playing music. We couldn’t even say hello to Eileen as she was madly busy filling orders. Back home we went, made dinner and headed to the Tin Pub close to 9:00.

We arrived at the Tin Pub and ordered some Murphy’s where the woman Niamh (Neve) behind the bar complimented us on ordering the local brew, Murphy’s is brewed in Cork City. I told her it was better than Guiness anyway and we always ordered Murphy’s when we could. She found that amusing and questioned us on what we were doing in Ireland. We told her we were musicians and she asked if we were playing and when finding out our instruments were in the car asked us to bring them in. A slight digression at this point. Last trip we were here in April, it was slower much more quiet, no tourists to speak of and NO midges. We unknowingly arrived for midge season. They are very much like no seeums in the States. They’re tiny, vicious little feckers whose bites feel like a hot little stab. You can’t even see the wound but you can sure as hell feel it. We mentioned to Niamh that the midges were really bad and she coyly remarked “don’t talk about small people like that”, ah that Irish sense of humor. So we set up in a corner and play a set of tunes. Pretty soon people begin to show up and it’s getting busy and loud. Every time the door is opened a cloud of midges swarm in and we’re trying to keep on top of the playing while swatting away the little feckers that are tormenting us. An hour in and we can barely hear ourselves, the party of people don’t seem to be music session listeners, but we’re getting some good playing in! Morgan goes up to order another pint for each of us and when they come we’re told they’re on the house. Niamh tells us that the musicians don’t pay but she waited to hear us first, “you might not have been any good, but ye are great” she says. We take a break, get a few compliments on our playing and head back inside running from the midges to where more midges await us! We play for another hour, but the heat, the midges and fatigue are setting in so we pack up. The place is still roaring so we head out the back. Niamh greets us as we’re leaving with a hug and compliments, thanks us for playing and we know at least one person was really listening to us and appreciated it.

Three Castle Head

We woke up slowly after a good night’s sleep. I’m grateful that real sleep has returned to me after all the early risings before we arrived. We decided to drive over to Mizen Head the last peninsula south. It’s across Dunmanus Bay and at its tip is the most South Western part of Ireland. Morgan wanted us to see Three Castle Head, an ancient castle built by Donagh O’Mahonaigh in 1207. So, off we drove back to Durrus and the road leading South to Mizen Head. The day was looking increasingly dark and as we got closer the clouds lowered. James and I were falling asleep in the back of the car so we made a quick stop in Goleen. While Morgan got a map from the tourist center for the route to Three Castle Head Peg, James and I beelined to a coffee shop to see if we could wake up. We finished our coffees and feeling more awake headed back out on the road. The road gradually turned into a one lane boreen with lots of twists and turns and finally turned downhill to a parking lot and the trailhead. The trail lead up through a gate into emerald green fields full of sheep, sheep that were utterly non-plussed by humans traipsing through their fields. Most of them didn’t turn their heads as we walked within a couple feet of them. Up a steep field to another gate, out across another rising field and up, up, up a steepening slope. The view is magnificent but unfortunately with the lowering clouds and threat of rain it was obscured to where the cliffs and headlands of Mizen Head were reduced to grey smudges. Up a final rise and there below and across from us lay a small lake with Three Castle tucked into the rocky landscape. The hillside that the path wound through was full of Primrose. The castle had an eerie quality to it, the weather certainly adding to it, and as we approached it I looked to the left at a magnificent grey-black wall of rock that dropped a good 100 meters to the ocean below. No photo quite gives the scale or feeling of that rock wall, but it certainly made me feel small and insignificant. As we explored the castle it began to rain, not pelting but steadily so we reluctantly cut our visit short and moved as quickly as we could across slick grass and rock back to the car. By the time we’d retraced our path to the car our pants and shoes were soaked. Thankfully I had my rain parka and hiking shoes. Morgan and Peg had kept their light weight shoes on and got a bit damp and James had forgotten his jacket and Morgan had loaned him his outer rain shell, but we all got back fairly unscathed. We shed our wettest gear and hopped in the car grateful to have a warm and dry shelter and started to make our way back to Goleen and a nice restaurant for a hot meal.

