Dervish – The Great Irish Songbook
Rounder Records – 12 April 2019
What it says on the tin, but, as Dervish approach their 30th anniversary, thankfully the renowned Irish folk sextet haven’t done a Rod Stewart and, while they may be reinventing the traditional songs of their homeland, they aren’t homogenising them. Making their Rounder debut, the Sligo-based outfit have joined forces with a fistful of luminaries from the folk, Americana and even acting worlds to give voice to the interpretations.
It is, however, their own Cathy Jordan who, also playing accordion, bouzouki and bodhran, jauntily starts the ball rolling with The Rambling Irishman, a song of unknown provenance, sometimes known as The Banks of Sweet Lough Erne, but, going by the lyrics, penned by an Ulsterman and concerning immigration to America to escape poverty, leaving sweethearts behind.
Bluegrass outfit The Steeldrivers step up the plate for a whistle, fiddle and banjo-led freewheeling six-minute take on the much-covered There’s Whiskey In the Jar that rounds out with the Irish reel Over The Hills to Maggie, then the baton’s handed to Imelda May for a suitably melancholic, flute-coloured sway through Molly Malone with Anna Houston on cello. Keeping things initially fairly sedate, Steve Earle sings in a waltzing wistful drawl mode for The Galway Shawl, the singer besotted by the modestly-dressed lass he meets one May in Galway, the track, carried along with 12-string guitar, mandola and fiddle, building to a rousing singalong finale.
First collected in Donegal, the ghostly She Moved Through The Fair has been recorded by pretty much everyone in the folk world, the version here breathily and echoingly sung by Andrea Corr to Seamie O’Dowd’s strummed guitar and Houston’s cello.
Picking the tempo back up, The Rocky Road To Dublin, a song about an Irishman’s experience as he travels from Tuam to Liverpool, being robbed in Dublin en route, written by 19th century poet D.K. Gavan for English music hall performer Harry Clifton, gets a robust thickly-brogued treatment by actor Brendan Gleeson (who is also a part-time fiddle and mandolin player) with brother Barry on backing vocals, Tom Morrow on fiddle and Michael Holmes squeezing the concertina.
By contrast of accent and tenor, Graham Henderson on harmonium, Barnsley’s Kate Rusby offers a lovely hushed reading of Yeats’s Down By The Sally Gardens, followed by country star Vince Gill giving it his best falsetto tenor for a fiddle and piano-backed melancholia waltz through Patrick Cavanagh’s lovesick On Raglan Road.
Jordan returns to the microphone and the bouzouki for the piano-based slow six and a half minute-sway of Dónal Óg. Originally an 8th century traditional Gaelic poem of a pregnant girl abandoned by her lover, it was translated by Irish dramatist Lady Gregory, co-founder of the Abbey theatre with Yeats, though, arranged by Jordan, this is the translation by Irish short stories writer Frank O’Connor.
Another, if lesser known, American country name, Jamey Johnson joins the line-up for the whistle and mandola-accompanied The Fields of Athenry, a song that often figures in his live shows. Set during the Great Famine, it tells of a woman lamenting outside a prison where her husband is awaiting transportation for stealing bread. Once claimed to be a 19th century broadside, Irish folkie Pete St John is now generally accepted as having written it in 1970.
Firmly traditional in origin, while more often sung unaccompanied, the melancholically reflective The May Morning Dew here has a spine-tingling Rhiannon Giddens backed by Liam Kelly’s haunted low whistle. Backed by low whistle, ebow and fiddle and accompanying himself on sorrow-drenched piano, David Gray captures all the heartache of The West Coast Of Clare, Andy Irvine’s lovelorn ballad recorded by Planxty in 1973, provides the penultimate track before the album closes, appropriately enough, with the traditional The Parting Glass sung by Abigail Washburn accompanied by pizzicato mandola and featuring an instrumental break of bowed guitar and forlorn whistle, a treatment more akin to that of Cara Dillon than The High Kings.
A stirring celebration of both their own thirty years together and the music of their native Ireland, given the wealth of material on which to draw, perhaps a future anniversary might bring another most welcome second volume.
Dervish has announced the premiere of its ‘The Great Irish Songbook’ show at The Palladium in London on Thursday, September 19. Read more here.