Aug. 1, 2020

Mick Kinsella interview

Mick Kinsella interview
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Season 1 Diatonic Harmonica Chromatic Harmonica Irish Harmonica Traditional Harmonica

Mick Kinsella started out as a drummer before moving across to the harmonica to pursue his love of traditional music. Skilled in the use of both the diatonic and chromatic, Mick played on numerous sessions before releasing his own 2002 album ‘Harmonica’ with an assortment of genres and some tremendous harmonica work. He went out to tour with Rick Epping and Brendan Power under the name Triple Harp Bypass. Mick likes to tinker with his harmonicas, has a tuition book to his name and teaches each year at the William Clancy festival in Ireland.

Select the Chapter Markers tab above to select different sections of the podcast (website version only).

YouTube:
Played on Michael Flatleys 'Celtic Tiger' CD:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7PD2v3YMo
Talking Harmonica act:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N96S7Q1nh9E
Rick Epping:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51YjOrp3RMc

Links:
Triple Harp Bypass album:
https://www.brendan-power.com/IronLung.php

Irish Traditional Music Archive:
https://www.itma.ie/digital-library

Teaching
Blues Harp From Scratch:
https://www.armaosmusic.gr/en/music-books/blues-harp-from-scratch-by-mick-kinsella-book-cd-detail

Michael McInerney teaching website:
https://www.bluethirdmusic.com


Podcast website:
https://www.harmonicahappyhour.com

Donations:
If you want to make a voluntary donation to help support the running costs of the podcast then please use this link (or visit the podcast website link above):
https://paypal.me/harmonicahappyhour?locale.x=en_GB

Spotify Playlist:
Also check out the Spotify Playlist, which contains most of the songs discussed in the podcast:
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5QC6RF2VTfs4iPuasJBqwT?si=M-j3IkiISeefhR7ybm9qIQ

Podcast sponsors:
This podcast is sponsored by SEYDEL harmonicas - visit the oldest harmonica factory in the world at www.seydel1847.com  or on Facebook or Instagram at SEYDEL HARMONICAS
and Blows Me Away Productions: http://www.blowsmeaway.com/

Support the show

01:12 - Irish roots and was a drummer originally

02:31 - Rick Epping early influence

03:21 - Moved to Dublin and really started playing harmonica

04:20 - Charlie McCoy influence

05:02 - Eddie Clarke

06:10 - Brendan Power got Mick playing different keyed harps

07:32 - Paul Lamb influence

08:09 - Triple Harp Bypass

08:25 - Turning around slide on chromatic for ornamentation

11:34 - Mick’s early bands

13:19 - Film recordings

14:49 - Good players around Ireland

15:52 - How playing drums helped with Mick’s harmonica playing

16:52 - Other instruments played

18:16 - Mick’s ‘Harmonica’ CD

20:21 - Overblows

24:08 - Japaneasy: good song to practise bending

24:57 - Rory McLeod

26:26 - Rick Epping taught Mick some harmonica maintenance

27:39 - Triple Harp Bypass formation, tour and album

30:52 - Joel Anderson

32:02 - Album with Steve Larkin

33:39 - Recorded with Michael Flatley

34:45 - Jazz playing

36:10 - Playing with partner Josephine March

37:26 - Why harmonica works so well on traditional music

38:30 - Talking harmonica part of show

40:27 - Mick has tuition book published and plans for another

42:19 - Mick’s choice of diatonic or chromatic on particular songs and overblown

43:53 - Octave harmonicas

46:10 - 10 minute question

46:57 - How to tackle traditional tunes on harmonica

49:36 - Irish Traditional Music Archive

49:49 - William Clancy Week

51:06 - Mick’s harmonicas of choice

52:48 - Favourite key of harmonica

53:02 - Different tunings

53:52 - Embouchre

54:03 - Amps, mics and effects

55:34 - Recording harmonica

56:30 - Future plans

WEBVTT

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Hey everybody and welcome to episode 18 of the Happy Hour Harmonica podcast.

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Thanks for tuning in and once again thanks to my sponsor the Lone Wolf Blues Company, makers of effects pedals, microphones and more designed for harmonica.