The Car In Question

On the road toward Goleen we got a little confused and turned into the road that leads to Barleycove Beach. Realizing it was the wrong turn James turned a circle back out to the Goleen road and on a slope the car stalled. James tried starting it and……….nothing. The same result over and over, nothing. Then messages began flashing on the display. CHECK HILL START, then CHECK CES and on and on the warnings scrolled. We were beginning to have a real dislike of “smart” cars. There was so much computer power in the damned thing that you couldn’t fix it or jump it. It was a stick shift but you couldn’t pop the clutch and get it to turn over. Realizing we were fecked we called Herz emergency service who told us they’d get someone out as soon as possible. I was thinking we were going to be there for quite a while. We kept ourselves entertained making jokes about the Renault we were driving how it was a French plot to get us, etc. We got out of the car and looked across the inlet, in the distance we heard the sound of a cuckoo calling, the tide was rushing under the causeway there were wild yellow Iris’ beginning to bloom, it was a beautiful place to be stuck. But sooner than expected a truck pulled in and it was our rescuer. Morgan asked him “where’d you come from”?, we were surprised he was so quick, and throwing his hands in the air he replied in a thick Cork accented English “from heaven sent”! His name is Eoin (Owen) O’Rallaigh (O’Reilly) and he’s a born entertainer. After trying to start it in a myriad of ways Eoin wanted to look under the hood. He looked at us and said “we’ll try this and if that doesn’t work then it’s Au revoir mon ami and he mimed jacking a shell into a shot gun and aiming it at the engine”. We all cracked up, could hardly stop laughing. It was almost worth breaking down just to meet Eoin. It’s just these unexpected adventures that we treasure in Ireland, it never fails that the unexpected happens and it’s always fun, educational, challenging or enlightening. Eoin’s truck had been idling this whole time and James said to Eoin “that’s a nice truck you’ve got there, it’s running” to which Eoin grins. Eoin calls the tow truck and informs him that the Renault is DOA and tells us he’ll get us back to Ahakista. He lives close by. in Goleen and our place is easily a 40 min. drive. We’re grateful that he’s willing as he wryly tells us he’s not obligated to do so but since we’re nice Americans who didn’t vote for Trump he was happy to do so. On the way back we stop to assist a woman whose car blew a tire, turns out she’s an American as well, whom Eoin tells that he’s a vehicle full of other Americans who aren’t exactly Trump supporters. She scrambles out of her car comes up to my window, which I roll down, letting in midges as well as her booming voice exclaiming, “I hear there’s a bunch of Trump lovers in here”. We all exclaim no, no, no we didn’t vote for the man. She’s another larger than life extrovert in a cocky felt hat (are you seeing a pattern here? Ireland has a way of capturing people like this like a magnet pulls in iron filings) She says, “So it’s Melania’s birthday and Donald forgot all about it. Melania let’s him know she’s not pleased so to save himself Donald says, well just imagine whatever you want, you visualize that Melania and I’ll get it for you. So Melania screws up her eyes and really concentrates, she thinks and thinks. Later that night Donald’s dick fall’s off.” She roars with laughter as do we, it’s hard to do anything else. She tells us she taught school in Texas for 40 years, lived all over the place. Her mother’s side of the family were Irish generations back so she holds an Irish Passport. We wave goodbye and Eoin roars off, the locals drive the roads with abandon, and I’m holding on to the door handle trying not to slide into Peg. Peg is proving to be an able traveler, she’s taking all of this with alacrity. Eoin mentiones that he and his wife were running a B&B out of their home and most tourists were just fine but in his experience Australians were the worst for complaining and then in a very good Aussie drawl he imitates them complaining about the food, the homes and the roads, especially the curving roads. Eoin says, “well mate that’s cause your used to driving on roads for 5 hours that are dead straight, bends in the road a bit of a novelty for ya now aren’t they”. We’re laughing all the way home. Eoin deposits us safe and sound at our door. We thank him, Peg thanks him for being our knight in shining orange armor (referring to his safety vest) and we bid him goodnight.

