Lúnasa
Diddly-Diddly with a groove!
By Maureen Brennan

Long before St. Patrick's Day evolved, the Celts celebrated four major festival holidays. Lúnasa was the harvest celebration, and its name paid homage to the god Lugh, patron of the arts. It's quite fitting then that a group that has harvested its members from some of the premier traditional music groups and families in Ireland should call itself Lúnasa.

Rhythm section guitarist Donogh Hennessey and double bassist Trevor Hutchinson are both Sharon Shannon Band alumni; Hutchinson's pedigree also includes membership in the Water boys. Flautist Kevin Crawford grew up playing traditional music in the Irish immigrant community of Birmingham, England. For a number of years now, he's lived in Ennis, Co. Clare, and played with Moving Cloud. Seán Smyth's family has a penchant for both medicine and music. He and sisters Breda and Cora are all physicians who also happen to be magnificent fiddle and whistle players.

Since its inception, Lúnasa has used a number of uilleann pipers, including John McSherry and Michael McGoldrick (who also did double duty on flute on the band's first album). On their recent U.S. tours, Cillian Vallely has been piping, and he's expected to hold onto that slot at least for some time. Vallely comes from a Northern musical family, which includes brother Niall (concertina player for Nomos) and father J.B., himself a renowned Armagh piper.

What sets Lúnasa apart from other Irish bands? It's the quality of their music that pays the utmost respect to the tradition, but carries it just a hair's breadth beyond the tradition. For Lúnasa, it's not a matter of throwing in a few jazz or rock chords to spice up their music. They're harvesting the melodies themselves for their hidden energy and driving rhythms. "There are lots of great melodies in Irish music," Hennessy explained, "but often people don't hear the rhythms underneath. It takes a while to train the ear to discern them because there are so many notes. What I've tried to do is relate that sort of swing or energy out of the music, and instead of playing the tune in a traditional manner, getting into the groove and letting the tune work itself. We pick tunes so that we can have an arrangement of a piece that would have its own life or energy. The melody does the grooving."

The group's approach requires the solid grounding in the tradition that Smyth, Crawford and Vallely all represent. "It's important for us, playing the melody line in the band, for there to be a few sparks flying," said flautist Crawford. "Donogh actually would be from the traditional mode, too. He plays traditional music on the whistle, as well, so he knows all the tunes, and he knows what he'd like to do with the tunes. He has a good ear for arrangements and stuff like that.

"Trevor would be coming from the rock end of the idiom," Crawford continued, "and between himself and Donogh, they can create this very complementary accompaniment – without being wishy-washy, it has this great punch. I feel, anyway, that it doesn't take away at all from the music, and it gives an extra dimension, which hasn't really been explored. It's kind of just playing around with the tunes that are already there, but giving them a breath of fresh air or a different texture, trying to work them up, so that they sound slightly new."

As much as Lúnasa enjoys creating something new with their music, they are also con cerned that they not offend the traditional players and listeners. Ironically, it was not for their tours at home that they worried, so much as for their travels in Am erica. Crawford elaborated: "We were cautious, I suppose, of how we would be received in the United States. I've been com ing out for many years with the traditional band Moving Cloud, and they go down really, really well. I felt that the American audiences are quite well educated in terms of traditional music. They know a lot, and they expect a lot. We were a small bit wary that maybe the American audiences wouldn't like our approach to the music, but right from day one of our first tour we've been really surprised by the reception. Everybody has been really positive, and good to us. We've gone with an American label [Green Linnet], and we see ourselves doing a lot of work out here. We're looking forward to coming out two or three times each year, and de veloping what we have."

For Crawford, who will continue to work with both bands, it was equally important that Moving Cloud enjoy the music that he plays with Lúnasa. He underwent the trial by fire last September when he performed with both groups at the Washington, D.C., Irish Festival. At the festival, he was able to give the members of Moving Cloud each a copy of the newly pressed Lúnasa album, Otherworld. When he checked in with accordion player Paul Brock a couple of weeks down the road, he discovered that Brock "was raving about it. I was dreading his input because he's told me on some other stuff I've done, 'You know, I don't think that really suited you.' At the time, it upset me a little bit that he felt that way, but one of the things I really admire about Paul is that he's honest, and therefore you know that when he says something, he means it. So, when he had nothing but positive things to say about Lúnasa's album, I took that as a little star. I know that he has listened to it intently, too, because he mentioned little touches here and there that he'd picked out. I knew he wasn't spoofing."

Part of the energy of Lúnasa's live performance is their aura of spontaneity. While they're creating this bracing, original sounding music, they appear fresh themselves. Smyth said, "We don't rehearse at home, we rehearse when we're on stage."

"That's where we do get most of our inspiration, on the road, as we're traveling." Crawford added. "That happened Saturday at the Sebastopol [California] Festival. This tune came out of a seisun we were in the week before in a quiet bar in New York. It was great to be in a seisun, and not gigging. Often tunes just come out that way, without you consciously thinking of them or looking for them. So we played this little reel, and we thought, 'That's nice now,' but we thought nothing more about it. Then Friday, we were to do a gig in Chico [California], but it was cancelled, so we had a bit of time, and we thought, 'We'll do something with this reel.' We started to play and come up with an arrangement, and we played it on stage on Saturday. It was the first time we'd done it, and when we finished the gig, people came up to us and were asking which album that particular tune was from. It hasn't been recorded yet, so we were just delighted that they noticed it. That gives us the encouragement; we're going to work on that set again tomorrow to try to bring it up to another stage."

Lúnasa began when Seán Smyth, Trevor Hutchinson, and Donogh Hennessy joined forces for a brief tour of Scandinavia in 1996. The trio hit it off so well that they decided to keep working together when they got back to Ireland. They asked John McSherry and Michael McGoldrick to join them. Before long they decided to make a recording together. "Trevor had his own studio," Smyth said, "but we decided to take the studio on the road instead to capture the live feel." Eight of the 11 tracks on Lúnasa were recorded live, and every attempt was made to give the remaining three selections that same live feel.

When it came time for the band to tour out side of Ireland, McSherry and McGoldrick of ten weren't available due to their respective commitments with Dónal Lunny's Coolfin and Capercaillie. Kevin Crawford was brought on board for the band's first Australian tour, and he's never jumped ship. Lúnasa's second release, Otherworld, includes Crawford, as well as McSherry and McGoldrick. Clearly, the lads enjoy playing together. As Hutchinson said: "[In the Irish music scene] everyone tends to know everyone else, and everybody has worked together, so it's really a question of playing with who you really want to play with."