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Elizabeth [email protected]
Martin Hayes plays fiddle. Dennis Cahill plays acoustic guitar. Singly, each is remarkable. As a duo, they are sublime. — ABC Radio, Perth, Australia The Booley House Jig
From “Welcome Here Again”
ravishing…entrancing…
inventive…eloquent…elegant…
essential…astonishing virtuosity…
soulful expressionism…
Read full reviews…
Read album notes from “Welcome Here Again” by Martin Hayes…
top: Derek Speirsbottom: Erin Baiano
”
O’Carolan’s Farewell to Music; The Beare Reel
Photo credits:Daniel Sheehan
Martin Hayes &Dennis Cahill
Tour Schedule
National Public Radio: Tiny Desk Concert
Martin Hayes and Dennis Cahill, Irish fiddle and guitar, are one of the world’s great musical duets.
Together they have toured throughout North America, Europe, Australia and Ja-pan bringing their sublime interpretations of Irish traditional music to venues as vast as the Sydney Opera House as serene as Buddhist temples and to university performing arts centers and community auditoriums everywhere.
Martin Hayes and Dennis Cahill dig deep into the melodies of the Irish canon, making poetry out of tunes and finding treasure within the notes. Guided by the inherent and irresistible rhythm of Irish dance music, they build slowly into fiery reels and take audiences on an ecstatic musical odyssey.
Read individual bios…
Eileen CurranFrom “The Lonesome Touch”
Elizabeth [email protected]
Martin Hayes | Martin Hayes’ unique sound, his mastery of the fiddle, his acknowledgement of the past and his ability to place the tradition within a wider contemporary context, combine to create a unique and insight-ful interpretation of Irish music. He has drawn inspiration from many musi-cal genres, but remains grounded in the music he grew up with in East County Clare where the tradition he inherited from his late father, P. Joe Hayes, was the formative influence on his musical accent and ideas. He has recorded two acclaimed solo albums, “Martin Hayes” and “Under the Moon” on the Green Linnet label and three duet albums with Dennis Cahill: “The Lonesome Touch”, “Live in Seattle”, and “Welcome Here Again”. Martin is the Artistic Director of the Masters of Tradition Festival in Bantry, West Cork and the touring show of the same name. A co-founder of the new band, The Gloaming, he also tours and records with Peadar Ó Riada and Caoimhin Ó Raghallaigh in the traditional Irish trio, Triúr. He has collaborated with the Irish Chamber Orchestra, the innovative string quartet, Brooklyn Rider, the viola da gamba player, Jordi Savall and jazz guitarist, Bill Frisell as well as projects in theatre, contemporary dance, televi-sion and film.
Dennis Cahill | A master guitarist born and raised in Chicago, Dennis is the son of Irish-speaking parents from the Dingle Peninsula in County Kerry. Trained at Chicago Music College, Dennis began his career playing in rock bands and country bands in Chicago before immersing himself in Irish music with Martin Hayes. His innovative and spare accompaniment to Martin’s fiddle is ac-knowledged as a major breakthrough for guitar in the Irish tradition. Dennis is a member of the Gloaming with whom he tours internationally. He is also a record producer in Chicago and a talented photographer.
Album Notes from Welcome Here Again by Martin Hayes | There are as many ways to play Irish music as there are people to play it. One of its greatest strengths is in its flexibility of interpretation: everyone has the opportunity to put their personal stamp on it. We try to avoid an overly technical or cerebral approach. Instead, it is all about inhabiting the world of musical intangibles —the place that is governed by heart, soul, feeling and instinct. The humility necessary to play this music meaningfully arises from a continuous struggle to enter that place. It is there that the melodies are shaped by gut responses to the feelings they evoke. These feelings are the goal and the litmus test for the musical decisions we make. Each choice of tempo, phrasing, ornamentation, chording and arrangement originates from the wish to express that central feel-ing of the tune. The result may be a simple and uncomplicated piece of music but hopefully something that speaks from the heart.
