I want to lead this week’s column with the heartiest congratulations to the great flute maker Patrick Olwell, who has just been awarded the prestigious National Heritage Fellowship, the country’s highest honor in the folk and traditional arts. Olwell flutes are among the finest ever made and are played by many of Irish music’s leading flute players, including Matt Molloy, June McCormack, Seamus Egan, Brian Finnegan, Ian Anderson and many others. These days, Patrick runs the shop with his son Aaron, himself a brilliant maker, and if you play the flute, you’re likely already playing on or on his waiting list. Congrats again! Learn more at https://www.olwellflutes.com/.
By the way, if you want a deeper lesson on Olwell and his instruments, I cannot recommend the film “The Keymaster” more highly. Directed by Jem Moore and Blayne Chastain, it looks at Olwell’s life and craft, is a wonderful portrait of this world-class builder and available to watch on YouTube.
In the digital media yoke this week is “Tennessee Sessions” by Dylan Foley and Colman Connolly. Foley is a world-class fiddle player who grew up in upstate New York, while Connolly, who grew up in Connecticut steeped in Irish music, might just be the best young accompanist out there at the moment. These days, both are based in Tennessee, so it’s natural they would get together for a project like this sooner or later. The results are just stunning, so if driving fiddle music is your thing, read on – this is an album you’ll definitely want to hear.
No reader of this column will be a stranger to Foley’s name. A four time All-Ireland champion, Foley is a Catskills Irish Arts Week regular and a frequent feature on Joanie Madden’s Folk ’n Irish Cruises. He was also a member of the U.S.-based supergroup the Yanks, whose albums “The Yanks” and “Haymaker” are just brilliant, and has made albums with button accordion player Dan Gurney (“Irish Music from the Hudson Valley”), flute and guitar player Josh Dukes (“The New York Connection”) and flute player Kevin Crawford (of Lúnasa fame) & guitarist Patrick Doocey (of Pat Doocey fame) as part of “The Drunken Gaugers.” Foley’s resumé speaks for himself: he’s one of Irish America’s premiere fiddle players.
The son of the superb box and fiddle player Damien Connolly, Colman is an astoundingly good musician. In high school (yes, high school), his band “The Low Darts,” which had a reputation for playing “slightly-more-complex-than-rock” music, attracted significant national attention for the high quality of their covers. For example, their take of Steely Dan’s “Black Cow” now has a half-million YouTube views, while their cover of Toto’s “Rosanna” received congratulatory personal responses from band members David Paich, Toto’s singer and the song’s writer, and Steve Lukather, the band’s guitarist. (That video “only” has about 425,000 views.) Connolly not only performed on those tracks, but he mixed, mastered and produced them as well. Connolly, who has been backing folks like Foley for 10 years, recently graduated from Middle Tennessee State University, where he wrote a fascinating and thoughtfully done honors thesis on the creative restoration of Michael Coleman’s 78rpm sides. Just brilliant stuff.
The playing on this album is outrageously good. Foley has amazing style and deep lift in his playing and Connolly has the taste and skill to match. What I love most about the album is how organic the playing seems. For example, there’s a playful energy in Foley playing on tracks like “Skylark / Roaring Mary” and “Dinny O’Briens / Farewell to Connaught.” Connolly follows Foley’s lead on tracks like these and together, the noise they make – a noise played with great creativity and profound technical control – is joyful, indeed.
In contrast there’s real hard driving attitude in Foley’s playing on “Rolling in the Barrell / The Tap Room” and “In Memory of Coleman / Bunch of Green Rushes.” Foley’s fiddling there is incredible, elevated by Connolly’s delightfully raucous piano playing. Together, they yield aggressive and very satisfying results.
Tracks like these contrast with the “Humors of Glynn” waltz, which shifts the mood without sacrificing quality. There, Foley and Connolly create music that is both graceful and deeply danceable.
“Tennessee Sessions” is a striking fiddle album with stellar accompaniment. Fans of New York-Sligo players like Andy McGann, Brian Conway, and Rose Flanagan will love this, but anyone with any interest in fiddle music will want to hear it. It’s an outstanding offering that comes highly recommend to everyone. Incidentally, Foley is currently on tour with Matt Mancuso (another great fiddler) through May 1, with stops in Virginia and Maryland. Visit https://dylanfoleymusic.com/ for details and click on over to https://dylanfoley.bandcamp.com/ to learn more about and to purchase “The Tennessee Sessions.”