00:00:11.541 --> 00:00:14.788
Remember, when you want control of your tone, you want Lone Wolf.

00:00:16.385 --> 00:00:17.766
Mick Concella joins me today.

00:00:18.228 --> 00:00:23.152
Mick started out as a drummer before moving across to the harmonica to pursue his love of traditional music.

00:00:23.792 --> 00:00:35.142
Skilled in the use of both the diatonic and chromatic, Mick has played on numerous sessions before releasing his 2002 album Harmonica with an assortment of genres and some tremendous harmonica work.

00:00:35.622 --> 00:00:40.606
He went on to tour with Rick Epping and Brendan Power under the name Triple Harp Bypass.

00:00:41.127 --> 00:00:48.314
Mick likes to tink with his harmonicas, has a tuition book to his name and teaches every year at the William Clancy Festival in Ireland.

00:01:08.043 --> 00:01:10.367
So hello Mick Kinsella and welcome to the podcast.

00:01:11.028 --> 00:01:12.049
Thank you very much Neil.

00:01:12.290 --> 00:01:17.036
So starting off with your Irish roots, what was it like growing up in Ireland?

00:01:17.096 --> 00:01:21.000
I think there's a reputation of having a very good music scene in Ireland.

00:01:21.061 --> 00:01:22.141
Is that something you fed off?

00:01:22.701 --> 00:01:24.944
Well, it's a really good music scene over here, almost.

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You know, every family has a couple of players.

00:01:27.308 --> 00:01:30.251
The traditional music itself is really popular here.

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Most kids play it in school, even go to lessons.

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My partner, Josephine, plays and teaches music.

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Thousands of kids play over here and the tradition will never be lost this way because it's been passed down through teachers to the new generations.

00:01:44.513 --> 00:01:47.558
But for myself, I didn't really start with traditional music.

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I started with rock and roll, listening to Led Zeppelin and Beatles and whatever came my way.

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I played drums originally.

00:01:55.728 --> 00:01:58.793
I started in a marching band in Tullow, County Carlow.

00:01:58.852 --> 00:01:59.593
That's where I come from.

00:01:59.935 --> 00:02:04.581
Nobody to teach me really, but I kind of learned the snare drum myself and played it in the marching band.

00:02:04.661 --> 00:02:06.043
And I really liked the drums.

00:02:06.143 --> 00:02:10.929
Eventually, I got a kit, pestered my mother until she bought me a small kit.

00:02:11.169 --> 00:02:12.610
And I started practicing on that.

00:02:12.991 --> 00:02:19.127
And when I went to work in Dublin, I ended up going for drum lessons in a drum school in Dublin, the John Murray School.

00:02:19.389 --> 00:02:23.780
And I ended up playing drums for years and years in bands that nobody really knows that I played.

00:02:24.020 --> 00:02:30.757
Well, people from Kilkenny and Dublin and stuff might know me from years ago as a drummer, but most people know me as a harmonica player now.

00:02:31.277 --> 00:02:53.647
I remember hearing Rick Epping In the 70s, when I worked in Dublin and I used to go along to hear, he was in a really good band called Pumpkinhead.

00:02:54.088 --> 00:02:56.933
I was just amazed at the sound he could get from it.

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And he impressed me so much that I went up and asked him what kind of harmonica he was using.

00:03:01.741 --> 00:03:04.086
And he said a diatonic or a blues harp.

00:03:04.325 --> 00:03:08.293
And I went out and bought one and I couldn't make head nor tails of it.

00:03:08.753 --> 00:03:09.574
And I always had it.

00:03:09.594 --> 00:03:10.376
I had it for years.

00:03:10.796 --> 00:03:12.992
And, um, go back to it every now and then.

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You know, we didn't have the internet or we didn't have people around to teach that.

00:03:16.277 --> 00:03:20.786
There were harmonica players here, but they all played tremolos and they played traditional music on it.

00:03:21.366 --> 00:03:28.579
Eventually, around the late 80s or the 90s, I moved to Dublin and that's where I really took an interest in it.

00:03:28.639 --> 00:03:30.502
I'd given up the drums at that stage.

00:03:30.786 --> 00:03:34.310
I got into an old-timey band called the Slightly Bewildered String Band.