Martin Hayes &Dennis Cahill Bios & Album Notes
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Martin Hayes &Dennis Cahill Reviews
MIX Magazine | Their first album of duets in eight years, Welcome Here Again is a quietly inspiring beauty that chiefly spotlights the Irish all-fiddle champion’s sensitive, sweet style. Cahill’s guitar work adds rhythm and harp-like embellishment to 18 soulful, traditional tunes. Almost as impressive as the flawless playing is the fact that the album is almost entirely handmade by the musicians; the music was all arranged, produced, and engineered by Hayes and Cahill. — Barbara Schultz, MIX Magazine
Metro | Martin Hayes’ ravishing fiddle style is marked by the graceful lyri-cism long associated with County Clare. [He has] an extraordinary acoustic duo with guitarist Dennis Cahill. Hayes and Cahill celebrate the release of their ravishing new album, Welcome Here Again. To listen to Welcome Here Again is to hear two artists communicating at the highest musical level. There’s a quiet intensity to their collaboration that makes the music feel complete, although part of its beauty is the sense of spaciousness. With a repertoire of traditional Irish tunes, they’ve honed a sublimely balanced chamber music sound in which their instruments often seem to breathe together. The result is a loose but finely calibrated approach that transforms dance music into concert hall fare, retaining the original terpsichorean impulse while lavishing attention on me-lodic lines that evoke life’s sweetness and inevitable sorrow. — Andrew Gilbert, Metro, Santa Cruz, CA
Slipcue.com | The Irish duo of Martin Hayes and Dennis Cahill returns with another set of subtle, elegaic fiddle-guitar instrumentals. It’s moody, mourn-ful and utterly entrancing. They find the soulful, melodic core of the music and linger there, in the hurricane’s calm eye, just drinking it all in.
The Irish violinist Martin Hayes and the American acoustic guitarist Dennis Cahill’s 1999 collaboration, Live in Seattle, is regarded as the Celtic Kind of Blue, but here is Hayes’s best work since that high-water mark. The Co Clare musician imbues…the traditional tunes of his native land…with vast emotional depths and breadths, and dares a sparse, measured improvisatory approach. The high point is a slow air called The Dear Irish Boy, a frozen five minutes of superbly controlled tension. — Stewart Lee, The Sunday Times, London
Georgia Straight | On Welcome Here Again, their first release in nine years, fiddler Martin Hayes and guitarist Dennis Cahill brilliantly demonstrate their skill at drawing out the emotional essence of Irish instrumental music. Hayes’s light and lyrical style is complemented by the spare and delicate accompaniment of Cahill, the master of a range of techniques from fingerpicking to harmonics. They lean on notes, contract or extend phrases, and add traditional ornamentation with flair and imagination. — Tony Montague, Georgia Straight, Vancouver BC, Canada
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The Sunday Times, London | The Irish violinist Martin Hayes and the American acoustic guitarist Dennis Cahill’s 1999 collaboration, Live in Seattle, is regarded as the Celtic Kind of Blue, but here is Hayes’s best work since that high-water mark. The Co Clare musician imbues...the traditional tunes of his native land...with vast emotional depths and breadths, and dares a sparse, measured improvisatory approach. The high point is a slow air called The Dear Irish Boy, a frozen five minutes of superbly controlled tension. — Stewart Lee, The Sunday Times, London
ABC Radio | Martin Hayes plays fiddle. Dennis Cahill plays acoustic guitar. Singly, each is remarkable. As a duo they are sublime. If you love Irish music you will surely love their sensitive, quietly inventive approach. If you generally don’t much care for Irish music, you may well love this duo all the more! Welcome Here Again is their first new duo CD in eight years. — Doug Spencer, The Weekend Planet, ABC Radio, Perth, Australia
LiveIreland.com | Welcome Here Again is a magic piece of business. They are perfectly tuned into each other. The lads emphasized that they wanted to really, really showcase the beautiful melodies themselves that grace traditional music, and they have succeeded brilliantly. This is the real essence of the music, interpreted and offered by two masters of the form. The tunes, presented this way, remind you of what drew you to this music in the first place—and what holds you. This is a great album, played by international masters of their art. Rating: Four Harps — Bill Margeson, LiveIreland.com
The Record | It’s been eight years since Irish fiddle virtuoso Martin Hayes and his subtle guitar accompanist Dennis Cahill released Live in Seattle, the duo’s sophomore album after 1997’s The Lonesome Touch. The aptly titled Welcome Here Again features 18 tunes and sets encompassing reels, jigs and airs per-formed by this incomparable duo. Hayes carries with him the traditional fiddle music of his birthplace...defined by slow lyricism and gentle contemplation with strains of sweet melancholy. And no one plays it better. Cahill is a master guitar-ist versed in rock, classical and blues, but you would think he has been playing the traditional music of County Clare for as long as Hayes.
