McGoldrick, McCusker & Doyle

The ever-quotable Frank Zappa, deriding the notion of music journalism, said that writing about music was ‘like dancing about architecture’. There’s something to be said for that, however the Folk Club review pages can’t just say ‘you had to be there’ and leave it at that, readers expect that the scratchy scribblings will convey something of the evening. So, in defiance of Frank, I’ll try my best.

This was gig 37 of a 48-date tour for McGoldrick McCusker & Doyle and we’re told ‘we’ve all run out of conversation between us so the only conversation we have is through music’. Lucky us!

McCusker starts a drone on the Indian Harmonium. A churchy mysterious resonance, soon to be joined by McGoldrick’s uilleann pipes, a scent, almost a flavour in the air, exploring the dark corners of the Community Hall. A movement to fiddle and guitar carries us into a jiggy thing. The piece finishes; as the last note dies the hall erupts. This is going to be a good one!

On tune two, fiddle flute and guitar dance, the musicians watch each other, grin, nod, an express train of crystal notes, perfectly shaped thrown around like a frisbee, that musical conversation we mentioned earlier… lucid, cheeky, articulate, fun, powerful.

My friend Ian M notes John Doyle’s 12 string guitar, we nod with enthusiasm, but something doesn’t seem right, it’s only got 10 tuning pegs! Googling I find out that it’s a 10-String Guizouki, a genetically modified cross between a guitar and a bouzouki specially commissioned by John. A unique instrument that we’re privileged to hear!

Ewan MacColl’s ‘The Tunnel Tigers’ hits the spot, a song recalling the travails of the Irish labourers who worked on the original Dartford Tunnel under the River Thames... ‘drive a tunnel through the London Clay’. Great singing and powerful rhythm guitar from Doyle.

Learned from Paddy Tunny we had the moving ballad ‘Lovely Willy’, Willy meeting his demise at the sword of his lover’s father - at the time a recognized way to dispatch an unpopular suitor. A tale of tragedy and loss and we then find that the grieving young lover’s intention to go off ‘to some far country’ is none other that a metaphor for suicide.

‘The Hare’s Lament’, a hunt song depicting the hare’s side of the hunt is amusingly introduced… ‘perhaps it should be the lament for the hair’… none of M, M & D have much head hair. Gentle and self-deprecating.

So, how can I sum up this trio. Well… a little abstractly … if you could imagine yourself being held in some sort of steampunk folk engine, mahogany, teak, strings, gut and steel, wheezing harmonium bellows, f-holes, pipes and whistles, all held together by some unknown quantum field, cylinders firing, synchronised whirling, jigging and skirling away, that might get you started. I had scribbled down that the music felt more masculine than, perhaps, last weeks Fara experience; the jury’s out on that one.

Thunderous foot stamping and clapping to secure an encore, we were truly rocked by the M, M & D machine!

But, let’s have a mention for the noble half time floorspots. Hamish (of Forgaitherin fame) gave us Andy M Stewart’s hilarious ‘The Errant Apprentice’. How he remembers all the words is a mystery! Brian, in fine voice dusted off Tom Waits’ ‘Tom Traubert’s Blues’ – best I’ve heard Brian in a long time. Finally, a newbie to the club, Martin Berwick, who travelled from Malmo in Sweden for the evening, bedecked in a glorious bunnet served up Dick Gaughan’s ‘Song for Ireland’ and Archie Fisher’s ‘The Final Trawl’.

What a night!

Words by Callum McLeod, Photos by Peter Salkeld