00:03:34.790 --> 00:03:37.052
We had a kind of a rock and roll old-timey band.

00:03:37.313 --> 00:03:41.117
Yeah, I really love the song of those, that Mexican hat trick.

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That's a really interesting one.

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It was actually...

00:03:58.018 --> 00:03:59.644
Damien wrote that, the guitar player.

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Great little track to jam on, a lovely rhythm to it, you know, and it's kind of a bright, sparkly little tune and it's kind of a happy tune as well.

00:04:07.233 --> 00:04:08.417
Everybody liked that live.

00:04:09.442 --> 00:04:14.788
So yeah, so you picked up the harmonica in the sort of late 80s then after hearing Rick Epping, is that right?

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So is that when you moved across from playing drums to playing harmonica, were you still doing both at the time?

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Well, I was still playing both.

00:04:22.235 --> 00:04:28.884
I had a big interest in traditional music at the time, but I started listening to Charlie McCoy and I just thought he had such...

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His pitch was really good.

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You know, when he would bend a note, his pitch was exact and...

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I was trying to emulate his playing and I really liked the way he approached a lot of the country songs and did them as instrumentals.

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And I would still recommend it to a student if they ever asked me to, I would say, listen to Charlie McCoy and get those bends as good as he can.

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It was great training because he was so accurate with the bends that it started me off right, that I wasn't being negligent.

00:04:56.906 --> 00:04:59.528
I really went for to try and get them as accurate as I could.

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Charlie was a big influence on me earlier on and then I started listening to Little Walter and all the blues people.

00:05:05.685 --> 00:05:09.910
And then I heard this guy called Eddie Clark and he played traditional music.

00:05:10.531 --> 00:05:13.714
He was a chromatic player and he just used one instrument.

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He used a C instrument and he held the slide in and he played lots of different keys in that position.

00:05:20.202 --> 00:05:33.021
And he would let the slide out for ornamentation or roles, but he could play lots of different keys and he could play D, which is a tough position on a C, you know, it's a tough position, especially playing traditional music.

00:05:33.083 --> 00:05:34.764
Reels and stuff like that are very fast.

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He would play, he even got around to playing kind of F tunes and G minor tunes.

00:05:39.310 --> 00:05:40.512
He made it sound really easy.

00:05:40.973 --> 00:05:47.321
When I started playing first, I tried to emulate him and I tried everything on a C harp, but I reversed the slide.

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I didn't hold it in.

00:05:48.583 --> 00:05:53.509
I took it out and put it in the opposite way because I was used to suppressing the slide for ornamentation.

00:05:54.130 --> 00:05:55.172
I really loved his playing.

00:05:55.192 --> 00:05:56.634
He sounded like a concertina.

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Took me a while to figure out how he was doing it and how he was doing little slides and stuff like that.

00:06:03.447 --> 00:06:09.697
But I listened and copied and copied and listened for a couple of years until I got that kind of down pat.

00:06:10.377 --> 00:06:12.180
And then I met Brendan Power.

00:06:12.641 --> 00:06:16.447
Brendan had brought out that new Irish harmonica album at the time, and it was brilliant.

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He seemed to be able to bend on the chromatics.

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I didn't understand the mechanics of the harmonicas that much.

00:06:21.634 --> 00:06:23.677
I'd never really delved into reeds.

00:06:24.225 --> 00:06:25.767
Brendan, I met him in Dublin.

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We had a bit of a session and then he invited me along to the gig.

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And he kind of set me straight.

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He said, look, you're playing those tunes in kind of tough positions, you know, like second and third and stuff like that.

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Would you consider playing G harmonica?

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And I hadn't up to then.

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So I took his advice and I'm really glad I did because it lends itself to more fluid playing, you know, first position.

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Now I do change.

00:06:50.156 --> 00:06:51.038
I will change.

00:06:51.298 --> 00:07:02.408
play in D on a G, or I would play in A minor on a G, or E minor on a G, and I'd play D mixolydian, that kind of thing, like if I want to vary the tunes in a set, within a set, just to change key.

00:07:02.970 --> 00:07:11.317
But he did, you know, it was an important thing to point out that it was probably less Staccato-ish play in first position.

