The Common Ground Ensemble, the latest project of Irish traditional fiddle player Martin Hayes, released their debut album, Peggy’s Dream, last month – you can read our review here. The album is a further exceptional example of Martin’s exploration of Irish traditional music, which began with his two solo albums in 1993 and 1995 and progressed through the groundbreaking duet with the late guitar player Dennis Cahill, the expansive delights of The Gloaming, the rich, deep soundscape of the Martin Hayes Quartet, and most recently a live EP recorded in 2020 with Cormac McCarthy (piano) and Brian Donnellan (bouzouki, harmonium & concertina) – constituting three-fifths of the Common Ground Ensemble – during one of those rare windows in the pandemic. The remainder of the Ensemble includes Kate Ellis (cello, Artistic Director of Crash Ensemble) and Kyle Sanna (guitar, a collaborator with Edgar Meyer and Chris Thile).
The Ensemble premiered Peggy’s Dream at National Concert Hall (NCH) in Dublin on 26th March, and I met Martin at the venue a few days before to talk about the album. He described how the project had come together, his clarity about how he wanted the music to sound, the essential, core nature of the traditional melodies, and how Dennis Cahill continues to influence how Martin thinks about arranging those tunes.
I started by asking Martin how he came to assemble this particular ensemble of musicians and whether the project had worked out how he thought it would.
“Way back, I was doing mini-festivals and residencies and got this idea about having a really confident group of musicians around me that could reach out to all kinds of worlds and connect me with them. I’ve been doing things at the Kilkenny Arts Festival, where each year I put a band together and bring in guests, and I’ve been doing the same thing at the Irish Arts Centre in New York. So, I started thinking about putting a band together for that. My wife was encouraging me to do it as well, and then my friend Gary Sheehan here at the NCH [where Gary is Head of Programme Planning] said why don’t you just make a band? So, I did and did it while hanging out at the beach in Asturias [Martin has lived in Spain for nearly a decade]. ‘Who should I get?’. You’re sitting there with a list, thinking about the sounds that people make, the way they play, and you’re trying to imagine the different compatibilities with each of them individually and then what would that mix of musicians be like. You can’t know for sure, but you have clues about the workability of it and the musical fit of people. After I had put it together on paper, I asked them, and they all said yes.
“Next, I picked tunes and did something I hadn’t done before, which was I recorded the tunes and then used a midi keyboard to work out rudimentary arrangements for each musician. Not with the idea that what I arranged would stand the test of time necessarily, but that it would be the beginning of a conversation and that it would point the tunes in a certain direction. I could clearly indicate that by saying I wanted this kind of open spaciousness here, this kind of tempo here, this kind of feel here, this kind of harmony on this tune, that kind of thing. I could then give a rough sketch to everybody that they could work off, and then they would create and develop their contribution as they wish because they are all remarkably creative musicians.
I’m really pleased with how the band have found their voice. Initially, we had two concerts scheduled here [at the NCH] just right before the pandemic, and only two days before the performance, everything was cancelled. So, the band was just about to start, just about to do a performance, and then it was stopped for two years straight, which was tough. When we could get together in the pandemic, we went into a recording studio and recorded at least the arrangements we had in place for the concert. We had that in our back pocket and so that after the pandemic, when there was a chance to do a few gigs, I could send the recordings to everyone to remind them. We did a few gigs last spring and into the summer, at which point the band said let’s go into the studio and really make a record. I feel a little bit jinxed in saying that I’m happy with it, but I am. Often I despair at some moment after making a recording and start to think it’s terrible and never want to hear it again. So far, so good; I haven’t turned against this one yet”.
Martin talked to me back in 2018 (here) about the different stages of his musical development, from his first solo album onwards, ground that he also covered in his fascinating in-depth autobiography (reviewed here). I asked him where the Common Ground Ensemble fitted into that development.
“I feel I’ve arrived at this point in my life where I feel empowered, or maybe entitled, to say what I really want and to ask of the musicians if they will do the thing that I want to do. That doesn’t mean that they don’t have loads of freedom to do what they want within that, of course they do. It’s just me reaching that point where I’m going: this is what I like, this is the way I like to play, these are the kind of musicians I like to surround myself with and this is kind of sound I like to make. It’s very, very indulgent on my part”.
I mentioned that I felt there were continuities on Peggy’s Dream with previous projects, clear echoes of what went before, in particular, and Martin finished the sentence himself, ‘The Gloaming’.
“From the Gloaming I began to see the value and use of piano in this music. That became a sound that I liked. I’ve also done the Quartet with four musicians, and this band also with five. It’s not so much that there’s one extra musician, adding another instrument. Five makes a big difference, there’s just a whole different dynamic in the music and the makeup of the thing. You don’t have the same symmetric polarity that can happen in a quartet, so you function in a really different way. I had enjoyed that aspect of the Gloaming a lot. I’ve had experiences with playing solo, duo, trio, quartet and a quintet and I’ve liked all those very different combinations. I’m enjoying the Ensemble a lot”.
The addition of both Brian Donnellan’s concertina, making for what sounds like an even stronger East Clare connection, and Kate Ellis’s ranging cello on the album offer quite different sound palette possibilities; I asked Martin to expand on what dimensions they both brought.
