IrishMusicInfo
The Sunday Tribune Weekly Traditional Music Column by Fintan Vallely
990801
De Dannan continue the triumph of their 'twenty-fifth' in lavish style with a tour of selected highlights and great goals. Their Olympia concert last week was a sell-out of celebratory goodwill, they opened on their original style of time-change - upping tempo from the horseback of 'Jerry's Beaver Hat' jig on to the fast-clipping choo-choo of 'The Mountain Road' reel. The band may have had more personnel changes than Dunne's Stores, but newcomer Brian McGrath evoked the original Charlie Piggott banjo edge, and his keyboards too added a cŽil’ band nostalgia in the bigger sets. Lit in magisterial red, the cabaret-style stage had maestro fiddler Gavin picked out in white, his green velour waistcoat reminiscent of stage-professional, Galway/USA piper Patsy Touhey a hundred years ago. Tears and cheers erupted spontaneously, the goodwill of this mixed-age audience was great sauce. New voice Andrew Murray's almost shocking bass reach was a thrilling disclosure, old face Eleanor McEvoy took 'Maggie' wonderfully, the band's backing built around Gavin's tremendous Flute dynamics were rather brilliant. Tune sets were as perfectionist as ever, and driving and driven by audience spontaneity, Gavin was spurred to push fiddle from shreik to bass, rasping bow, McGrath clipping along as a tight reference. Colm Murphy's bodhr‡n was the solid, cobbled carriageway for this, and Alec Finn's splendidly stubborn Greek bouzouki added the birdsong treble to what has been for a quarter century a consistent, hallmark sound unique to his and Gavin's expertise. Accordionist M‡irt’n O'Connor's parachuting in from Brittany as another old-boy guest popped the champagne - he and Gavin literally spark each other in ever-escalating ingenuity and energy, particularly so on their Klezmer reels. The arrival too of New York Gospel singers Ivan Le Par and Marelle Epps added a great strength to 'Will ye go Lassie Go', and with Murray and Shanley they were the constant referent for the latter part of the concert. Their unison 'Anthem' peace song (a re-write of Danny Boy by Desmond Leslie) seemed tediously twee and naive in this age of selective genocide and Imperial bombing (why should such fine art be sabotaged by sentimental platitude, and why should performers make such major assumptions about audience sophistication?). Epps's expansive personality however unbalanced the chemistry anyway, and by the concluding sets she had (with extraordinary style) hijacked the concert's genre and the audience mood. Cat-walking, brilliantly extemporising and calling for 'lights' for herself completed the coup, Murphy's truly outstanding and original bodhr‡n solo faded to insignificance. By the encore the audience were at a Tina Turner gig so powerful that not even Gavin could turn it around, and the rout prevented the anticipated arrival of his forte 'Queen of Sheba'. Thrilling stuff, if conflicting signals, but not enough De Dannan. And what has Gospel got to do with Traditional anyway?
©Fintan Vallely, IrishMusicInfo.com
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