00:07:12.218 --> 00:07:17.524
So at this stage, were you mainly still playing chromatics, or were you playing diatonics at this stage?

00:07:17.985 --> 00:07:18.045
I

00:07:18.084 --> 00:07:18.826
was playing both.

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I was listening to everything, country music, traditional music, blues, jazz, Rory MacLeod, all the kind of stuff he was using.

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I went to a couple of his gigs.

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He was a fantastic player.

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So I was hearing all these different players, you know, on the blues.

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Paul Lamb came through at one stage in Waterford when I lived in Waterford.

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It was so slick, his playing and his sound, everything, the way the band played.

00:07:41.538 --> 00:07:42.980
There was nothing hurried about it.

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It was all, you know, stomping and everybody had their part and it sounded really good.

00:07:48.769 --> 00:07:54.249
Probably the first time I saw him was the first time I saw an amp being used, a valve amp and a static mic.

00:07:55.072 --> 00:07:56.677
Initially, Brendan was...

00:07:57.185 --> 00:08:24.769
very gracious he brendan would go out of his way to help people and he's always been like that you know he he helped me an awful lot at the start and taught me a lot about you know tuning and stuff like that as did rick you know rick later on when we formed the triple heart bypass you know it was like going to heaven sitting in the in you know in the van with the two of them and they're talking about harmonicas and reeds and tolerances and it was great it was probably the best experience of my life to be in a band with the two of them

00:08:25.050 --> 00:08:50.893
yeah so going back to eddie clark then this is really interesting interesting just to being clear what Eddie Clark did with the chromatic so he would turn around the slide so that effectively he would be playing in B on the C chromatic with the slide out and then he would hold it in to play in C and then he would let go of the slide to get these semitone ornamentations coming through that's right yeah The thing about Eddie was he wouldn't use a

00:08:50.952 --> 00:08:51.173
B.

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Like I suggested that to him.

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Oh, he didn't use it.

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So you uses the B, isn't it?

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Yeah.

00:08:56.259 --> 00:08:58.000
Well, I use the B at the start.

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That brings me up to C.

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When I reverse the slide, B turns into C and all the ornamentation or all the slide work down.

00:09:05.811 --> 00:09:06.831
And the same with any of them.

00:09:07.172 --> 00:09:10.235
If I have a G, all the slide work goes down to the F sharp blade.

00:09:10.537 --> 00:09:12.198
D, it goes down to a C sharp blade.

00:09:12.298 --> 00:09:14.140
So that's the kind of formula I play.

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I don't use any other tunings.

00:09:15.722 --> 00:09:17.524
I don't change the tuning of the harmonica.

00:09:17.565 --> 00:09:51.000
Just that the ornamentation or the slide will bring you down a semitone instead he had taken it to you know he'd taken it to a different level eddie could switch keys on it he could play in d and stuff like that at the start i was really trying to do that but i found it very hard so and when i suggested to him to get a b because he he would play at sessions but he'd have to play on his own now he did a couple of recordings and the fiddle player would tune up semitone Because when Eddie was playing G on his C harmonic, it wasn't G anymore.

00:09:51.019 --> 00:09:52.702
It was up one semitone.

00:09:52.962 --> 00:09:54.024
So he was playing in A flat.

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So the fiddle player would tune up and they'd play tunes together and it worked fine.

00:09:58.653 --> 00:10:02.139
But when he was at a session, he couldn't play because everybody else was in concert key.

00:10:02.799 --> 00:10:05.224
I said to him one time, I said, would you consider using a B?

00:10:05.303 --> 00:10:08.668
And he said, no, I like the way that the C sings.

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That was his answer.

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I thought...

00:10:11.586 --> 00:10:12.447
It's very astute.

00:10:12.508 --> 00:10:20.724
He was right, you know, that the C when you hold a slide in, it has a really nice sound, you know, that the G can be a little cumbersome, but I like playing G.

00:10:21.365 --> 00:10:23.990
At the start, I found it very cumbersome with the bigger reeds at the end.

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So the G is very low, isn't it?

00:10:26.475 --> 00:10:29.640
And not so responsive as the C, yeah.