Welcome Home Again is the perfect anodyne to the hustle and the bustle, the noise and the agitation that dominates so much of contemporary life. It’s as though the duo transports listeners back in time and place to rural County Clare on an evening in mid-winter when family and neighbours gather to share the mu-sic of their ancestors. — Robert Reid, The Record, Kitchener, Ontario, Canada
the Irish Examiner | Ceaselessly stretching boundaries and cajoling melo-dies into uncharted waters, Hayes and Cahill produce a radical, yet rooted resonance. — Gerry Quinn, the Irish Examiner
Martin Hayes &Dennis Cahill Reviews
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The Irish Times | If your live music rations were limited to a single concert in the entire year, then you’d be either crazy or foolish if you didn’t pass that precious time in the company of Martin Hayes and Dennis Cahill. — Siobhan Long, The Irish Times, Dublin Seattle Times | The remarkable duo, which performs Tuesday at the Triple Door, has honed a ravishing repertoire by distilling the melodic essence of traditional tunes. The two can play a reel that sets feet stomping, but they’ve distinguished themselves by bringing chamber music’s intensity and dynamic control to folk tunes created for community celebrations. — Andrew Gilbert, Seattle Times
Time Out NY | …this is no New Age chill-out zone— it’s pure, simple, spare and intense. — Gwen Orel, Time Out NY
Wall Street Journal | The strength of his musical staying power stems from an unwavering devotion to melody. — Earl Hitchner, Wall Street Journal
The Chicago Irish-American News | Martin Hayes and Dennis CahillMale Musician of the Year, 2008.
Martin Hayes &Dennis Cahill Reviews
18 Irish ExaminerFriday 08.02.2008ARTS
XX1 - V4
r eviews
The long-awaited new albumfrom Martin Hayes, left, andDennis Cahill, was “certainlyworth the wait”.
Fresh departureGerry Quinn
talks to fiddlevirtuoso MartinHayes about his
long-aw ai t edreunion albumwith guitaristDennis Cahill
W ELCOME HereAgain (Green Lin-net Records) is the
eagerly anticipated new album frominternationally acclaimed fiddle/gui-tar duet, Martin Hayes and DennisCahill. It’s the first studio releasefrom the American-based Irish tra-ditional musicians in 10 years, sinceThe Lonesome Touch.
The pair’s most recent offeringwas the much-feted Live in Seattle,released in 1999. On a flying visitlast week to his native Co Clare,fiddler Martin Hayes frankly dis-closed the basis for such a long delaybetween releases.
“There’s no very good reason, totell you the truth. The record com-pany was going through a lot of tur-moil for a while, so that gave me anexcuse to procrastinate. Somebodyhas to give me a deadline or I can’tmake it happen,” says the recentlycrowned traditional musician of theyea r.
A heavy international touringschedule has kept the duo busy inthe interim and, as Hayes explains,he’s loath to record just for record-ing sake alone. “We didn’t reallywant to make a record that was justlike The Lonesome Touch or thelive album. It’s always easy to goback and make an album like theone you’ve just made and it’s alsoeasy to make a totally different one.But it’s very tricky to create onethat’s in the world that you inhabit.I don’t want it to just sound goodfor this month. I just want to makesure it will still sound good in 20years’ time,” states the six-timeAll-Ireland fiddle champion.
“I’m still interested in the pureIrish traditional music and I was try-ing to find something that didn’tdeviate from that too much, yet hada slightly different wrinkle on it.One might listen to this album andeasily think that it should have onlytaken us a month to record, but Ireject an awful lot of stuff before Imake a record,” he admits.
Did it become a chore at anystage? “I suppose it kind of did,” hereplies. “It’s like as if you decide tobuild a shed in your backyard andyou complete everything except forgetting around to putting the win-dows and doors on it, but promiseto get back to it later.”
