GREAT tunes and sets of tunes keep and bear rediscovery in a new setting, and Michael McGoldrick and Tim Edey do just that with great aplomb on their first album together.
Mrs Judge, a four hundred year old O’Carolan tune, typifies such renewal, and highlights shared influences and connections.
They take the tune from The Chieftains 9 Boil the Breakfast Early (1979) album, which just happened to be McGoldrick’s flute hero Matt Molloy’s first album with the band, after he replaced Michael Tubridy, and much later Edey played guitar with The Chieftains for over a decade.
Simpler than The Chieftains multipart arrangement, the duo’s flute and guitar version is exquisite, bringing out the full beauty of the melody.
At their gig at this year’s Celtic Connections festival in Glasgow, McGoldrick recalled first encountering Edey as a 12-year-old prodigy playing his accordion sitting under a tree outside a pub McGoldrick had been in.
Apart from over the years sharing the odd gig together with Sharon Shannon or McGoldrick’s Big Band, they only got around to playing as a duo to do a tour of Switzerland last year and decided to record together after audiences asked if they had made an album.
The pair explicitly acknowledge their respective main influences on the CD sleeve – thanking Molloy (McGoldrick) and guitar player Steve Cooney (Edey) “for huge inspiration over the years” - and you can hear those inspirations immediately on Jamland’s beautifully redolent opening track, Ma Theid Mise Tuileagh, a tune written by Donald Shaw, and the reel St Kilda’s Wedding.
Edey’s accordion combines impeccably with McGoldrick’s flute in a set of the slow air Port Na bPúcai and the slip jig Cucanandy. McGoldrick told me that the recording process was very relaxed, “just playing, having cups of tea, talking, having a laugh and picking tunes spontaneously”, including two tunes recently composed by McGoldrick for the Irish Concertina Orchestra, on which Bonfire Radicals Katie Steven’s adds lovely clarinet, and tunes by Tony Sullivan and by Tommy Peoples.
The flute and guitar paring works like a dream on tunes like Cuz Teahan’s, Give Me Your Hand and a magnificent set joining Calum’s Road, another Donald Shaw composition, with The Full Set, two jigs composed by McGoldrick.
Accordion takes centre stage on a very effective set comprised of Rocking The Boat composed by Mairtin O’Connor with Wing Commander Donald Mackenzie composed by Phil Cunningham.
Some sets feature McGoldrick on whistle or low whistle and on a few he adds a dash of uilleann pipes, Edey adding high guitar on others.
“I was at first self-conscious, not really sure if it was a kind of cheating” McGoldrick said “to include tunes and sets that I’d previously recorded”, variously with Capercaille or Sharon Shannon, but he decided to include them after people fed back that “they loved how they worked in a different setting.” One set - Larkin's Beehive / Andy McGann's / The Amazing Adventures Of Dr. Moriarty - included at Edey’s request, dates back almost 30 years to McGoldrick’s first album Morning Rory.
Jamland has a natural, instinctive feel throughout, just two master musicians, doing what they do best and, whilst they’d happily play entirely for own enjoyment, we fortunately also get to hear to the result of their richly rewarding endeavours.
Available from: www.michaelmcgoldrick1.bandcamp.com/album/jamland
See More: Dave McNally, Michael McGoldrick, Tim Edey
