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Vol. LXX, No. 215 (Saturday, July 29, 1995)
U2's Bono once introduced a tune with "This is not a
rebel song!" Then the Irish rock band launched into a
blistering rendition of "Sunday Bloody Sunday," a song about
the tragic "troubles" of Northern Ireland.
Unlike Bono, Irish folk band Four to the Bar isn't afraid
to call a tune a rebel song--even though it's a ballad.
Well, OK, the New York-based band, in concert here August
1-2, considers" Another Son" a "curiously appropriate
`rebel' song"--note the quotes.
"It's a rebellion against rebel songs," says Four to the
Bar bassist Pat Clifford. "It's a call to arms through
civil disobedience rather than a call to arms by picking up
a gun."
Still, the title track to the band's new album, Another
Son, is also "kind of subversive," Clifford admits during a
phone interview form his home in Astoria, N.Y. Though the
song speaks to oppression anywhere, it, of course, summons
images of the centuries-old domination of Ireland by
England.
The ballad's defiant last lines are
This is the way I see it:
Though we may all speak English,
We think in Irish.
This is the ironic, subversive part: Four to the Bar
vocalist David Yeates sings that verse in Gaelic (also known
as the Irish language).
"The first thing an oppressor will do is outlaw the
native tongue," Clifford says. "You can't control what you
can't understand, so you make the dominions speak your
language so you can control them. Hopefully this song is
redundant at this point, with the prospects of peace in
Northern Ireland."
Though based in New York City, where the band is a
mainstay on the pub scene, the members of Four to the Bar
still "think in Irish."
After all, two members were born in the Emerald Isle:
Yeates, who also plays tin whistle, flute, and bodhran; and
Martin Kelleher, who plays banjo, guitar, and bouzouki.
Clifford and Keith O'Neill are New Yorkers, though their
parents, as Clifford says, were "off the boat" (born in
Ireland).
Though raised in New York, Clifford had no trouble
discovering his musical roots amid the sizable Irish
population of the Big Apple.
"It's part of the emigration thing," he says. "Leaving
your home behind, you want to take a part of it with you.
The Irish are a very musical and community-minded culture."
The traditional Irish folk songs--the giddy-paced reels
and jigs, the melancholy ballads, the happy-sad drinking
songs--always come out at christenings, weddings, funerals.
Anyone who plays an instrument brings it along," he says.
Along with his job as an editor for a legal publisher,
Clifford was just such a casual musician until he answered a
musician-wanted ad in the Irish Voice, a New York newspaper,
four years ago.
Since Clifford joined, Four to the Bar has released three
independent albums. The band's second CD, Craic on the
Road, features raucous, belly-up to the bar, traditional
folk tunes. Another Son, released last month, features a
more eclectic mix of ballads, reels, and uptempo story
songs, many penned by band members.
You don't have to be Irish to enjoy Irish folk music,
Clifford says: "That has to do with the folk angle.
Regardless of the culture, the bets folk music deals with
universal issues, very down-to-earth subject matter.
"Then, with the Irish thing--we're a very musical
culture, so the music is melodic and you have that visceral
impact as well."
Is Irish music soul music, as singer Van Morrison and
even rocker Bono claim?
"I've never considered it that way, but that makes
sense," Clifford says. "Even the most standard Irish folk
song isn't just `I love you, the sky is blue' stuff. Like
the song `Murshin Durkin'--underneath the lighthearted
melody is a story about a man leaving his country to make a
better life. There are definite emotions attached."
The Four to the Bar concerts August 1 and 2 at the Main
Street Bank and Blues Club in Daytona Beach are sold out.
Vol. LXX, No. 215 (Thursday, August 3, 1995)
The smile of singer David Yeates was hard to decipher.
"This is a song about death," mused the frontman of Four to
the Bar, a New York-based Irish folk band. Maybe Yeates noticed something incongruously amusing
among the crowd at the Main Street Bank and Blues Club,
where Four to the Bar performed Tuesday. Maybe he realized the absurdity of attempting a sad song
amid the bar's blustery, fun-seeking packed house. Or maybe--just maybe--here was evidence of that renowned
temperament known as "tragic gaiety," that spirit that once
moved some sage to note that "the Irish are only happy when
they're sad."
In any event, the band--two Irishmen and two sons of
Irish immigrants--then played "Skibbereen," a sad, sad song
about Ireland's great famine and its devastating aftermath.
In a house of blues that's heard the powerful, mournful
screech of many an electric guitar, here was a band out-
saddening the blues with the gentle, dove-like notes of
Yeates's tin whistle and the weeping of Keith O'Neill's
fiddle.
Indeed, "Irish blues" may be the best way to describe
Four to the Bar's spirited, wonderfully engaging concert, an
event of the Florida International Festival. Of course, the quartet's music didn't resemble African-
American blues in style. But it did recall this country's blues in terms of
soulfulness.
That was true with Four to the Bar's moving, lyrical
ballads about the Irish diaspora and the Irish "troubles." Such songs as "The Western Shore" and "The Shores of
America" conveyed the special heartache of immigrants. "Another Son" and "I Ain't Marching Anymore" evoked the
"terrible beauty" of Ireland's tragic, centuries-old
struggle against English domination.
That soulfulness was evident with more upbeat takes on
the Irish immigration experience. On the delightful "NY's
for Paddy," the twentysomething Yeates used his robust
brogue to sing about an Irishman's fruitless search for "a
decent pint of stout" (Irish beer) in the Big Apple.
And that soulfulness was evident in the band's reels,
those giddy, instrumental folk tunes driven by O'Neill's
fiddle and Yeates's manic, primeval pounding on the bodhran-
-a round, hand-held drum.
The only blemish on the band's Tuesday gig was the
mismatch between their beautiful ballads and the club
setting. Whether due to the natural rowdiness of a club atmosphere
or the possible inadequacy of the band's sound system, Four
to the Bar's most poignant story songs were sometimes lost
in the din.
But ultimately, Four to the Bar proved that a sad tale, a
murmuring tin whistle, and a sobbing fiddle can be more
potent than a thousand screaming Telecasters.
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