Other extenuating circumstancesled to further delays along the wayand, at times, fans probably de-spaired of ever getting an opportu-nity to experience the new record.“For one thing, Dennis lives inChicago and I’m now living inConnecticut after being in Seattle
for years,” remarks Hayes.“So, apart from touring togeth-
er, we were always thousands ofmiles away from each other.There were other factors too. Iremember that we had one sec-tion of the album set up whenDennis’s wife died, so we stoppedeverything and put it to one side.And when you put a project asidefor a year, it can be very strangeto come back to it.
“I also had difficulty imaginingthis record. I wasn’t always able totie the tunes together. They wereall stored away on the hard driveand I didn’t listen to it in its en-tirety until about a month before Isent it to the record company. Al-so, I changed fiddles in the middleof it and recording microphones. Ialso changed computers, so, for atime, I was wondering if therewas any cohesion at all on this
thing. Oddly enough, there wasthough,” proffers the virtuoso.
Over the past decade, Hayes andCahill have garnished rave reviewsand special mentions for theirunique interpretations of Irishmusic — mixing the melancholicwith fiery and dazzling perfor-mances, peppered with elementsof classical and jazz music,prompting The New York Timesto describe them as “a Celticcompliment to Steve Reich’squartets or Miles Davis’s Sketchesof Spain.”
How does this comparison siton your collective shoulders, I en-quire? “We don’t think about ittoo much, to be honest,” comesthe reply. “Though I suppose ifthe New York Times said thatabout us, it is obviously very goodon some level, that they regard usthat highly. Maybe it should be
more like Simon and Garfunkel orAbbott and Costello,” he laughs.
Despite living in the USA forhalf his life and spending an inor-dinate time touring the world,Martin Hayes still has a strongaffinity for East Clare, where hewas brought up and, in particular,the beautifully lyrical music of theregion. Having played with hislate father, P Joe, in the famedTulla Céilí Band from an earlyage, Hayes admits to still beingstrongly influenced by his birth-place and it’s distinctive character.
How important is East Clare toyou right now? “Irrespective ofhow important I would think it is,the fact is it’s just woven into meat this stage. In life, you can haveso many experiences and so manyvaried things that you encounteras you travel the world, but theformative experiences of your
childhood and teenage life are justenormous. All the other happen-ings in life can never balance itout. It’s like your accent, the wayyou talk — you are imprintedfrom an early age. I’ve spent morethan half my life away from here,but I still talk like I come fromFeakle or Killanena.”
As regards the music of his na-tive region, Hayes puts forwardsome interesting observations onits diversity and durability andhow it has impacted on his ownstage performance. “What I playon stage isn’t necessarily what youare going to hear in a pub in EastClare,” he says.
“But, in many ways, there’s abig chunk of it involved in both.Obviously everything I do onstage isn’t East Clare music, but alot of the qualities of what I doare. There’s some joy in openingit up for people and allowingthem to maybe look into theworld of Joe Bane and JohnNaughton or Paddy Canny andletting them have a little feel of it.Anyway, East Clare music is openfor interpretation,” he suggests.
“For example, Andrew McNa-mara, Mary McNamara (fellowEast Clare musicians) and myselfhave subtle opinions as to whatthis same music we’ve been listen-ing to is. Andrew has quite differ-ent characteristics in his music tome. Growing up, we knew exactlythe same people and heard exactlythe same music, yet for him, he’sabsolutely immersed in that wilddance rhythm that is also part ofEast Clare music. So, there’sschizophrenic things going oneven inside a regional music.”
Welcome Here Again, by Martin Hayes andDennis Cahill, will be released on Green Lin-net Records on February 12.
Rock
American MusicClubRÓISÍN DUBH, GALWAY
�����THERE is a horde of overlookedbands on the sidelines of rock mu-sic. Only a few, though, could bedescribed as criminally neglected.American Music Club fall into thislatter category.
Over two decades, the San Fran-cisco outfit have fashioned a tapestryof rich, elegiac Americana, standardblues-rock, jazzy lounge-pop andmelancholic country.
Frontman Mark Eitzel displays avoice of raw, disarming emotion anda penchant for poignant wordplayand at this show he and mercurialguitarist Vudi were joined by theirnew rhythm section, Sean Hoffmanon bass and Steve Didelot ondrums, whowere brilliantly up tothe task.
