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The Band
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The Doon Ceili
Band lineup:
Button
Accordion: Paddy O'Brien
Fiddles: Django Amerson, Nathan Gourley, Tom Schaefer
Flutes: Laura MacKenzie, Brian Miller,
Norah Rendell
Click
on band members' names for their profiles.
Originally
formed in 2003, The Doon
Céilí Band took shape around a group of the top local
musicians from the Twin
Cities of Minneapolis/Saint Paul, Minnesota. Paddy
O'Brien's
vision involved a
céilí band with a strong flute section. So it began with
three flutes; next,
three fiddles were added to balance; then piano to enhance the rhythm.
Paddy
also selected a repertoire based on his passionate study of the music.
There is
a distinctive Clare influence to many of the tunes, with Mrs. Crotty
and Micho
Russell as tune sources. There is also a Sligo influence with tunes
from James
Morrison and others. Above all, the music bears the stamp of Paddy
himself, and
that is accentuated by the contribution of styles and energies of the
individual players in the band.
But
the seeds of The Doon Céilí Band were being sown long
before some band members
were even born. As a teenager in 1960s Ireland, co-founder Paddy
O’Brien spent
a lot of time with his ear glued to the radio, listening to traditional
music.
“That time, from the late Fifties through the mid-Sixties, was a time
of great
opening up, musically speaking,” O’Brien says. “With everything that
was on the
radio, and a bit later on the television, it was the first time we were
really
aware of all the different local céilí bands, and of the
regional styles they
captured, both in their repertoire and in the way they played. It was a
revelation.”
Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Paddy immersed himself in music,
traveling the length
and breadth of Ireland to meet and learn from older players. He spent
time with
some of the legendary musicians of his era, playing with legendary
groups like
Ceoltoiri Laighean and the seminal Castle Céilí Band, a
Dublin-based group with
deep West Clare roots.
Upon his arrival in the Twin Cities in 1983, Paddy was impressed with
the
quality of the local musicians, and with their enthusiasm for the older
music.
The Twin Cities has a long tradition of supporting céilí
band music, from the
Irish immigrants who played for dances at Saint Paul’s Commercial Club
during
the Fifties and Sixties, through the folk revival of the Seventies and
Eighties, which spawned respected groups like the Blackthorn Band and
the
formidable Northern Star Céilí Band.
So when The Doon first came together in the spring of 2003, the idea
for the
band had actually been percolating for some time, and that was to learn
and
play some fine old traditional tunes that had been sorely neglected in
recent
years. For inspiration, band members turned to Paddy, who carried with
him the
repertoire and styles belonging to that older generation of traditional
musicians, groups like the Castle Ceili Band and the Lough Gowna
Céilí Band,
and individual players whose names are legend in Irish music: John
Kelly, Paddy
Cronin, Micho Russell, and Joe Cooley, among others.
But repertoire alone wasn’t everything; the sound of the band was also
important. The Doon started very consciously with a solid foundation of
flute
and fiddle, the dominant instruments in Irish céilí bands
of old. The current
lineup features Laura MacKenzie, Brian Miller, and Norah Rendell on
flute, with
Django Amerson, Nathan Gourley, and Tom Schaefer on fiddle. The melody
gets additional heft from
Paddy O’Brien on button accordion, and the whole sound is underscored
with piano accompaniment.
The Doon Céilí Band has been rehearsing regularly,
sitting once a week around various members’ dining room tables. They
work at
learning tunes very carefully—note for note—and on capturing creative
settings
and phrasing that bring out the character of a particular melody.
They’ve
invested long hours in developing the unison style that showcases the
band
rather than individual players. Strangely enough, it was while they
were
working away building that solid blend of flute, fiddle, accordion and
piano,
that the band discovered they had plenty of room for individual
expression
within the overall sound. They’ve also worked out a few songs to
feature
performances from singers MacKenzie and Miller.
After receiving an enthusiastic reception from crowds at the Irish Fair
of
Minnesota and at IrishFest in Milwaukee, The Doon Céilí
Band set out to make
its first recording, working with Shanachie Records, the prestigious
traditional
label that has been home to renowned Irish traditional groups like
Planxty,
DeDanann, Clannad, and Solas.
Listen to a few cuts from their debut recording, “Around the World for
Sport,”
and you’ll hear notes that call to mind the great Irish
céilí bands from forty
and fifty years ago. If you’re a scholar of the music you might notice
a
definite West Clare tilt in the clean, uncluttered approach to melody.
More
casual listeners will just hear great foot-tapping, spirit-moving music.
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