We’ve lost our chance of a dinner out, it’s past 8:00, so we use all our remaining eggs and veg’s. and Morgan makes us a delicious omelet. We head down to the Tin Pub for a drink and a chat and Niamh isn’t there but her brother Cormac is behind the bar. It’s quiet with 3 people there before us who are just finishing up. We fall into easy conversation and learn some interesting things. I mention how much I appreciate the Irish gift of banter, how it’s honed to a fine skill. Cormac said that it’s really a default setting in Irish relations, that speaking of deep things is much more difficult in most Irish families. I’d never even considered that and it puts it in a different perspective. We also mentioned the difference we notice between the Irish Pub and an American Bar. The Irish Pub is a social gathering spot, not a place you go to avoid others. He told us that he noticed a real difference between the U.S. East and West coasts. He’d gone over to The States to visit when Niamh was working there. In New York and Boston he found a more social environment. In San Francisco he found the atmosphere inside a bar much less social, that people were in their own small groups isolated from one another, no real mixing. But even in New York and Boston he found himself isolated from people and he’d get lonely. He’d go to a barber shop and pay for a haircut just to have someone to speak with. When Niamh would come home she’d see the fresh haircut and ask him “were you lonely today?” Cormac graduated from University in criminal studies, but he couldn’t get any work. He’s going back to school for nursing. He’d been working the pub since he was a child, his mother had grown up in the home next door and had worked in the pub. His grandfather had owned it. We bid Cormac a goodnight and walk home.

Foley’s Bar Inch, Dingle Peninsula, Co. Kerry

May 29

I’m going to sum up the last three days. We’ve been very busy taking Peg to some of our favorite spots along the Dingle peninsula and in Dingle Town. This part of the trip is and has been the least session centric part of the trip, we simply love the area, if we get a chance to play with some local players that’s great, but if not we’re not bothered by it. The weather held the entire time, we got sun and heat, the locals shaking their heads at this marvel of nature. The temperature held in the high 70’s F. unlike any other trip to Ireland we’ve taken. We drove out to the end of the Dingle peninsula to Blasket Center and gazed across at the Islands. The Blasket islanders were a hardy group of less than 200 people. It was never an easy life and they got what they could from the sea and what they could wrest from the land. Irish gaelic had been systematically eradicated by the British. It was an act of defiance to speak it, punishable with prison. Due to their isolation, the people of Blasket spoke the pure Irish language. When linguists learned of this they went and studied with the Blasket people, cataloged the language and thankfully it was saved. Before the Uprising it was taught in secret and after the Free State was established taught openly. You can hear it spoken all over Ireland now. The problem for the people of Blasket was that contact with the mainlanders and immigration to America slowly depopulated the Islands. The children saw the possibilities of an easier and less isolated life so life on the Islands became more untenable. In 1953 the last of the Blasket people were moved to the mainland and a unique culture and way of life ended. We explored different sections of the Dingle area, drove up over the Conor pass, which is an incredible sight, dipped our toes in the sea, had a great picnic next to a little inlet and went into Dingle and heard Eoin Duignan and Tommy O’Sullivan play, in other words we allowed ourselves to be tourists.

Tunes with Katie Foley, Foley’s Bar, Inch, Dingle, Co. Kerry

On Monday we were getting ready to go into Dingle and Katie requested that if we could there was a tour bus stopping for lunch and would we mind playing some tunes while they were waiting for their lunch to be served? The Foley’s treat us like good friends and when we can return the kindness we do. We said of course we would, so we went to the back dining room, set up and waited. As the people came in we started up some tunes with Katie playing box with us. I think the people from the bus actually thought we were Irish at first, but we let them know we were visitors just like them. They enjoyed the tunes though. We later saw some of them when we were wandering about Dingle Town and they told us how much they enjoyed our playing for them. We caught up as best we could with John and Fidelis, but they had two tour buses stopping in as well as a gathering for a local funeral, so we headed into Dingle Town and had dinner there. Tuesday we finally had a chance to spend some time with John and Fidelis. They’d had only a few hours sleep on Monday. They flew into Dublin from Mallorca and arrived in Inch sometime around 5:00am and had to hit the ground running. They were originally supposed to get back Saturday which would have been much easier, but they got through it all and finally got a good nights sleep. Through hard work they’ve made a really good life for their family. John’s family has had the pub for five generations, John being the fifth. The old cottage across the road that John is restoring belonged to the family and was the original pub in the 19th century. The paved road that cars and lorries run up and down now was a dirt track then. So much personal history. Fidelis took us for a short walk up the road yesterday and showed us a holiday home they invested in so they could rent it it to families or larger parties who want more space. All in all they’ve created a really good life for themselves and their children.

We bid goodbye to Fidelis and John on Thursday morning, hoping we’re all alive in two years to see one another again, and off to Clare!

