This is an excerpt from the print edition of Dirty Linen Magazine #100 (June/July 2002). the magazine is available on newsstands and by subscription.

Cathie Ryan
Motown Meets Tipperary
by Kerry Dexter

"There's a lot of mystery in the Irish landscape," said Irish-American singer and songwriter Cathie Ryan. "I think it's unfathomable. It's like the music — it's endless. You can plumb it forever and still find something that just lights you up."

Ryan has been adding her own share of light to Celtic music recently, being named Irish traditional vocalist of the decade by the Irish American News of Chicago and hailed as one of the leading voices in Celtic music by the Los Angeles Times. Ryan is both Irish and American, born in Detroit to parents from Kerry and Tipperary, and raised with Irish traditional styles as much as with Motown, Merle Haggard, and Van Morrison. In her own recordings, she skillfully mixes traditional Irish jigs and reels with tunes by contemporary writers such as Luka Bloom and Dougie MacLean and songs she composes herself, with lyrics in both English and Irish.

"I grew up in Detroit," Ryan said, "and my parents brought their music with them from Ireland. My dad was a singer, always was singing. He was very serious about songs; he talked about songs a lot, talked about music a lot." When he played music on their home stereo, Ryan explained, "He'd keep picking up the needle and say, 'Listen to how Joe Blake does this run,' or 'Listen to how Dizzy Gillespie plays this passage of the song compared to this person.' So he really took us past the superficial joy of listening, to analyzing the music, seeing it as an organic entity in and of itself."

Ryan's mother took her turn at the family stereo, too. "My mother loved music, lots of music. It was always, always playing. You know in the old days of vinyl, there used to be this great weight of records, and every record would plop down? It was Irish traditional music, and then more mainstream stuff like the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem, and then Johnny Cash, and Merle Haggard, and Creedence Clearwater Revival — it was great!" Ryan recalled enthusiastically.

There was more than just recorded music for the young Ryan to enjoy. "They took us to the Gaelic League and the Irish American Club always. That was our social world, and that's where they had Gaelic lessons, and step- dancing lessons, and music, loads and loads of music," said Ryan, who soon began performing there herself. "That's how I started in music; that's how I fell in love with it — that and going to Ireland for the summers. My grandmother Catherine Ryan was a singer, and a fiddle player, as well. She loved to sing and play; she loved having people come into the house and pushing back the furniture, and they'd have a dance or a ceili, and everybody would have to sing.

"My mother's father was a storyteller," she continued, "and he was the one, I think, who gave me my love of the narrative. He told stories of the history of Ireland, the mythology, and the characters, what this one did and what that one did. And he'd terrorize us as kids with stories of banshees and fairies — and I mean really scary — and they really happened to him. For him there was a very, very thin line between this world and the other world, and he had one foot in each of them."

Her musical listening tastes were not exclusively traditional Irish, however. "I've been listening to Van Morrison since I was a kid in Detroit with my transistor radio," she said, and also mentioned Loretta Lynn as a major musical hero. Patsy Cline is another. "When I go to karaoke, I do Patsy Cline!" she said, breaking into laughter. "I think every woman I know does Patsy Cline. Her songs were just the best." Turning serious again, Ryan also mentioned Emmylou Harris. "I'm a huge Emmylou Harris fan. I have every recording I think she's ever made. She has integrity, she has a beautiful voice, she has impeccable taste in her song choices, she works with wonderful musicians. She's an extraordinary musician, one to be emulated."

Joe Heany, a legendary singer of the sean nos style of unaccompanied narrative song, was also a major influence on the young musician, both personally and professionally. Relocating to New York, she began to learn from Heany, who was then in his 70s. He was "a gem, a real gem. I'm very grateful to him. I'm not sure if I would still be singing, if it wasn't for him," Ryan explained, "because I was singing at a time before traditional music became so popular. I was singing with my ex-husband [Dermot Henry], and I wanted to sing traditional sean nos, and the audiences really wanted to hear much more commercial material. I didn't know it, and I didn't want to sing it, so I found it very hard to have an audience, and then, when I went to Ireland to compete in the All-Ireland, I was told from the stage by a judge that no American could win an All-Ireland, because they weren't native, and really you had to live in Ireland to be an authentic singer."

When Ryan told Heany of the comment, "He just went off on the whole adjudicating system," she said, and encouraged her by saying, " 'Don't you ever stop singing, never mind them, you sing what's in you, you're a beautiful singer, and don't let anybody stop you.' Hearing that from him meant the world to me, it just meant the world to me," Ryan recalled.