Lúnasa – Cas
Lúnasa Records – 8 June 2018
It’s time for that difficult 10th album, just over 20 years after the first one. To stick or to twist? On CAS, their delightful new album, top-flight Irish traditional band Lúnasa solve that conundrum nimbly by combining continuity in top-notch sets of tunes and a departure from their preceding purely instrumental recordings dovetailed with a bunch of vocal tracks with five well-known guest singers. Guitar player Ed Boyd generously took time out to answer a few questions along the way.
I asked Ed where the idea come from to record nearly half of CAS with singers that the band have worked with live over the years?
“It seemed to be an obvious thing to do to try and celebrate the 20th anniversary by doing something a little different, particularly as we’d steered clear of recording any songs before. We did a lot of gigs with Tim O’Brien in the States in 2016, which probably helped spur us along with the idea”.
Eight years on from their last album Lá Nua, newer band members have slipped in with no interruption to the unique Lúnasa’s sound. Ed Boyd (Flook, Mike McGoldrick Band, Cara Dillon) joined permanently in 2012. Colin Farrell on fiddle and low whistle fills the fiddle slot for North American dates when band founder Séan Smyth stays at home to do his GP duties – both play on CAS. Patrick Doocey, who also fills in, on guitar, for some U.S. tours, played with longstanding band member flute and whistle player Kevin Crawford on last year’s top-drawer release The Drunken Gaugers (alongside fiddler Dylan Foley). Other long settled members are Trevor Hutchinson in the engine room on bass, bouzouki, and lap steel guitar and Cillian Vallely on uilleann pipes and low whistle.
In terms of choosing singers to record with for the album from a long list of possibles, Ed explained “The rule was that they had to have a close relationship with the band and be willing and able to do it! We were amazed when everyone replied so positively and were so easy to deal with”.
The majority of singing guests – Natalie Merchant, Tim O’Brien, Mary Chapin Carpenter and Eric Bibb – are of course all from the United States, reflecting perhaps both Lúnasa’s popularity in that large market and the simple fact that most of the band live there. They have recorded before both with Tim O’Brien – Fair and Tender Ladies on the 2005 Hands Across the Water CD for children affected by the tsunami – and with Natalie Merchant on her Leave Your Sleep in 2010.
The Bonny Light Horseman is so widely sung that it’s hard to imagine there being much scope to bring anything completely fresh to it but that is exactly what Natalie Merchant and Lúnasa do magnificently. Merchant makes it all her own, with her trademark vocal phrasing matched note for note by Ed Boyd’s appropriately slow-march like, but always subtle, guitar, interspersed by sorrowful fiddle, flute and pipes. Collaborations between singers and instrumental bands don’t come better than this majestic track. Hopefully, their joint U.S and forthcoming shows in Ireland will be reprised in the UK. Ed described how the track came about:
“I was very excited about the prospect of working with Natalie, as I’m a huge fan, and wasn’t in the band when they played on her Leave your Sleep album. She came to a concert we did in Troy, NY to decide upon a song, then we reconvened a ten days later in Dreamland, a great studio in Upstate New York. We spent the whole day on Bonny Light Horseman, finding the right tempo and feel, by the end Natalie felt her voice was tired, quite understandably, and came back the following morning to finish the vocal. I sat in with the engineer and it was terrific to be there for that moment. She is an exceptional artist and I am immensely proud of that track”.
The arrangement of the Tim O’Brien and Sarah Jarosz song The Water Is Wise is very similar to that on O’Brien’s last album Pompadour, which Hutchinson played on, except that here O’Brien majors on mandolin rather than banjo. The song benefits from nifty but restrained Lúnasa playing, most obviously from Kevin Crawford and Cillian Vallely. The gigs with O’Brien seem to have aided a straightforward recording process as Ed recounts:
“We went to Nashville to record with Tim, he tends to use the Butcher’s Shoppe studio, which is where Johnny Cash recorded for the last 15 years of his life. It was, of course, very cool, the whole song took less than two hours to complete so we had time to record an instrumental as well”.
Daoirí Farrell represents the only Irish singing guest on Paddy’s Green Shamrock Shore, a favourite from his live performances and made popular by Paul Brady. The accompaniment here is much fuller than you hear on Farrell’s solo work, as the band demonstrate very well their ability, shared on the other vocal tracks, to provide sympathetic backing that supports and doesn’t distract from the vocal. They always leave room for their own stamp with characteristically deft instrumental touches. Ed filled in the stories for that and the other vocal tracks:
“It wasn’t massively rock ‘n’ roll to be perfectly honest. Daoirí Farrell came to Trevor’s place in Dublin and the three of us put down the bare bones of Paddy’s Green Shamrock Shore. He was excellent to work with, a beautiful singer and real character. We weren’t able to record live with Mary Chapin or Eric Bibb, so Trevor, Colin and myself recorded the instrumental part to The Irish Girl in a grim Airbnb apartment in Queens and sent it to her – shhh, she’ll never know. Eric sent Trevor My Lord What a Morning My Lord right at the end of making the album so we were lucky to get him on it in time”.
Instrumental tracks still make up the majority of CAS and they are up there with the best of Lúnasa’s previous work. Putting sets of tunes together is something Lúnasa have off to a particularly fine art, mixing self-compositions, trad and other people’s tunes. Stretching to over 7-minutes, the opening track, The Tinker’s Frolics, typifies their approach, with a captivating set of four tunes, superbly arranged with changes of pace that keep you eagerly anticipating the next change. A lovely measured Kevin Crawford tune, Bob’s Hole in One, kicks things off, followed by a tune from Damien Mullane, then Colin Farrell’s tune Headford Junction from his second solo album and things gather pace with the traditional reel that gives the track it’s title. The band re-visit Sinead Maire’s from Cillian Vallely’s solo album Raven’s Rock, giving it the full, sumptuous Lúnasa treatment.
The Dregs of Birch, written as both an air and a reel by Canadian fiddler Tania Elizabeth, is a delicious discovery and the band make it work really well on both low whistles and then on pipes. Pontivy, an enthralling set of Breton tunes, starts with lovely interplay between flute and pipes on a traditional carol with gentle guitar, followed by polka Sant Hern and ending with An dro for Kevin, a tune by flute-maker Pol Jezeque which translates as ‘A dance’ (Crawford is said to have played one of his flutes). Tribute to Larry Reynolds has popped up a few times recently, with great versions by Doyle, McCusker & McGoldrick and the tune’s composer Maurice Lennon (with others) on Leitrim Equation 3 – here it bridges another very fine, bright and varied set of tunes.
In Irish Gaelic ‘cas’ can have various definitions, including to turn or twist, to play a tune or to sing a song. Lúnasa have certainly taken CAS literally in all those meanings with high-class tunes and a set of songs that work equally well vocally and instrumentally. A fitting, celebratory, must-listen album.
Sinead Maire’s Live on TG4:
Lúnasa Tour Dates
August 1, Whelans, Dublin, Ireland – with Natalie Merchant
August 2, Skibbereen Arts Festival, Ireland – with Natalie Merchant
August 3, Dungarvan Music Festival, Ireland – with Natalie Merchant
August 4, Live at St. Lukes, Cork, Ireland with Natalie Merchant
August 13, Festival Les Traversées, Tatihou, France
August 23, Tonder Festival, Denmark
September 7, Paris Celtic Live, France