Micahel Walsh – Quare Hawk
Self-released – 2 August 2019
Back in May, we featured an “enthralling and thought-provoking” video of the debut live performance of flute player Michael Walsh’s Quare Hawk (watch here). The album of the same name, featuring many of the same musicians, is a similarly distinctive triumph of musical variety and playing. Quare Hawk is built on a very solid Irish traditional foundation but is in no sense just another traditional album.
The music we hear at the start and then at the end of the album (an alternate mix of the title track aside) sounds like a recording from the classic era of Irish traditional music records made in the U.S. by the likes of fiddle players Michael Coleman and James Morrison in the 1920s and 1930s. The two tunes, Marian’s Favourite (written by Tony Sullivan) and the traditional Crowley’s Reel, are two halves of live 78 rpm recording made in 2016 at the Lathe Revival Studios in Newcastle – recorded on a 1938 Presto recording lathe, with a single microphone. The lovely playing, by Michael and Paul Daly (from Mayo, now resident in Manchester) on flutes and Amanda Lewis (from Newcastle) on fiddle, transports us to that different time and place and is a strong pointer of the importance of the source of the music. You can find out more about the Lathe Revival at latherevival.com.
The Shores of Loch Bran is best known from the version sung by Dolores Keane on De Danann’s 1975 debut album and is a song which for Michael is associated “with my uncle Frank Mollohan, he can be persuaded to sing this at the end of a party”. Here it exemplifies how effectively Michael and his co-producer Mike McGoldrick make the eclectic elements of Quare Hawk work as a whole. It begins with Michael playing a Chinese Hulusi (gourd flute), supported by quiet, murmuring keyboard from Anthony Davis. He then sings the first verse solo, with the second verse sung in Irish by the incomparable Armagh born, Manchester based, singer and flute player Rioghnach Connolly – who Michael describes as having “encouraged me to find my own voice”. Leticia González Menéndez then sings a verse in Asturian, followed by a haunting cello break from Liz Hanks (who has played with Martin Simpson and Liam Gallagher amongst others, and is Michael’s neighbour) and a final lovely harmony duet verse sung by Michael and English fiddle player and singer Bryony Griffith. As if that wasn’t enough, legendary Basque trikitixa (accordion) player Kepa Junkera guests on the track.
Michael describes growing up learning Sligo style traditional music in Manchester and he wears that, and other Irish traditional flute playing inspirations, on his sleeve, citing “Roger Sherlock, Tony Howley, Matt Molloy, Michael Tubridy, Peter Horan and Kevin Henry”. There’s a very fine set made up of Boys of the Lough and Trip to Birmingham. The first tune Michael learnt from the playing of the late, London based, Sligo flute player Roger Sherlock who “set the standard for Irish flute playing for me and his solo album ‘Memories of Sligo’ (1978) is my favourite flute album of all time”. The second tune was written by another Sligo player, Josie McDermott after he ended up getting a taxi from London to Birmingham for a gig, after his flight from Ireland was diverted due to fog.
The Boys of Blue Hill, Michael recalls listening to, as a youngster, as Tony Howley (yet another Sligo flute and sax player, based in Manchester) “played it down the phone to me and I remember thinking how on earth would I ever be able to play like that.” Tony sadly died last year, but I’m certain he’d be suitably impressed by Michael’s version played here on whistle. Personal aside: I knew Tony for many years as the man who always won the best allotment prize at our allotments and only discovered he was also a prominent musician after he had died – a lovely man, made of many talents. The Boys of Blue Hill is played in a set with The Stockport Hornpipe, a seemingly displaced tune, as although it is named after Michael’s home town, it is actually a Scottish tune. Both are played in the English traditional style, accompanied by Bryony Griffiths on fiddle and Will Hampson on melodeon – “I’ve grown to love English folk music” Michael says, perhaps a necessity after he married a Morris Dancer.
New versions of old tunes sometimes succeed so well that they sound as if that is how they should have always sounded and that is saying something when the original is Moving Hearts Tribute to Peadar O’Donnell (composed by Donal Lunny and from The Storm, 1985). O’Donnell’s life as an Irish Republican and socialist activist was remarkable: he began as a trade union organiser in 1918, was Chair of an Irish anti-Vietnam group in the 1960s and in between was in the Irish Republican Army during the 1919-1921 Irish Civil War and fought in the Spanish Civil War. With simply Michael on flute and Liz Hanks on cello, the inherent beauty in Donal’s air is fully realised – beautiful, evocative playing. Talking about the tune, Michael talks about going to see Moving Hearts in Manchester in the 1980’s: “I thought I was going to explode with the emotion, sound and pleasure I experienced that night.”
The music of Asturia is another thread in Michael Walsh’s musical journey. The connection comes from Michael spending time in Asturia and for the last 4 years taking a PhD in identity, nationalism and music in the contemporary Asturian folk scene in northern Spain. Barralin/Pasucais De Uveu are two Asturian tunes, the first by J.M. Tejedor and the second traditional, that Michael learned from Asturian group Llan de Cubel. Michael is joined by that band’s fiddle player Simon Bradley, Leticia González Menéndez on pandeiro, Ruben Bada on bouziki and Helen Gubbins on button accordion. The track is a delightful addition to the assortment of genres on the album.
The phrase Quare Hawk, used by Michael’s father Patrick, can mean many things: crafty, clever, a bit odd, a bit strange. Michael Walsh’s debut album is all of those things and a lot more besides. What unifies the wealth of components parts on Quare Hawk is the personal, the story of Michael’s life and music. Michael describes the album as charting: “the last three years of my life. Celebration, loss, moving on and finding my own voice.” Family is central to what matters most for Michael: the title track is a set of three jigs he wrote in tribute to his two children and his wife. He describes Mike Garry’s poem The Visitor helping him deal with the loss of his father who died in 2017 and to whom Michael dedicates the album. On the album, the poem is spoken by Mike, with Michael on flute, Liz Hanks on cello and Mike McGoldrick on drone, guitars and samples. The opening line alone powerfully evokes that feeling of wanting to still be in connect with people we have lost: “My father is with me, he visits me, calls to me from the dark”.
It may have taken Michael Walsh a long time to make his first album, but he has delivered a warm, unassuming collection of tunes, songs and spoken word. Quare Hawk has a striking coherence across a multiplicity of influences and styles – you can never be quite sure what is coming next. Michael describes the tune written for his son in the title track set as, in part, offering “encouragement to be his own man” – on Quare Hawk Michael Walsh is definitely his own man.
Michael Walsh is launching Quare Hawk today (Friday 2nd August) at the Cambridge Folk Festival (5:15 pm The Den Stage)
Order Quare Hawk here: https://www.michaelwalshmusic.com/