James, Morgan, Christy & Terry Roadside Pub, Lisdoonvarna, Co. Clare

May 30

We left Inch, Dingle late morning heading north to Clare to our rental home above Fanore. We’d rented the same home on our last trip in 2016. It’s in an area known as the Burren, huge outcrops of limestone with scrubby growth of shrubs and grasses. The home in Fanore sits high up on a shoulder with a commanding view of the sea, the Aran Islands to the near South and the village of Fanore tucked into the landscape to the North. We drove down to Ennistimon where they have a good size market to buy groceries for the week. We rent homes so we have our own space and also so we can cook meals. Eating out is fine and fun, but it gets expensive as all of you well know and we like our own cooking. On the way back to Fanore we stopped by the Roadside Pub, where we’d had a lot of fun in 2016, to see if there was a session. I jumped in while the others waited in the car and asked if there was something scheduled. The young woman I asked said there was at 9:00. I asked who might be leading it and a young man said Christy Barry and Terry Bingham. To be certain I asked if it was an open session and was assured we’d be welcomed. Some sessions aren’t wide open, sometimes they’re invitational, there’s an etiquette involved. I excitedly ran out with the info and told the others. Christy Barry, amongst Irish tune hounds, is famous. We play a couple of his jigs in our sets and have for years. It turns out we’d met Terry in 2016, he’s a very fine box player.

It also turns out that a good friend of ours, Dave Lewicki has been in Ireland since mid April. James and I met him through Morgan at Irish Tunes Camp over at Roche Harbor on San Juan Island. He does the kind of technical work where he can work remotely, so he’s been in Ireland for over 6 weeks finding sessions, meeting many fine musicians and studying with some as well. Dave’s a good player and listener and to play this music well you have to know how to listen. Good music is a conversation, that’s where the joy and fun is! Dave was meeting us at our place and as we turn in to go up the hill Dave’s in front of us. Perfect timing. We got home with all our groceries and sundries, made dinner, had good conversation and got ready and headed into Lisdoonvarna and The Roadside Pub. We arrived at 9:00, Christy was out front and we recognized Terry. They welcomed us and we sat down for some musical conversation. There’re some sessions where the tunes are fast and furious and some where they’re unfamiliar and you have to let the tune go around once or twice to catch its shape before joining in. Christy being the gracious host asked Morgan to start, but Morgan demurred and Christy and Terry started a tune we all knew. The ice broken the tunes flowed and a fun evening followed. It’s tourist season, so the Pub was full of listeners, some from France others from the USA, a few locals. Two women sitting next to me were from Pennsylvania and they really enjoyed the tunes. They remarked that it sounded as if everyone playing had played together before. They were amazed we could sit down and play like that. That’s what it’s all about. Christy at one point got his whistle out and remarked how much he didn’t like it. It looked like a plastic Susato to me, but James handed Christy his Sindt whistle. It’s a lovely thing, a sterling silver body and brass head joint. Christy gave it a little tweet and launched into the jigs we knew and have in our repertoire as well as some other tunes. He sounded great and so did the whistle. At the end of the set he looked at James and said “that’s a fine whistle, I love it. Don’t go leavin’ it here, we won’t be postin’ it on”. At one point Christy went out for a break and we got into a conversation with Terry about young players, tunes, style and other things. Terry isn’t that old probably 50’s and he prefers the older approach to the tunes and the playing. He’s not that enamored of the schools like University of Limerick that teaches traditional music. He say’s and not unfairly that they’re technically brilliant but they all sound the same. Back in the day you’d pick up the instrument you were attracted to and teach yourself. You’d learn from others as you could but you developed your own techniques and style, and truth to tell a lot of the old recordings we’ve listened to for reference bear this out. Patsy Twohey and Seamus Ennis, Joe Cooley and Micho Russell and so many others, they all have their idiosyncratic styles. I asked him when he started box and concertina and he told me when he was ten. He’s one of the least physically active players I’ve ever played with. His economy of motion is miraculous. I kid you not, he doesn’t look like he’s doing anything, his fingers barely lift from the buttons and yet all this music is flowing out. It’s a beautiful thing to witness and he’s so relaxed you’d think he was semi-dozing, but he’s totally aware of the music around him. As the evening wound down Christy asked us to play with him at Donohue’s in Fanore at 7:00 and then follow him to the Roadside in Lisdoonvarna at 9:00. Friday is taken care of and we’ll see what happens after that.

