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Hmm...
A person can never be past making good music. However, I must admit to being a bit old for this lark……releasing a first solo album of my own songs. Being at the long end of my fifties I do wonder if this is appropriate behaviour for a person of my age. However, I’ve written the songs. They’re not bad and……who else is going to perform them?
I’d also say I feel quite young for an ‘auld fella’. I kind of lost twenty years of my life and maybe it’s a case of trying to make up for this lost time. Since reclaiming myself and especially since returning to teaching ten years ago other concerns have taken me over.
I’m not sure if the compulsion to produce music is driven by the music itself or these ‘other concerns’. To be honest, I love playing but it is not what I’d call ‘that’ important to me. If this album sells, great. If not, so what. If a few gigs come in it will be pleasure, I hope, to take on this challenge. However, we’ll see.
The worry that has moved me, as an ordinary citizen and as a teacher, is that I observe a ‘helplessness’ in people. A feeling, a belief even, that they can’t do anything to change or affect the world around them nor any of the forces that fashion the essence of their lives.
This reality is disastrous for the individual and for society at every level…..furthermore there is a truth, of which I have become increasingly aware over the last few years, that this psychological condition is deliberately manufactured in us by a private and public sector culture that originates in corporate-funded think-tanks and is carefully delivered to our workplaces through thousands of governmental and non-governmental management systems.
We are being socially engineered and lied to on what, for myself a few years ago, would have been an unimaginable scale.
It is possible that we will end up being socially engineered literally to death.
I will try and address some of these issues, as I see them , on my ‘blog’ over the coming months. Music is great therapy but this stuff matters.
I do hope you like the songs by the way.
A couple of really pleasing reviews (see 'Music' pages) have so far come in from Tim Carroll of www.Folkwords.com and from the 'Daddy' of British folk music, Ralph McTell, whom I must admit to having known for quite a few years. Since we both played in the same rather comical pub football team, in fact. It was never about the football, but that didn't stop it being a matter of life and death at the time. I suppose it was unlikely that a pal like Ralph would give me a very tough review, but he's not the kind of person to say something he doesn't mean either.
Thanks very much guys.
Music
I’ve been playing in mostly Irish/British folk bands since my early twenties. ‘The White Hart’ on Fulham Broadway was, along with ‘The Favourite’ just off the Holloway Road, the Irish music ‘Mecca’ of the seventies in London. Every Irish band and traditional maestro passed through (I nearly said ‘passed out’….and some did) the long Saloon bar where the music swang and throbbed nearly every night of the week. I started playing there in about 1972 and in ’74 a few of us formed ‘Le Cheile’ (gaelic for ‘together’, by the way) and we released a couple of albums that enjoyed some success in the small world (as it was then) of pure Irish traditional music. That ‘scene’ waned, as it was bound to. I played clubs with my sister Maggie and brother Paul for a while then we joined in a band with Mick Sands (the familiar voice of the‘You will Have A Fishy’ TV ad....)and his sister Susan. In the early 80’s I started playing with my good friend, the uilleann piper/singer Paul Brennan, in his band, ‘Carrig’ (meaning ‘rock’). We still do the odd wedding, function, party or National Theatre foyer gig to this day. Other members include ex All-Ireland champions Brendan McGlinchey (fiddle) and Michael O’Connell (accordion) and Nigel Smith (bass) of Pentangle.
Sadly Raymond Roland, Le Cheile’s accordion player from Loughrea, Galway, died in 1984 and P.J. Crotty (flute, Moyasta, Co. Clare) passed away in 2005, both from cancer. Limerick University re-released a compilation CD of our early albums in 2006 and, lo and behold, we reformed the band with two new members, Andy Martyn on accordion and Paul Gallagher on flute. We are currently completing a brand new album to be released later this summer (hopefully) and launched at the Camden Irish Festival on October 30th. John Roe (piano) and myself used to be the ‘youngsters’ in this band. A couple of the guys are 70+. This, I suppose (it must be admitted), has to be our unique selling point. Come along and watch in case one of the band pegs out on stage. Danny Meehan, Liam Farrell and the rest of us are still compos mentis, thank God, and the real "old boys'" music remains, like themselves, wild and untamed. We will all frustrate the grim reaper a while yet.
PALESTINE GROVE
I began recording ‘Palestine Grove’ in Gerry Diver’s studio, ‘The Tunehouse’, in 2008, working mostly at weekends. Gerry is a remarkably talented fellow. He plays just about every instrument, excluding brass, as far as I can make out. And brilliantly. He produced his wife Lisa Knapp’s first album (‘Wild and Undaunted’), which won ‘Folk Album Of The Year 2007’ at the MOJO awards. Gerry has played on nearly every track on the album and his brilliance has contributed significantly to whatever positive qualities this album might be deemed to possess. Martin O’Leary played bass on a few tracks and, because my sister Maggie lives far away in Keighley in Yorkshire and couldn’t make it to the studio at the required time I asked daughter Lucy to come along and try a few harmony lines on four of the songs. She did the lot in no time and without any fuss at all. Thanks darling.
I hope you enjoy the album.
Actually, I hope you buy it.
Full length renditions of a few tracks of the CD can also be heard on www.myspace.com/kevboylemusic
Good luck and God bless, Kev Boyle (21.07.09).