“I played with Brian in the Tulla Ceili Band but I’d never really heard him play. I heard him at the other side of the band stage, so I hadn’t known exactly how he played the concertina. I knew he played bouzouki, and he played keyboards, so I knew he was somebody who could do a few different things in the band, but his concertina playing completely caught me by surprise. I rarely sit down and play tunes with somebody where it feels so sympathetic, so connected. What I didn’t know was the extent to which he had internalised the whole repertoire of East Clare music, which he plays in the most beautiful, flowing kind of way. When I sit down to play with Brian on the concertina, it’s like putting on a glove. It’s a perfect fit, and I love it. I could play with him all night. It was a pure thrill to find that level of empathic playing.
“Kate is a remarkable musician. She’s the Artistic Director of the Crash Ensemble who do contemporary classical music, which means that everything and anything goes, out there and maybe not so out there kinds of things. She’s on that precipice of worlds, in contemporary modern music and off touring with Bono as well; she’s a musician of the moment. I had got to play with her a little over the years at the Kilkenny Arts Festival, where she’s been a regular. Some years ago, when Denis and myself were touring, we had Kate sit in with us on a few occasions, and we also worked with her at the Irish Arts Centre in New York. So, I got to know Kate over the years, but it would be intermittent, and we never got a chance to develop anything. This was an opportunity to get more connected with Kate musically and see what evolved from that. On the one hand, she’s a classical cellist, but in other respects, she’s a very avant-garde player, always pushing boundaries, fearless and a good improviser. Every time you sit with Kate, you can expect new things to happen”.
Martin has spoken movingly, from the heart, about his musical partnership and strong friendship with Dennis Cahill, who sadly died last year. I ask Martin what it felt like creating and recording a new project without Dennis and whether he felt the presence of Dennis’s musical voice and influence in his thinking and on the arrangements.
“It’s funny you should ask that. Looking at some new tunes for this concert, I sat down with my mini keyboard, created the chords behind the tune and then a guitar part and then realised that’s exactly what Dennis would have played. My idea of what a guitar should do is definitely shaped by my experience with Dennis and the whole harmonic trajectory of things is shaped by what I think Dennis would do. So even though he’s not there, he’s there in some way. The impact of having played with him for half my life isn’t going to away just like that. I felt his absence. He was in poor health, so this was the first project that I developed myself, that didn’t have him in it. Although I’d done other collaborations like Triúr [with Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh and Peadar Ó Riada], the Teetotallers [with John Doyle and Kevin Crawford] and worked with Brooklyn Rider, they were just me hoping on board with others; but to develop something new from scratch myself, I hadn’t done that without Dennis before”.
I asked him if playing in a duo was something he would want to go back to.
“I’m still attracted to the idea of duets, but I have decidedly said to myself that I’m not going to attempt to replicate what I’d had with Dennis. That was a chapter in itself. The unique thing about Dennis and my duets was that it preceded all of these collaborations and it continued as part of these collaborations and sometimes separately from some of them. The ground zero in music making and concerts was still Dennis and myself for me. So that’s a closed chapter. But I still like to play with people in a duet, one to one basis, but not on an ongoing basis. I’m happy to sit and play for an evening with Brian, or with Kate, with Steve Cooney, or with David Power, so I have a number duet partners like that”.
Peggy’s Dream has a lovely mix of tunes, some well-known in trad music circles, others less so. I asked Martin about how he chose the tunes for the album and if familiarity was a factor.
“The most important thing for me is the quality of the melody itself. So, I don’t distinguish between obscure and popular in that. Before I would do anything with the band with a tune, I would want to know: does this stand up on its own? If I sit down here with a fiddle and play that tune is it really going to do something for me? If it is not producing something right there for me, without any additions, then I can’t be expecting other people to do something to it to make it good, to make it attractive. People often slip on that; maybe the melody is not as good as you think it is, no matter how good the arrangement is. Take a tune like The Boyne Water [the opening track from the album which Martin briefly lilts]; that line is beautiful and good in itself, so you’re only adding to it after that; you’re not searching for a reason to make it good.
“Despite all the variety of musicians and backgrounds on the album, it still resolves around the basic beauty of these old melodies and how beautiful I think they are. It’s really getting to dress them up and interact with them in different kinds of ways, but the beauty of the music was always there, is always there. I’m just going to the same touchstone over and over. Obviously, we do different things, we improvise, and we take liberties, but the core never really changes. The important thing when you’re experimenting, developing, improvising, doing whatever you want to do with the music is to know what’s indispensable in the music.
“I might be doing that with the music, and somebody else might be doing that with Sliabh Luachra music. We’re all going in different directions, so no single one of us has the baton entirely to themselves. So, you couldn’t say that I was taking music in a particular direction; I’m just one little thread in the whole thing. The people who go to the session once or twice a week are ultimately the jury; they’ll decide if this is any good in the future. The other thing that will decide if it’s any part of the future is whether people come to and begin to like the music through this”.
Peggy’s Dream is out now on 251 Records; you can order it here.