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Tell you a little bit about myself. I grew up in England, so I did. My parents immigrated to England from Ireland I suppose back in the '60s because there was no work in Ireland. I was brought up in a town called Luton which is about an hour north of London, so it is. And grew up in a massive Irish community there.
So there was lots of Irish things — like all the people that had immigrated there was a big community. I come from a family of three. I have two older sisters and they both did the whole Irish dance thing, they did. And that progressed onto music classes and then I suppose that's how I got into music...was through my older sisters. They both played. I started on the bodhran when I was about 12 and it wasn't actually a bodhran. It was an old shoe box, so it was, and I was shown how to hold the stick and started banging away like that.
And then I moved on and got a proper bodhran and then I got the hang of that fairly fast and moved onto the button accordion then and me sister taught me that. So I suppose even my musical influences and that when I was in England — you know if people grow up in different areas in Ireland they'd be kind of used to that kind of style of music. So with growing up in England there'd be a lot of traveling musicians coming over from Ireland passing through [and] you tend to get lots of variety in that. So there's no one kind of specific style that I tried to go along with and that. So I'm a bit like a musical magpie I suppose. I draw bits and pieces out of different places and that.
I was very lucky in England growing up. I'd done lots of things even by the age of 16. I'd performed on telly, playing support gigs to the large Irish artists coming over. I performed twice at EuroWoodstock in Budapest alongside the likes of Jethro Tull, people like that. Then I suppose I hit 18, so I did, and I decided that I preferred Ireland because I was always back and forth playing anyway. So at the age of 18 I loaded up the car, and headed off to the Fleadh Cheoil which is a big Irish music competition in Ireland. I loaded up the car, got the ferry across from England to Ireland, came for the festival and I didn't go back. And that was it. That was how I ended up in Ireland.
Settling in Ireland —
[I] Settled in. I used to live in a place called Rathcairn, which is a little Gaeltacht area in County Meath. It's like a village where everyone speaks Irish. There's a few kind of Gaeltachts around Ireland so there are, and everyone in them does speak Irish. I lived there for about 10 years. So I can understand an awful lot of Irish that's spoken but I wouldn't be great at replying to people. But when I was in Rathcairn I met a lovely bunch of lads and that — young lads like myself, kind of in the same situation where their parents moved to the likes of Birmingham and they moved back when they were small. But they're all fluent Irish speakers. Got into playing music...and before I knew it, there was work coming in left, right and center between playing and teaching.
Traveling and playing —
How I ended up then in Branson, Missouri, was I got the phone call from Dearbhail and Robin saying, "Would you like to take part in the show?" So I said, "Yeah, sure, why not. Put me down for two." So that's how I ended up in Branson, Missouri. I just enjoy playing the music.
Other things I've done — I do lots of variety, which I'm lucky with. Not just doing traditional music and that. I've messed around with different projects with classical music, a bit of jazz, I do some, kind of like American Civil War music along with a guy called Derek Warfield and then he has a large band in Ireland called the Wolfetones that were huge in Ireland, England and even America. And that's more kind of ballads, things like that. I do a lot of recording work and stuff like that for him and I do recording work for different singers/songwriters. So, good bit of variety all.
[On coming to the States]. I'd been to the States before [WorldFest 2005 and Silver Dollar City]. I'll tell you where I spend a good bit of time is over in Cape Breton in Canada. After I lived in Rathcairn in Meath, I moved to Donegal and I'm up in Rancrammon now.My girlfriend and myself have a great interest in the Cape Breton music. I remember back years ago, I heard tapes of an old guy named Jerry Holland, fiddle player, and what really drew me to that music was the piano backing that they have. They've got an absolutely fabulous style. It's kind of all offbeat and things like that.
So I went to Canada. I was there a couple of years ago, went to Nova Scotia and ended up teaching at an Irish week that was there. Then I was invited back last October for the Celtic Colors International Festival. That was good fun. And then I was back there for St. Patrick's Week this year for their 40th year anniversary of their Irish Benevolent Society. When I was back at Celtic Colors, I left there and I headed off down to Philadelphia and I spent a week there, meeting friends and played a bit of music down there too.
