In Part One of this story (which can be read here) we looked at the making of Michael McGoldrick’s second solo album Fused from the perspective of the artist, band and producer. In part two we look more widely at the impact and influence that Fused had on others. We have the thoughts of other musicians including Julie Fowlis, Duncan Chisholm, Damien O’Kane, Jarlath Henderson, Cormac Byrne, Aileen Reid, Ciaran Clifford, Graham Mackenzie and Méabh Kennedy, together with sound engineer Alan ‘Dinner’ MacKinnon. After hearing from them, we end the story of Fused with amusing and illuminating stories relating to Fused from Mike, Julie Fowlis, Cormac Byrne and Donald Shaw.
Asking other musicians, both Mike’s contemporaries and younger players, for their view on Fused, elicited a remarkable unanimity about how significant it was at the time, and how it remains relevant, fresh and influential twenty years later. Many of the interviews were done at Celtic Connections in January this year, hence the references to the 20th-anniversary gig which was reviewed here.
What impression did Fused make on contemporary working musicians?
Julie Fowlis: “Fused was released at a time in my life when music was suddenly everything. I remember being so excited by the sound, the tunes, the arrangements, the production. I remember listening endlessly to that record. I could recount it track by track at the time. Fused showcased what an incredible musician Mike is, there’s a real confidence. There was nobody else doing anything like that at the time. It was ground-breaking. There are lots of musicians who have tried to cross-over but there are only a handful who can really do it successfully. In order to do that, you have to be a brilliant traditional musician first and foremost, and Mike has that in spades. When I go back and listen to Fused now, it still sounds really fresh. There’s something vibrant and exciting and new about it even though it’s 20 years old.”
Duncan Chisholm: “For me, he’s one the most naturally gifted musicians that I’ve come across in my life. He feels music, so when Morning Rory came out, he had a piping style all of his own and this amazing flute playing that took everyone by surprise and he landed on the scene with a big wallop. So, when it came to Fused, I don’t think anyone was expecting it to be what it was. Just straight from the first track Waterman’s, it’s like a statement of intent. He’s embracing tabla. I didn’t even know what a tabla was until that album came out, and he’s embracing trance and different styles of music. It was a gamechanger for everybody I think. That was the point that I realised that traditional music fitted into world music, hand in glove. All of a sudden a much wider landscape was opened up. It has a mixture of instruments and styles that you would think on paper wouldn’t create an overall sound that was very coherent, but it absolutely does have that coherence all the way through.”
For younger musicians in 2000 when Fused came out, some beginning their degrees, others learning to play, it made a big impression and directly shaped their approach to playing music. It was no different for those too young to hold an instrument at the time, who came to it later.
Cormac Byrne (bodhran): For me it’s a really important album. I went to the launch gig at Band On The Wall in Manchester in 2000. I had just moved from Ireland to Manchester to study classical music at the RNCM. Fused changed everything for me. It’s like there’s a time before that album, and a time after that album.”
Damian O’Kane: “Before I moved to England in 2001 to do the Folk & Traditional Music degree at Newcastle University, I’d never heard of Mike McGoldrick. The reason I chose that course was that you would study the musical traditions of these islands, so it broadened my horizons. I started discovering all this new stuff through people I got friendly with on the course and the Fused album was one of those albums. You start realising that the arrangements are so innovative. Straight away it was kind of a landmark album. There’s something quite pioneering about this album.”
Aileen Reid (fiddle): “’For us [Kinnaris Quintet], Fused represents the glory days of being youthful and carefree, Celtic Connections, the days of The Arches and trying to sneak into the Festival Club in the hotel days. Not only was the album so fresh and new and full of weird and wonderful, tasteful ideas and sounds, but the tunes were relatable. You could learn them easily and play them in sessions. We still do. This influenced us when making our own album, ‘Free One’, as we remember how inspiring and exciting it was to play along with Fused, that we wanted people to do the same with our record, keeping it accessible for all learners and players. Every track on Fused is a total soundtrack in itself, to an imaginary scene. It still remains so tasteful, exciting, fresh and progressive, even 20 years on.”
Jarlath Henderson: “When Fused came out when I was 13 or 14 year old trad lover. That album took the world that I knew, the trad tunes, the jigs and the reels and brought the whole thing into a much more modern context. It became a bit of a lifeline in many ways because I was in an all-boys school where trad music wasn’t cool. Fused was the album that made it make sense and is probably responsible for me continuing to play music. It had a big production sound that made me think, there’s actually stuff in here that my pals can relate to. It was the album that justified where I was, what I was doing and what I wanted to do. The styles that Fused was done in were a blueprint for me. Even in terms of the cover design, something modern, something off the wall – it wasn’t the old guys sitting on the cover, just playing instruments – it had the full package. Mike is melody through and through, his amazing tune playing is the central thing, and there’s a bit of magic in how Fused is put together with all the other influences on it as well.”
Ciaran Clifford (whistle player): “Fused is aptly named because he subtlety brought together all those different influences. None of the instruments on it are done over the top or showing off. The percussion on it is something I’d really take away from it, you’d expect having the bodhran, the table and full drum kit would clash in some way, but they don’t. They all perfectly complement each other. It sets up so many different vibes on the different tracks, evokes a different emotion and that’s lot down to the tune selection. For me, the low whistle playing on it really is jazz flute-esque, the way he ‘bends’ the notes. That the first time I’d heard that, and it had a major influence on my playing.”
