Randal Bays & Frank Kilkelly at Feakle Traditional Music Festival 2023
photo by Joe McDonough
On a Saturday in the middle of August, a much loved godchild, Myla, was visiting from London, and the talk all day at home was about Irish fairies; fairy houses built, fairy customs and rituals dramatically re-enacted.
In the afternoon I headed south, took the Scarriff road east, green foliage on both sides; beech, ash, birch, laurel, roadside fern, flourishing fuchsia bells, montbretia in orange spurts and curious boreens sprouting left and right. The road winds and climbs, corners not for cutting, through Inchaboy south, Gortacarnaun into Dromindoora, (fairy-friendly names), a valley village, fertile fields rise up to the right, the land falls away to the left, road edged in clumps of purple bog heather.
Lough Cutra on the left, water flat, calm as glass, framed in woodland and gentle hills, edged in a sloping tapestry of oblong fields of recently cut silage, ripe corn and cattle pastures. After McNamara’s bar and garage, the birch, beech and ash in canopies, a gentle climb, then the sudden stop at the T-junction beside Pepper’s bar. This junction is a liminal place, no advance warning to the stranger that Feakle traditional music festival, 36th year in existence, is underway. The farmland, forest, grazing cattle and hay baling left behind for this other-world, (those fairies), I’m compelled to park nearby.
Peppers is synonymous with the festival, an iconic landmark, everything about it welcoming. Inside there are concertinas, fiddles, a piper, flutes, bouzouki, banjos, bodhráns, all huddled into P. Joe’s dedicated corner, jigs and reels pouring out from quaint windows, spilling onto the pavement to a wall of listeners, foot tappers enjoying a pint, some with burgers and chips, basking in the warm August sunshine. Up past the graveyard a group of teenagers played a lively set, in the background a newly mown meadow is a picturesque campsite; musicians, singers, dancers and followers comfortable in their campers, tents, caravans and ‘in vans with mattresses’ I’m told.
Moloney’s is packed with singers and listeners, could go on all day and night, while across the road in Shortt’s, American fiddler Randal Bays is about to launch his most recent album ‘Up the West.’ It’s wall to wall musicians; fiddles, accordions, concertinas and flutes in concentric circles, the bar hopping, customers line up mannerly for pints, youngsters in GAA shirts play cards between sets, tourists in sunglasses, locals meeting friends from previous years and a rousing set of Kerry polkas, could it get better?
Pat Hayes appears, microphone in hand, a hush descends, carrying notes but he mostly speaks from the heart and his memory of the first time he met Randal Bays.
‘It’s been said of Randal Bays that he is one of the true masters of the complex art of traditional Irish fiddle playing, and it is my great honour to welcome you all here today as we launch his new album, ‘Up the West.’ Listening to it this morning and reading the sleeve notes I felt emotional, honestly, Randal has taken the music of south Galway and east Clare, tunes my father would have played, tunes we grew up listening to, what a beautiful tribute to this small place, that an exponent of the tradition like Randal, living in Seattle on the west coast of America, that he would promote our music all over the world. What can I say, only sincere thanks and to say how honoured we are to have you here today. I first met Randal thirty years ago when my brother Martin introduced him to our family. I remember bringing him to Naughton’s one night, wondering how I’d tell him that we were going to the bog next day and also that I had a thousand bales of hay to bring in! Not an ideal way for a man with guitar and fiddle playing fingers to spend a few days in east Clare but it all worked out fine because he still comes to visit us regularly and he’s always heartily welcome in east Clare. On accompaniment is Frank Kilkelly, and not unlike Randal’s accompaniment of Martin, Frank has a lovely subtle style, his backing on the album is terrific and I’m delighted to now officially launch ‘Up the West.’
Randal and Frank lead in with ‘The Man from Kilconell,’ an original, in memory of and to celebrate Randal’s relationship with Paddy Fahey. Just when we thought it couldn’t get better, Eamonn Cotter and Christy McNamara join in and after a few sets the concentric circles form again, ‘Up the West,’ gets baptised in east Clare musical camaraderie, a magical session ensues for hours.
Afterwards I spoke to Randal Bays, asking about his first introduction to the music of Ireland, county Clare in particular.
RANDAL: I learned to play fiddle in the 70’s in Portland, Oregon and players we knew brought back cassette tapes of sessions in Ireland, John Kelly Snr., Bobby Casey and the likes. Then Kevin Burke gave me a tape of the seminal album, P. Joe Hayes, Paddy Canny, Peter O’Loughlin with Bridie Lafferty on piano. Made in the 60’s and reissued on CD it is an historic recording of Irish traditional music. At the time I wasn’t too knowledgeable about Ireland but the tunes I was drawn to were always east Clare and south Galway. I listened voraciously to what I loved the best and was trying to imitate it. Of course it made no sense, not a commercial sound, people weren’t as knowledgeable as they are now, no one really understood what I was trying to do with the fiddle, but I was happiest when immersed in that music, the best version of myself! Then I met Martin in Seattle in 1991, didn’t know him but I knew his music and we had an instant connection. About a year later I played on his debut album, it did well, enabling us to come to Ireland to record another one, ‘Under the Moon,’ which we recorded at Matt Purcell’s Harmony Row studio in Ennis. I made some great friends around here and I’ve always been very grateful to Martin for giving me the opportunity to meet his family and friends, enabling my ongoing connection to east Clare.
A.M: You were properly inducted at the Willie Clancy Summer school I heard.
RANDAL: Funny story, so thirty years ago, first time I came, Martin and his father P. Joe were playing the fiddle recital at Miltown, with Francie Donnellan. They convinced me to join them on stage. So here I was in Miltown, seeing the faces of my fiddle playing heroes in the audience, to say I was nervous would be understatement, but we got through and it all sounded great. At the end a lovely old man I’d never met came up to me, threw his arms around me saying, ‘it’s the Hayes’s and the Bays’s be Jaysus!
A.M: Pure poetry!
RANDAL: But seriously, I feel phenomenally lucky to love this music so much, to have a welcoming community here in Clare and to hear the music played in its home place, very fortunate for me. Then along the way I met Frank Kilkelly, not in Clare, but in Alaska, as you do! We’ve been friends for years, he’s toured with me in the States and I’ve wanted to record with him for a long time so it’s finally happened. We played a few sessions around Kinvara where he lives and it felt right, relaxed, so we recorded it in Frank’s home studio and planned to launch in March 2020, timing! It didn’t see the light of day for a few years but worth the wait, to launch it here in Feakle, no better place.
Driving home, enchanted by the day, I’m away with the fairies! Brian Merriman’s Midnight court, comes to mind, that robust chronicle of 18th century rural life, rich with spells, magic and folklore. And when the beloved godchild is a bit older I’ll tell her about Merriman’s Aoibheall, the all powerful fairy queen, legislator and harpist. Is she still casting her musical spells over Feakle?