Christy Barry and Colin Nea with a bunch of Yanks, O’Doherty’s Pub, Fanore, Co. Clare

After the night of fun and frolics at the Riverside Pub in Lisdoonvarna, we woke up to a cloudy day. Peg is leaving for Spokane on Monday and we really wanted her to meet our good friends Tommy, Maura and Martina Neilan. Peg had heard the stories over the years about the Neilan’s and how important to us they’d become, they are our last stay here at the end of this years adventures, but we wanted Peg to meet them. Also the last trip Martina let me keep my big guitar flight case at their place so we didn’t have to drag it all over Ireland. I’d emailed Martina to ask if that would be OK this time and to tell her we’d like to come by for a visit and she responded saying she’d be happy to see us and it’d be fine to drop the case off. Down to Gort we drove, taking some of the smaller roads across the Burren. One of the delightful things about Ireland is how close things are. When you’re in West Clare and think about visiting friends in East Galway the tendency is to think it will be quite a drive and hours away, but it isn’t. To get to the Neilan’s from Fanore is just about an hour of driving on small roads, passing through beautiful country. We made a stop in Kilfenora to visit an old ruined Abbey that had been partially restored. It had some lovely stone crosses that were preserved within it and on the grounds.

Just as we arrived at the Neilan’s, pulling into the lane that leads to their farm, we saw their car coming towards us. We hailed them and there was Maura and Tommy. We were all glad to see one another and Tommy told us to go to the farm, that Martina was there and they’d be back in a half hour. We got back in the car and drove into the farm. James called for Martina but didn’t raise her, as he went around to the front of the house he told me he was sure she was in there and for me to give it a try. I stepped in towards the kitchen and yelled for Martina, she answered asking “who is it?” I responded “Rick” and she came out and gave me a hug, really pleased that we’d come by. We introduced Peg to her and greetings were made all around and before we knew it we were seated at the table and Martina was bustling in the parlor and kitchen, and against our protests, laying out a high tea for us. Tea, scones and jam, toasted sandwiches, digestive biscuits, and lots of conversation. I sensed that Martina was happy for the company. Tommy’s 85 and it’s only been in the last few years that he and Maura have started having health issues. Martina used to work in a school nearby, I don’t remember if it was teaching or administrative work but she’s had to give that up to take over the responsibility of running the farm. Tommy can’t keep up with it and Maura’s slowed down as well. Martina and her brother who has his own small farm east across the fields from theirs, now maintain the family farm. Martina’s added a nice large shed for the tractor with a workshop and storage for firewood. She’s cleaned and tidied the farm up, cut down some old dying trees, cleared brush and her brother strung. new fence all down the lane. It looks really good for all their efforts. Martina told us that they were down to 20 cows and not that many sheep. It had been a hard Winter with 3 months of rain until it turned to snow. It sounded like there was a good 2′ of snow on the ground and drifts far deeper. They lost a lamb and one adult sheep that they didn’t find until the snow melted. Besides that they all had a nasty virus, so they were grateful for the recent turn of weather. Soon Tommy and Maura were back and we were busy catching up. Tommy is always great craic, he’s a charming man and a great one for the jokes. My wife Ally fell in love with him when we were over in October 2016. We are so grateful for their affection and friendship that seeing them is always a high point of our trips. Tommy was spinning tales and jokes, showing us pictures of his mother and father when they were young, he in his Garda uniform when he lived in Dublin for 5 years, he said he left Dublin and the Garda because “they couldn’t understand my accent and I couldn’t understand theirs.” There’s another photo of his old Irish draft horse with him behind the plow and many others. Maura always has a look of bemusement when Tommy spins his stories, they’ve shared so much over the years and she seems content to listen with an occasional comment here and there, sometimes a wry aside taking the mickey out of Tommy. We visited for nearly 2 hours and reluctantly took our leave. We told them we had a session with Christy Barry whom Tommy knows, he knows so many Clare and Galway musicians, being one himself. The only thing that made the parting tolerable was knowing we’d see them in 2 weeks.