Graham Mackenzie (fiddle player): “I was about 9 when Fused came out. It’s in my top ten albums of all time for sure. I’d started playing when I was 6. We had a lot of music on in the house, so I was aware of Mike’s tunes and playing. He was my idol and then I got to meet and play with him for the first time in the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall when I was 12. Waterman’s, you know it from the first note, that always the hit for me. I’ve been working with Mike recently helping him producing a book of his tunes, doing the transcribing. I’ve been going through the album track by track. It has been nice to really listen to it and hear things that you missed the first time, and the second time, and the third time. There are always new things coming up, every time you listen to it. The arrangements and the tunes themselves are brilliant. Mike is probably my biggest influence and my favourite musician still.”
Méabh Kennedy (fiddle player): “I heard James Brown’s March when I was 9 or 10, which was years after Fused came out. My mum was a music teacher in a school and she heard a girl playing it on her phone. She loved it and said can you send it to me, so then played it at home. I remember hearing it and thinking it’s the most joyful piece ever, the syncopation. I’d never heard anything like it, anything with that fluidity, the highs and lows. My dad said it’s too much, you can’t play that, you won’t get any points for that at the Fleadh. It was really just that one song growing up, but I adored it. Later, when I came to Manchester [from Tyrone] as a student in 2014, I listened to the whole album. Reels are usually played really fast but not the reels on Fused. I’d never heard such as groove before. When I hear a tune, I know straight away if it’s’ a Mike tune.”
The clear, vibrant production sound was another factor that made Fused stand out.
Alan ‘Dinner’ MacKinnon (sound engineer with Julie Fowlis, Duncan Chisholm): “Fused set a new bar for sound engineers. When it came out, we talked about it having the sound that we then had to aspire to.”
Duncan Chisholm: “What it created was a point where production took a huge step up. I think the album creates a piece of work that you can sit down and listen to as one piece. It had that coherence on that big scale. Previous albums like that included, Moving Hearts The Storm and Dick Gaughan’s Handful Of Earth; and Fused took over that mantel.”
Aileen Reid: “The production on it is still just the best in my opinion”.
What wider impact did Fused have at the time, and since?
Julie Fowlis: “It spawned a whole generation of low whistle players. You would go to sessions, and there would be low whistles players everywhere. He inspired a whole generation of musicians, and made pipes accessible and exciting. The album created a ripple effect for a long time.”
Jarlath Henderson: “It had a big influence quickly on what tunes people play in sessions, the tunes became session standards, it was everywhere. There’s a generation 10 years below me who wouldn’t have experienced it at the time I did, but there was a very wide demographic at the gig last night and that’s a sign of the lasting impact of the album.”
Cormac Byrne: “It had an impact on everyone that was playing trad and listening to trad music. The beautiful thing about it was that it encouraged experimentation with trad and people weren’t afraid to do it. It was bravely going into these different areas and taking this sample, this beat or this feel and merging it with these tunes.”
Duncan Chisholm: “I think it still does have an impact. I don’t think it has ever aged and I don’t think it ever will. His tunes have been a huge influence on everybody, and the tunes still get played which is a testament to his writing.”
Aileen Reid:“’Fused is still one of the most influential albums of our generation, one of the greatest trad records there’ll ever be in my opinion! It’s a total desert island disc.”
Bonus tracks: ‘My favourite story about Fused’
Mike: “Alan Kelly [accordion on Fused] flew over to Glasgow from Dublin for the recording. When he rang the buzzer at the studio, I answered and said ‘you’ll never believe who’s here, Phil Cunningham’. Phil had just popped in and was Alan’s hero. His reply was ‘so what the hell have you brought me all the way over here for then?’.”
Julie Fowlis: We [Dochas] toured with them 15 years ago. The first night in Glasgow Mike had asked beforehand if we’d come up for the encore. We were so keen to get on that we jumped up for the second last tune, not the encore. So, we were on stage way too early but, because we knew the album inside out we were still able to play along with the tunes we hadn’t practiced because that was our music at the time.”
Cormac Byrne: “At the Band on the Wall launch gig Johnny Kalsi was playing tabla and dhol. Then Mike brought on a whole load of dhol players. He told the audience that he had been in the city centre that day, seen a group of dhol players busking and invited them to play at the gig that night. They played acoustic at the front of the stage, and Mike played a march over the dhol rhythm. It was like ‘what is happening’, it was a euphoric sort of situation.”
Donald Shaw (keyboards and producer on Fused): “My favourite story about Fused is about when we played it live for the first time at Celtic Connections just after it was released. I just remember saying to Mike we need to rehearse this because we’ve never played it live. He said we’ll come a couple of days before the gig but he ended up going on a tour of Ireland for a week. On the day of the gig, we were supposed to be rehearsing. They arrived very early in the morning but had been up all night, so they went straight to the hotel and went to sleep. We were all in the studio, me, Ewen Vernal and James Macintosh, waiting to rehearse and at 2.00 Mike phoned and said, ‘we’ve got a radio live broadcast now’, him and John Joe Kelly and Ed Boyd. I said I’m worried about the gig tonight if we haven’t rehearsed it. He said don’t worry we’ll get a chance at the soundcheck. So, we’re all in the studio just sitting around. I had a big radio and I turned on Radio Scotland. We heard, ‘coming up Mike McGoldrick’. Iain Anderson [the presenter] asked ‘what are you going to play Mike, and he said, ‘we’re going to play a few tracks from my new album Fused’. So, I said come on we’ll just rehearse with them. So, we cranked up the radio and rehearsed those tunes so at least we had half a chance when we arrived at the soundcheck, but then that gig was amazing.”
Fused is available from Vertical Records here.