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| Bloomington-Normal spreads out on the old Illinois prairie, surrounded by corn and soybeans for as far as you can see. It's not the kind of place one expects to find great Irish music. Bloomsday confounds that expectation. Sitting on the grass at the Springfield fairgrounds, each band member shared his thoughts on Bloomsday and why Irish heritage isn't a requirement to playing compelling Irish music. |
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| Meet Bloomsday: from top, Kevin Loseke, Alton "Butch" Angus, Thom Larson, and Dan Liechty. Chris Callahan was unavailable during the time of the interview. | |||
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| Band Spotlight: Bloomsday Kevin Loseke. We got together in the fall of 2001. Played our first gig on February 17th at the Lucca Grill on "St. John's Day" — which is for John the manager. It's his birthday. And then a month after that, we played the St. Patrick's season, which, for an Irish band, is a week long. So we jumped right in when we got started. I play flute, whistle, mandolin and accordion as well as helping out with vocals whenever there just needs to be more noise. So that's what I do with the group. I'd been wanting to get a group together. I played with a group in college and I'd been wanting to play Irish music . Ran into these guys and it all just came together. Once we decided we wanted to be in a band and commit to it — and that's usually the hardest part about getting a band together: is that people are willing to stick with it. So once that all happened, we just fell into a practice regime and gigs and just went. I have Irish heritage on my mother's side. My mother's Irish and my father's German, so that's where the Loseke comes from. But my heritage really didn't play a big part in the music. I was more just drawn to the music itself. I can't say it was any distant calling to go back home or whatever. I think the music and the culture has a draw of its own regardless — so nothing overt, no, but now that I'm into it, I do have more of an interest in the heritage. Where I'm from and interest in going back there and looking for family and that kind of stuff. Alton "Butch" Angus. I live in Bloomington but grew up in the Peoria area. That's my hometown. I do a lot of the lead vocals and I play the bodhran. That's my contribution to the noise-making — and it literally is noise-making. I think one thing that's interesting is the fact that we've stayed together for as long as we have. We keep going. And we've watched some of the other local groups change but we've been real constant — five since we started. And I think that makes a difference in our creativity We're in the process of arranging new things. We need to evolve and add to our repertoire. And that makes it fun. I enjoy the collaboration that we have together. I might have a song I want to do and then Kevin has a tune and then Dan will add something. Everybody contributes and does there own thing. Thom, of course, is writing all the original stuff which is, again, another different thing that I think makes the whole process enjoyable for us. So it's fun. I've always been drawn to the music. And then a few years ago I was watching a bodhran player and saying, "You know, I think I might be able to do that." So I asked for one for Christmas and my wife went to Thom's shop and bought it for a Christmas present. So that's where that came from! I started hanging out at the Lucca Grill and meeting these guys. So I've always been interested in music and I've always enjoyed it. Thom Larson. I'm from Bloomington like everybody else. I play guitar, and whistle, and do vocals also. I just discovered Irish music about a year before I got together with these guys. Years ago, I'd played in hard rock and heavy metal bands. I just fell in love with Irish music right after I started hearing it and realizing what it was. I started a place called the WhistleShop. I sell Celtic musical instruments, flutes, harps and whistles and things like that. And I run a slow session there twice a month for new players. I also have a big website — The WhistleShop.com. I haven't been playing anything else since. [On Irish heritage] Not at all. I'm Swedish and Norwegian. My mom's Swedish. My dad's Norwegian. So I don't know where it came from. It just happened. Dan Liechty. I play the guitar, and the mandola and sometimes a little tenor banjo. I'm Swiss-German all the way back. I've been playing folk music since I was little and spent lots of years playing bluegrass. There's a connection between blugrass and Irish, but I always listened to Irish even when I was playing bluegrass. I really like all kinds of folk music, though bluegrass, Irish and Klezmer are the ones I like the best. Bluegrass is a lot more stylized than Irish but it's got a lot of the same instrumentation. Particularly with the fiddle and the mandolin. And the tunes, the fiddle tunes or fiddle repertoire — there is a lot of crossover between them. A lot of people ask, "Well, if you don't have Irish heritage, then what's your connection to this music?" And I think all of us are connected. All of us, if we cultivate it, have some connection to a kind of a folk music. I think of folk music as a river and then there's all sorts of tributaries. And you can paddle down each and every tributary that has its own special feel but it's all part of one source. You know, folk music talks about death and birth and love and getting drunk and working hard and losing your job and the things that life is made of no matter what culture you are of. And that's the way I really connect to this stuff. May 25, 2006 |
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