We drove hastily back and realized we’d not have time to make a meal at home and get to the session on time so we stopped at a great little restaurant in Ennistimon, then home with just enough time to grab our instruments and head down the hill to Fanore and O’Donohue’s. We arrived close to 7: 15 and Dave Lewicki was there waiting and Christy had yet to arrive. Dave said he saw a box case inside so figured Colin Nea was there already. This being Ireland time is a bit loose, so we actually didn’t need to worry about being exactly on time but old habits die slowly. Christy shows up about 20 min. later and we have a few words and jokes, he’s a very charming fellow and we follow him in, pints in hand. He’s got a great head of curly grey hair and piercing blue eyes. Christy has told us that Colin is a great box player and that he plays a nice easy style, not too fast and not too slow, so we’re looking forward to playing with him. The older original pub section of the building is jammed and we’re wondering where we’re going to fit! Christy leads us around to a newer restaurant section where there’s a small stage. Christy had said outside that there was a stage that was just a little bump up that could fit 20 people and still have room to dance, he must mean dancing in the restaurant because the six of us barely fit it. It’s certainly not feeling like a session. An important Hurling match is on so everyone is glued to the big screens, we’re certainly not the focus of attention, which we weren’t expecting. Generally the musicians are there for themselves and one another but there are environments conducive to that and some that aren’t. We’re learning that Christy has the gift of, shall I say, elaboration? It’s a skill that’s highly appreciated in Ireland. I’ve heard it said “never let the truth get in the way of a good story!” A “character” is prized in this country. “Oh Paddy who just lived over in Kilshanny, now he was a real character, he’d bring his pig with him when he’d come to visit!” Ireland allows for all sorts, which doesn’t mean you won’t be talked about and stories told at your expense. It’s best not to be too prideful. So Christy introduces us to Colin, a big man with a large appetite for pints of Guiness. Christy tells us he can down the pints and then proceed to crank out the tunes and in this he wasn’t elaborating. We launch into the first tune and it’s run, run, run and grab hold of the moving freight train. Colin has one tempo, presto and one volume, forte’. Christy was definitely elaborating on this part of the man, who is a fine player, note perfect and highly ornamented and hard to keep up with. A couple of amusing moments was when Colin had some business on his phone, so off he goes and Christy got up saying “Rick, give em’ a song, I’ll just stand over here and listen, this is a good room and I want ta’ hear how you carry”, and after listening a moment scurries off for quite awhile as the four American lads are holding down the fort. We played a couple of sets and Colin and Christy drift back in, this happened several times. We don’t mind. Hell, if you can get a break, lean on the visiting lads who hunger for the tunes and have the music keep going, why not? Colin comes back after a break and says we’re going over into the Pub, there’s a spot opened up for us. This feels more familiar, a dark little room, jammed to capacity, crammed into a corner around the table, making sure my guitar head isn’t hitting the drinker next to me. We play a set and suddenly I’m really hot. I strip off down to my T-shirt and climb aboard the Christy & Colin express. Around 10:30 we’re all tired and hot and ready to find a quieter session. We drive up the hill and drop Peg off, she’s not used to this kind of madness and is ready for some quiet space.

We take our leave and head down the road to Lisdoonvarna and the Roadside to see how the session is going down there. James is looking in the window and see’s Dave who got there before us and grabbed a stool. Terry Bingham is there with Paul the fiddler and Frenchman Stephan the fluter and it’s a madhouse, the crush of people and their voices come out of the door like an explosion, not a chance of wedging our way in. So much for a quieter session. I look around the corner and Terry sees me, beckons me to come round’ but I just can’t get motivated to push through all the drunk and shouting tourists, it’s just too much for my nerves. Dave texts me to say the crowd is going back to their tourist bus in 5 min. and we should stay, but even after their departure we can’t quite handle the crowded space and go home. We agree that we love this warmer weather, but honestly we prefer to be here earlier in the season and not have to share Ireland with so many other tourists. If James’ schedule allows in the next trip we’ll return in early April like we have in the past. Everything’s so much quieter and easier to negotiate. And so ends the day.

 

Morgan Walking On The Moon without a space suit

Yesterday Morgan had to drive Peg down to Shannon for her flight back home. James and I are sorry to see her go, she was a great traveling companion, took to Ireland like a duck to water and fit right in to our traveling ways. Now that she’s experienced it Morgan will likely find it easier to entice her over again. Safe journey Peg, Wishing you the best, Ádh mór agus gach dea-ghuí.