Opening with back-to-back clas-sics in Johnny Mathis’s Feet andBlue And Grey Shirt, the bandroad-tested material from new al-bum The Golden Age (their finestsince 1993’s Mercury). Of these, AllMy Love and Who You Are werethe standouts, the latter a beautifulhymn on the value of preservingone’s identity in the face of a worldhell-bent on homogeneity.
There was one bum note whenwistful tearjerker Western Sky wasblasphemously funked up. Thataside, the show was a corker untilEitzel’s mood took a turn for theworse. Mumbling something aboutthe crowd not “digging it”, he ledthe band through furious renditionsof Wish The World Away, HelloAmsterdam, and Jesus’s Hands be-fore walking offstage.
The abrupt departure failed todampen the experience much. Inthe midst of songs of this calibre,you can put up with a lot.
Padraic Killeen
Theatre
The MaidsTOWN HALL THEATRE, GALWAY
�����
A WORD of warning to all thosestill in a position to employ maids inour struggling Celtic Tiger: treatthem with respect, because as JeanGenet’s play illustrates, you neverknow what they are capable of.Originally written in 1945, this newproduction is by Galway-based The-atrecorp and it is dark.
Based on a true murder story, itcharts the claustrophobic love-haterelationship between two sisters,Solange and Claire and their mis-tress, Madame.
The claustrophobia is captured inthe opening scene, a static one,which places Madame behind barsin a set that is a cross between aprison and a church, but with opu-lent furnishings.
When Madame leaves her apart-ment the maids play dangerousgames in which they take turns pre-tending to be her. The games illus-trate the depths of their misery andtheir complex attitude towards her— they admire the glamour andlifestyle, while hating how she treatsthem.
It takes a while for this play, di-rected by Max Hafler, to hit itsstride, but it eventually does abouthalf-way through.
There is a particularly strong per-formance from Andrea Kelly asSolange, and Sheila McCormack asClaire is solid, although Ionia NíChróinín doesn’t always hit theright note as the whimsical andspoilt Madame.
The set is excellent and lightinghighlights the claustrophobia felt bythe characters.
Judy Murphy
Scotland’s Sons andDaughters — left to right,Adele Bethel, ScottPaterson, Ailidh Lennonand David Gow — have hadgreat critical acclaim, buthave yet to cross over intothe mainstream.
Making use of the gifts they’ve been givenCult band Sonsand Daughters
may havehit the bigtime with
their latestalbum, writesEd Power
IN a grimy Glasgow rehearsalspace, David Gow, of ac-claimed Scottish rock band
Sons and Daughters, is holdingforth on the benefits of socialism.
“The internet has changed themusic business and major record la-bels are in a real bind at the mo-ment,” he says. “And it’s all theirown fault. It just shows what hap-pens when you don’t respect theartists that are on your label. Whenit all comes down to accountantsand you’re not respecting the artists,you’re going to be banjaxed.”
Sons and Daughters, a boy/girlfour-piece long beloved of critics,have no such worries. Signed tofiercely independent DominoRecords, home to Mercury Prizewinners Arctic Monkeys and FranzFerdinand, they are part of a musicalcollective that looks after its own.
“At Domino, it’s all about sup-porting the artist, whether it’s theArctic Monkeys, who are huge, orthe smaller artists,” says Gow. “Themoney that is made from the biggerartists gets shared around. It’s a verysocialist kind of idea. Nobody getsleft behind.”
Tipped for success for severalyears now, Sons and Daughters seempoised to finally make good on theirpromise — new album This Gift,their most commercial yet, is set tocatapult the group out of cultish ob-scurity. “We’d been away for a bit
and didn’t want to come backwith a record everyone was ex-pecting,” says Gow of their pop-ulist new direction. “A lot of peo-ple see us as this band that lives ina kind of country-punk niche. Wewanted to do something that wasgoing to surprise ourselves andsurprise everyone else.”
