Kevin Buckley – Big Spring
Avonmore Records – 8 April 2022
Kevin Buckley was raised in Missouri and learned Irish fiddle from the age of 9. He formerly traded as roots rockers Grace Basement and Big Spring marks his solo debut under his own name. The album is a mix of covers and traditional songs and tunes showing his multi-instrumentalist skills, drawing on folk, bluegrass, swing and Tejano.
Big Spring opens with a brace of instrumentals. The first is a frisky fiddle arrangement of County Cork accordionist Jackie Daly’s Sweeney’s Wheel, the circular melody inspired by the real-life character’s attempt to invent a perpetual motion machine.
It’s followed by the lively, tempo shifting and punningly titled Ryder’s Block, the only self-penned tune, accompanied by bouzouki and banjo, that has the air of being out folk dancing under summer skies. The first of the three vocal tracks, with harmonies from Alex Sinclair and Dan Lowery, reaches into the tradition for a rousing Ozarks-flavoured reading of The Blackest Crow with Buckley on bouzouki and octave mandolin, the two others being Andy Irvine’s Guthrie hobo and anti-fascist backdrop homage Never Tire Of The Road, here, accompanied by just fingerpicked bouzouki and given more Appalachian and dusty American folk colours than the original, and the traditional Miss Bailey, a suitably subdued take on the story of a captain who seduced and abandoned the titular maid, who subsequently hung herself and returned to haunt his guilty conscience, giving her a pound to pay for the burial and, having done so, apparently returning his old life of eating heartily and eyeing up the ladies.
The remainder are all fiddle-based instrumentals. Eileen Gannon adds her harp to the brief slip jig Hardiman The Fiddler, thought to be named in honour of James Hardiman (Séamus Ó hArgadáin), a librarian at Queen’s College, Galway, best remembered for his History of the Town and County of Galway (1820) and Irish Minstrelsy (1831).
Written by harmonica blues player Jean-Jacques Milteau and transposed for fiddle and mandolin, Marcelle et Marcel deftly summons visions of Paris cafes. Two feature just Buckley on fiddle, bouzouki and guitar for the seamless twinning of the jigs The Queen (of the Rushes) and the Cook (in the Kitchen) and just fiddle for the Irish flute reel The Belles Of St Louis.
Equally cheerful and upbeat, again joined by Gannon, La Rubia, a pavane that interpolates Irish waltz An Chúileann, which leaves Frank Livingston’s jaunty, hot club-tinged, time signature skipping hornpipe City of Savannah and Ships Are Sailing/Laington’s, a pairing of two traditional Irish reels that takes things out in grand style with bouzouki, tenor guitar and Ian Walsh and Eimear Arkins bringing the fiddle quotient up to three.
The first time he’s both featured fiddle and wholly based the music on his folk roots. Whether it’s a one-off or marks an invigorating new direction for his career, this is a hugely enjoyable and listenable album, though, if there is a solo sequel, given the evidence here I’d like to hear his voice in play more often.
Website: https://kevin-buckley.com/