Not your traditional trad

Artisan Row’s “Wild Winds” is CD of contemporary music with a cosmopolitan flair.

By Daniel Neely

There are many bands out there today that stake their reputation on taking traditional music and doing something with it to give it broader, modern appeal. Some bands play fast and loose with things while others follow a fairly conservative path. (I’ve written about both sorts of bands in this column.) Artisan Row, which recently released its debut album “Wild Winds,” stands somewhere in the middle. Although its music is suffused with the familiar elements of Irish tradition, the players temper their overall sound with a range of influences and ideas to produce a fascinating and eminently listenable mix that will appeal to Irish music fans that follow contemporary style.

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Artisan Row is comprised of Conor Doherty (guitars, vocals), Elma McElligott (sax, flute, low whistle, backing vocals), Pete Quinn (piano, keyboard, backing vocals) and Karen Ryan (banjo, mandola, fiddle, low whistle), a crew of seasoned, respected veterans, all of whom have a connection to the London Lasses (www.londonlasses.net), an excellent group based, as you might guess, in London.

The group can boast of having two current Lasses in the lineup in Ryan and McElligott. However, Quinn was a longtime member as well – 15 years! – and recorded four albums with them. But the connections here run deeper. McElligott and Doherty both studied at University College Cork in the mid-1990s under Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin, while Doherty and Quinn, who met as students at Goldsmiths, University of London, in the late 1990s and maintained a close musical relationship ever since and both appeared on Ryan’s 2012 solo album “The Coast Road.” To say that it’s a tight-knit group would be something of an understatement, but the bonds here are what allow the group to do what it does.

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There are a few basically “straight-ahead” traditional tracks on this album, including the opener “Doras de Rìan / …” and “March to Kinsale.” Variety is added in gradual shifts, with electric guitar on “Red-Haired Lass / …” and a bit of balkan rhythmic asymmetricality on “Chetvorno Horo.” These are lovely wrinkles that give the album its unique character.

But indeed, there are a few things that give this album its unique tone. In some ways, Doherty’s electric guitar is reminiscent John Brennan’s on “The Pound Ridge Sessions” (the album he recently made with Kevin Burke), as it displays an almost jazz-fusion sensibility. This might be most apparent on “Tynagh / …,” which is a great track consisting of a jig and three slip jigs, the last of which McElligott and Ryan composed. But as Doherty has a more complete background in trad music, the harmonic sensibility at work articulates with the rest of the group in a different, more holistic way.

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And then there’s McElligott’s sax, which adds more variety still. On “Paul Rodden’s / …,” its role is reminiscent of Séamus O’Donnell's in the band At The Racket. But her approach isn’t static. For example, the darker tone she and Quinn set in “Dawn Chorus / …” brings to mind the one John Coltrane and McCoy Tyner’s at the beginning of their famous track “Alabama.” The illusion is dashed once the banjo steps in, but the direction the track takes from there is most welcome and lovely.

One of the album’s nicest instrumental tracks is “Helvic Head.” Inspired by the version on Kevin Crawford and Cillian Vallely’s album “On Common Ground,” the group first gives Ryan’s banjo the lead, which floats an interesting harmonic background of guitar and keyboard.

The tune's second pass-through introduces sax and some harmonic departures that add dramatic flair and a tension which builds toward a modulation, ultimately pushing the track into an inviting and fairly optimistic sense of swing.

There are four vocal tracks here and they’re all quite intriguing. Although an admitted homage, “Mary and the Soldier” is not your typical Andy Irvine/Paul Brady tribute, as the band draws on their musical imagination to come up with something fresh. They’ve given “Monk McClamont’s ‘Farewell to Articlave,’” a tune taken from Sam Henry’s collection “Songs of the People,” a very traditional feel that matches some of the instrumental tracks here. And then there are “Sleep Now” and “Dear Heart,” which present a complete contrast. For these tracks Quinn has taken poems from James Joyce’s “Chamber Music” and set them to original music. Doherty, whose voice on here reminds me of rock singer Peter Gabriel’s, does an excellent job and while the liner notes speak on the musicality in Joyce’s verse, it could equally have mentioned the poetry in the group’s arrangement. The music and words articulate well here and give nice life to an idea that could easily be considered mere curiosity.

Artisan Row is not your traditional trad group. Sure, each of the musicians is a top-level player who would be welcome at any session, but the more profound statement being made on “Wild Winds” is how singularly the group shares a vision for what a modern sound should be. This is contemporary music with a cosmopolitan flair, appropriate to the sort of hip downtown performance spaces where new sounds cross over and break out. Give this album a listen – it’ll be time well spent and you’ll feel cooler for having done so! Learn more and hear tracks at artisanrow.bandcamp.com.

 

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