I was busy typing up the previous day’s experiences and James was falling asleep reading a book when Morgan returned. After about an hour he asked us if we felt like going out on a walk. We needed some energizing and thought that sounded good. There’s an area of The Burren north of us that nearly defies description. The entire Burren is a thick crust of ancient limestone. It dominates this whole section of the coast and is quite dramatic, full of broken sections, stacked walls, huge boulders with little gullies carving through it here and there. There are small shrubs and grassy sections hanging onto a thin topsoil, yet there’s one area to the North that we can see from here that looks as if it has snow or frost on it. In this large area the topsoil has been stripped away, the rock laid barren and forbidding and it has an otherworldly quality. High up on the top of a vast field of broken and fractured limestone sits the remains of an old ring fort. It’s been dated to around 500 B.C. At that time the soil was intact and it supported a small population. Where the soil went and how it disappeared I do not know, but walking across the landscape now it’s hard to imagine how it could have ever been any different.

We drove up to the trail head following directions that Dave Lewicki gave to Morgan, down a little lane, up an even smaller one to where it dead ended next to a farm house. The day was getting warm, the fog beginning to burn off and I realized I wore pants that were too heavy for the walk. Oh well, there’s nothing for it but to keep going. Over a stone stile and on to a grassy path that appears to be heading toward the base of a large hill that looks frosty. As we get closer and the stacked walls closer we are gazing at what I could easily mistake for a Moonscape. It’s the same color as a full moon, dirty bone white and utterly inhospitable. It’s forbidding yet strangely attractive. We followed a wall to a spot where we could hop it and headed up hill. This fractured landscape that Dante could have used in one of his levels of Hell is criss-crossed with long chest high walls of limestone. I’ll post photos of them in the website gallery so you can see how they’re constructed. The three of us can only guess as to their purpose. We doubt that they’re as old as the ring fort, some research is in order, but why they’re here and what they’re protecting is anyone’s guess. If there were grassy fields with livestock grazing within them that would make sense, but they’re only walling off fields of fractured rock that only mountain goats can cross easily. There’s areas of scat we can see but it’s not cow pies, it looks more like goat or sheep, but again we don’t see any animals in evidence. We cross some small areas of grass and gorse with pretty little wild flowers, but it’s few and far between, certainly not enough to support any livestock.

My cotton canvas pants are feeling like they’re heavy wool so I roll up the pant legs to my knees in an attempt at some ventilation. The sun is beating down on us as we continue up, crossing a perpendicular wall, hopping on larger rocks while avoiding sections of scree and ankle breaking crevices. I’m walking with as much intention as I can muster, visualizing a broken ankle or leg to keep me focused so I won’t end up with one. We stop to catch our breath and sip some water as we get swallowed up into this bizarre landscape, little human creatures inserting themselves into this maze of rock and rubble. We slowly make our way up and just as it seems that we’ll never find the top and the ring fort, there on the other side of yet another wall, it is. It’s actually rather impressive, some good sized sections of it still intact with a commanding view of Galway Bay to the North and North East and the Clare coast and Fanore to the South with a huge wall of limestone to the direct East. The people that put this together had to be tough. Morgan says that he’d heard that what modern man is calling a fort was actually a place that livestock could be collected and guarded. Clans would raid one another’s stock. Even humans with bow and arrows and imagining the “fort” intact it doesn’t impress me as the remains of a true fortress. We scurried around the perimeter of it and climbed a rock field above it for a different view, running into tiny pockets of vegetation and wild flowers in this wasteland, a seeming miracle in such a place. After a bit of time we headed back down the mountain, picking a diagonal through a fractured landscape we didn’t cross coming up that was even more forbidding. There were limestone flakes sticking out presenting edges that could easily slice you open if you were careless enough to fall on one. We made it safely down to the path and made our way back to the car. We had seen these odd creatures that looked like a cross between a goat a sheep and or alpaca. It was pure white freshly sheared of its wool, had more massive shoulders and thick powerful front legs and had ears that can only be described as rabbit like. We joked that there must be some gigantic hares in the Burren that were breeding with sheep. We’ve described them to some local people but no one has been able to enlighten us. We kept going down the path and saw our car, grateful for the experience and happy to be back down.