On the suggestion of Dominosupremo Laurence Bell, drummerGow, together with guitarist ScottPaterson, vocalist Adele Bethel
and musical all-rounder AilidhLennon hooked up with producerBernard Butler, best known as theguitarist with 1990s Britpopdandies Suede. Butler is establish-ing a reputation as the go-to guyfor crossover success (he recentlycollaborated with Amy Duffy, theWelsh chanteuse tipped as thisyear’s Amy Winehouse). But he isalso rumoured to be difficult towork with.
“Obviously he’s a really talented
guy, but he is opinionated aboutmusic, as are we,” says Gow ofButler’s reputation as a confronta-tional producer. “We’re goodfriends now, but at the time, itwas quite horrible. He likes pro-ducers like Berry Gordy and PhilSpector, people who created anair of constant tension in the stu-dio and made beautiful records. Ithink he thought if we were toolaid-back, we’d make somethinglacklustre. If we were all fighting
for our ideas, it would inject morepassion into the record.”
Did the tension, as has been re-ported elsewhere, develop intofull-blown shouting matches?
“Well, he didn’t hold back inhis opinions, and we didn’t holdback either. It’s nice now to lookback. We’re on friendly terms. I’mjust glad we made an LP that’s re-ally going to surprise people.”
One thing that has always setSons and Daughters apart — their
more folksy counterparts The Pro-claimers aside — is the fact thatthey sing in thick Scottish brogue.You might even call them trailblaz-ers — in their wake, a generation ofartists have started to sing in theirown accents.
“We didn’t think about it much atthe start,” says Gow of the decision.“Adele used to be in [Glasgow art-house group] Arab Strap — sheused to sing in her own accent then.It would have seemed false for herto come out and put on a big yan-kee accent. In truth, it is easier tosing in an American accent from apurely phonetic standpoint. But, aswe see it, we’ve nothing to beashamed of. It seems to be more invogue now than when we started.You hear a lot of bands now in re-gional accents.”
This Gift reaches record stores thisweek, but if you really wanted tohear the album it’s been floating il-licitly around the internet for severalweeks. Gow shrugs his shoulders.
“What can you do? All recordsleak. In a way, it’s always been likethat. When I was a kid I taped mu-sic because I didn’t have enoughpocket money. What’s annoying isthat it was probably a journalist wholeaked it, someone you would havethought it was safe to trust.”
This Gift is out on Domino Records. Sons andDaughters play Whelan’s, Dublin, on Sunday,February 17.
Martin Hayes andDenis CahillWELCOME HERE AGAIN
�����
IT’S certainly been worth thewait. After eight years since Livein Seattle and 10 since The Lone-some Touch, Welcome HereAgain heralds Hayes and Cahill’sdedication to creating a soundtrackfor ethereal and plaintive medita-tions.
Here, they demonstrate master-fully that Irish traditional musiccan, in the right hands, be knead-ed and expanded imaginatively.The duo carefully avoid the pitfallsof pastiche and musical dilution.Ceaselessly stretching boundariesand cajoling melodies into un-charted waters, Hayes and Cahillproduce a radical, yet rooted reso-nance.
The opening track, The ClareReel, with its laid-back tempo,measured features and lithe fiddle
in tow with Cahill’s deftly pickedmandolin, subtly entices the listenerinto a world of astounding virtuosityand soulful expressionism. As closeto a spiritual experience as a musicalrecording can be, this magnificentpresentation is food for the soul.
Eloquent and at times sparse,Hayes’ fiddle dances, swings, swaysand saunters, astride familiar andsome not so well-known tunes, un-derpinned by Cahill’s understatedbut essential and elegant guitarphrasings. The Wind Swept Hill ofTulla, an air from Hayes’ native eastClare is played on fiddle in a simple
and complex manner at the sametime, with minimalist guitar, giv-ing the track a truly elegant feel.
With recognisable tunes in un-common keys and lesser knownmelodies sitting comfortably to-gether, the album fashions a workof exquisite tone and annuncia-tion. Equally lonesome and hos-pitable, this music negotiates yetanother landmark on an ev-er-evolving exploration for theunearthing of a musical truth.
Hayes and Cahill’s opus main-tains an enthusiastic commitmentto investigation and magnificentinnovation, but at all times remainstrue to the core beauty and time-less cadence of Irish traditionalmusic. Beauty and sublime artistryp rolife r a t e.
Gerry Quinn