And when I left Silver Dollar City last year, I headed off down towards the Mississippi, and I was on the Delta Queen paddleboat. I traveled the Ohio, the Tennessee and the Mississippi Rivers. I spent 10 days, I think, on that, just playing — that was kind of American Civil War music, so it was. It was good fun.
And I've spent a good bit of time traveling around Germany and that as well. I've done about four or five tours of Germany so my German is coming along fairly well.
Musical influences —
I suppose bodhran-wise, a big influence on me was a guy called Mossie Griffin. He was one of the first who started changing the tone and the pitch on the back of the bodhran. As well, he was one of the first to start using more of the one side of the stick so he was a great influence on me.
I suppose one of the first people who started it as well would be the likes of Ringo McDonough with the likes of Mossie Griffin and that they brought it on. And then other guys, like John Jar Kelly and that, we just started experimenting with the sticks and listening to different drum beats and looking at drum scores and practicing what you could actually achieve just by listening to different things.
Accordion-wise, growing up in England, I suppose my biggest influences would have been the likes of Dermot Byrne, who is with the group Altan; this really lovely, flowing box player, you know, smooth, and I suppose Sharon Channon. I enjoyed listening to her stuff and Bobby Gardner. He was another great accordion player. There's another couple of local fellas from London, like the likes of Andy Martin, really nice box player. And a guy called Gary Connalley; they were all kind of smooth.
The older style of box players, [the playing] was more jerky, so it was. And then with the basses just banging out the rhythm even if it wasn't kind of the right chord — just using it as a kind of rhythm. So I kind of steered more toward the kind of smooth style. And the I used to listen to — the setup of my accordion would be like a B-C system, like the inside row is in C, the outside row is B, so it is, but I listen to guys who play different kind of styles. Like a C-sharp-D is completely different fingering to what I play, so listening to the way that they could ornament tunes and then trying to be able to do those ornaments on a B-C accordion, so it sounds a little bit different but it's kind of quirky, too.
And I used to listen to a lot of old records, you know, Even vinyl. There was one that, particularly, I was amazed with when I heard it. And that was a guy named John Jay Kimmel. I think he used to be in the States. He was called the Flying Dutchman and he used to play back in the early 1900s. He used to play the music in the theatres for the shows and that. But it was amazing and so advanced, the fingering and stuff, that he was using and even now you have box players trying to imitate what he was doing.
Coisir —
I play in a band back in Ireland, called Coisir. With my sister and a singer/songwriter, Gerry Tully. With that band that came together — what Coisir means, it's an Irish word, and it's the Gaelic word for party. And that's how we all got together in Rathcairn.
So we used to spend a lot of time in the club [at Rathcairn] playing music and they'd all be singing the sean nos songs. What sean nos means, translated from Irish, means old-style. So they'd be singing the old style of songs, where they'd link hands and things like that.
And we used to finish up in the club and go back and have a big party and all the instruments would be out, things like that. So that's how the group was put together. We just all got together. We used to do a couple of local gigs and then before you knew it, we had a large following. Then we were asked to do the likes of the German spring tour, which is a big kind of tour that you do. They put three bands on the one tour bus and send them around Germany. And then other work started coming in for the band as well. Like a couple of days before St. Patrick's Day this year, we were asked to perform at the European Parliament Center in Brussels. So the band went and done it. Unfortunately, I was already tied into going to Cape Breton in Canada so I had to get someone else to fill in for me in our band!
We recorded an album, On The Right Track, and that's going very well, so it is. There's a good mixture of slow stuff through to fast crazy stuff, a few different instruments, a few guests on it. It was produced by a guy called Patrick McManus, who used to be in a group called Mama's Boys. They were a huge rock band in America. They were signed with Sony and had a top 10 selling album. It was good fun working with him. Learning different things and that.
May 14, 2006
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| "Jim's...a very mellifluous accordionist, as listeners can hear on [On The Right Track]..." says Geoff Wallis of the Irish Music Review. |
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