 

Seamus Hynes (left) Paul Dooley (right)

After our Burren adventure we got back to home base and cleaned up. Dave Lewicki had given us a list of possible sessions and we were mulling them over. In Ennis at Cruz’s Brid O’Gorman was leading a session that Dave warned would likely be crowded. She’s a fabulous player, but none of us were in the mood for crowds or long drives. Also in Liscannon there was supposed to be a session lead by fiddler Laura Ungar whom we’d heard playing in 2012 out on the Beara Peninsula at the Allihies Michael Dwyer Festival. She played there with Martin Quinn on box and John Rhynne on flute. She’d just graduated from the Limerick School back then and showed great promise. A session with her in Liscannon would be great but again Liscannon was a good long drive from here. Since we’d been lucky at the Roadside since first finding it in 2016 and having met Christy and Terry there this trip we thought we’d go there, catch up with mail, they have WiFi, and if we didn’t hear anything we liked we’d head to Ennistimon and see what was happening.

As we sat doing our mail and listening to some lovely modern music played by a French violist and a guitarist, sipping a pint, I heard the door open and spotted Paul Dooley coming in. I said hi to him, and of course he didn’t remember me, no surprise there. We’d met him at a session in 2016 at Cooley’s in Ennistimon. He’s a great player and seemed like a nice man, but we didn’t get to know him then. Seeing him walk in though promised something interesting so we stuck around. After about 15 min. James and I heard Paul playing with a flute player. I got up and moved toward the area where it was being played and saw Morgan standing at the end of the bar with a smile on his face. The music sounded great. They played a couple of sets and Morgan and I walked over to them. Morgan introduced us and said “would you mind a few Yanks joining you if we promise to play only what we know and not feck up the rest!” Paul laughed and said “get in here.” We got our instruments out of the car and made our way in, sat down and tuned up. I reminded Paul that we’d met him 2 years previously at the session that he and Adam were leading at Cooley’s in Ennistimon. Paul introduced us to Seamus Hynes on flute. I recognized Seamus but couldn’t recall where we’d met before. Paul began to remember our previous meeting and it felt like a connection was forming, when we started playing tunes with them it all fell into place. There’s times you get lucky and meet the right players and this was one of those occasions. Paul and Seamus are both brilliant players who were happy to share the space. They kept asking us to start tunes, for as Paul said, “we play the same shite all the time, it’s good to hear something new.” We kept saying we wanted to hear things we didn’t know, so a good balance was struck between things all of us knew and didn’t know. It’s always great ear training to have to catch something new on the fly, so rather than being intimidated you go with the flow. Paul said that it’s nice to have a little uncertainty in the tunes, so it’s not formulaic. There were tourists coming and going and a few who stuck around to listen. One couple from Los Angeles sat listening through the first 2 hours and were really into it. Billy Archibald the publican came over and told Morgan that there were three pints of stout on the bar for us and the gentleman from L.A. had gotten them for us out of appreciation. We turned to their table and thanked him and his wife. They told us how much they enjoyed hearing traditional Irish music. James told them we were tourists as well, but they said we played so well with Paul and Seamus that they hadn’t noticed, that it didn’t matter, it was a pleasure for them to be there. Another couple from Idaho were taking tons of photos and couldn’t believe we were from Spokane, WA. Paul and Morgan were talking fiddles and bows and swapped instruments and bows to try out. Paul liked Morgan’s bow (one Morgan made). Seamus who is a true lefty plays flute left handed and was telling us he has two brothers who are actually right handed play left handed because their father who is left handed like Seamus taught them. After we wound things up around midnight we chatted and it turns out that Paul makes harps, actual copies of early Irish wire strung harps, Morgan had told him I did lutherie work as well and that he was a bow maker. That opened a whole other door for connection since we spoke one another’s craft language as well. I told Paul I’d read that the sound boxes of the early harps were carved from Willow. He nodded yes and that he’d done so and that it was very uncooperative wood to carve, stringy and tough with interlocking grain but that it sounded glorious, like nothing else. That led to tool talk, this is how things go when luthier’s get together. Shop talk! Billy wanted to close up so we had to say goodnight to them both, I gave Paul one of my business cards and told him if he ever considered visiting he was a welcome guest. The five of us were happy for the meeting, Seamus in a very understated way said that it was a great evening.

A night like that is why we come to Ireland, to connect and share our joy of the music. After we got back to our house in Fanore we were all wound up and high from the playing. It took us over an hour to come down and get tired enough to go to bed. So ended another great day.