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June/July 1995 (Issue #58)
During my misspent youth in New York City, I used to walk
past a grungy-looking Irish pub called the Glocca Morra
every day on my way to school. Turns out it's one of three
bars that regularly host the Big Apple's latest up-and-
coming Irish band, Four to the Bar. Although the pun in
their name was stolen from a Welsh group, their style's
their own.
The four in question are David Yeates from Dunboyne, Co.
Meath on vocals, bodhran, flute and whistle; Martin Kelleher
from Cork on guitar and vocals, along with New Yorkers Keith
O'Neill on fiddle and Pat Clifford on bass. Their album,
Craic on the Road: Live at Sam Maguire's [FTB002 (1994)]
also features percussionist Seamus Casey and accordion
player Tony McQuillan.
The songs and tunes they have chosen to perform are
mostly sentimental old Irish songs with a clean-cut feel
that appeals to the largely Irish and Irish-American crowd
in the Bronx; I think you could find most of these songs,
including "Muirshin Durkin," "The Galway Shawl," "The Black
Velvet Band," "Mr. Maguire," and "I'll Tell Me Ma," on old
Irish rovers and Clancy Brothers albums.
Still, there's a bit of the Dubliners' irreverence and
the Pogues' energy and abandon in their sound as well,
making them more interesting than your average Irish bar
band. The live atmosphere is nice, complete with cheering
crowds and thumping feet, but as always in these situations,
the sound suffers a bit. Indeed, O'Neill's fiddling, which
won him an All-Ireland title in 1985, is hard to hear in
many places. Even so, there's more than enough enthusiasm
and skill in evidence to make this disc worth a listen.
February/March 1996 (Issue #62)
Top honors this time go to New York-based Irish group
Four to the Bar for their third album Another Son [FTB003].
Their last album, Craic on the Road, was a good live set of
old songs, but it didn't thoroughly transcend the ballad-
group style of the Clancys and the Irish Rovers.
Another Son is a step forward in many ways. for one
thing, there is more variety to the material. The band
members wrote about half of the songs, took others from
Donovan, Dick Gaughan, and William Butler Yeats, and added
some energetic sets of tunes. Several of the original songs-
-notably Pat Clifford's "The Western Shore," "Martin
Kelleher's "The Shores of America" and David Yeates's "NY's
for Paddy"--refer to the experience of emigration, which is
still one of the biggest issues facing Ireland and Irish
America. All three are powerful songs that demonstrate the
profound ambivalence felt by most emigrants caught between a
homeland they love and an adopted land where opportunities
are better.
Only two traditional songs appear, "The Newry Highwayman"
and "Skibbereen." The former is one of the "good night"
ballads relaying a criminal's last words from the gallows--
in fact it's the only "good night" ballad I know that
actually contains the words "good night"! The latter is a
heartbreaking tale of the famine and subsequent exodus from
Ireland. Both, also, are emigration songs--The Newry
Highwayman does his robbery in London's Grosvenor Square,
and the narrators of Skibbereen have left Ireland behind.
Each song is given an appropriate, contemporary, mostly
acoustic and very Irish arrangement featuring guitar,
fiddle, bouzouki, banjo, flute, whistle, bodhran, piano,
bass... the usual Irish instruments. Keith O'Neill's fiery
fiddling is a highlight (he's 1985's All-Ireland champion),
as is David Yeates's resonant lead vocal. Check these guys
out, they're here to stay.
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