00:10:30.498 --> 00:10:44.715
So you will, on the different chromatics you use, which are mainly G, D, and perhaps C, you will always switch the slide so that you have this semitone ornamentation by releasing it, yeah?

00:10:45.076 --> 00:10:48.440
Yeah, or I will change the plates or detune.

00:10:48.539 --> 00:10:52.063
I use a 64, a Horner 64.

00:10:52.083 --> 00:10:53.966
I use one of those as a D.

00:10:54.147 --> 00:10:56.330
I have retuned it completely.

00:10:57.070 --> 00:10:59.793
So when I play it normally with the slide out, it's D.

00:11:00.129 --> 00:11:01.991
When I press the slide in, it's C sharp.

00:11:02.552 --> 00:11:06.116
But now that's a huge job and it took me a long time to kind of get it right.

00:11:06.136 --> 00:11:13.626
I think Horner make an F sharp plate so you can get a G that dips down to F sharp without doing all that tuning.

00:11:13.947 --> 00:11:21.436
I know some of the other sites do them as well, but I would use a G to F sharp, a C down to B.

00:11:21.817 --> 00:11:22.517
B is easy enough.

00:11:22.537 --> 00:11:24.239
You can buy a B and just reverse the slide.

00:11:24.299 --> 00:11:26.162
Then you have your C and it will dip down.

00:11:26.433 --> 00:11:28.356
The D is the only problem, really.

00:11:28.636 --> 00:11:33.784
I'm sure you could get a C-sharp plate and a D plate from owner or one of the other suppliers.

00:11:34.907 --> 00:11:39.774
Let's move on now to talk a bit about your recordings and your music careers.

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So as you say, was one of your first bands...

00:11:44.673 --> 00:11:47.899
Playing harmonica was with the Slightly Bewildered String Band, was it?

00:11:48.821 --> 00:11:48.961
Well,

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I

00:11:49.081 --> 00:11:51.283
had kind of played in a couple of bands.

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I was in a band years ago.

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It was called Cotton the Act.

00:11:55.311 --> 00:12:03.423
And we actually, it was after I heard Paul Lamb that I really started listening to kind of West Coast stuff and trying to emulate his playing.

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We actually ended up as a support band to him in Waterford.

00:12:07.590 --> 00:12:09.273
But that band was kind of short-lived.

00:12:09.854 --> 00:12:12.638
And then I moved to Dublin and I joined the Slightly Bewildered String.

00:12:13.057 --> 00:12:15.321
But that band was a blues band, was it?

00:12:15.341 --> 00:12:18.684
So was your first real harmonica band a blues band?

00:12:18.985 --> 00:12:19.186
Yeah,

00:12:19.546 --> 00:12:20.106
except for,

00:12:20.267 --> 00:12:22.409
as I say, the bands I played in as a drummer.

00:12:23.110 --> 00:12:26.053
But as a harmonica player, your first thing was a blues?

00:12:26.634 --> 00:12:28.356
And then, as I say, I moved to Dublin.

00:12:28.756 --> 00:12:30.539
I met a guy called Bill Whelan.

00:12:30.679 --> 00:12:34.504
He's a banjo player, Clawhammer style, and a great musician.

00:12:34.583 --> 00:12:39.070
And he wanted a harmonica in the band, you know, for that kind of authentic sound.

00:12:39.201 --> 00:12:40.143
old timey sound.

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So I joined and Bill taught me a lot of old time tunes and stuff like that.

00:12:44.570 --> 00:12:48.777
We did a CD and we toured in Australia.

00:12:49.017 --> 00:12:58.110
It came to an end at some stage and I moved back down the country again and I joined a traditional band at one stage as well.

00:12:58.371 --> 00:13:05.923
They were called Tradivarius and I ended up playing with a fiddle player and a guitar and we didn't really record anything.

00:13:05.964 --> 00:13:07.385
We did some television stuff.

00:13:07.809 --> 00:13:09.392
on a program called Gantry.

00:13:09.812 --> 00:13:13.254
And then I moved back to Dublin again, later stage.

00:13:13.816 --> 00:13:18.600
Did a lot of session work in studios and stuff like that for films and people's albums.

00:13:19.041 --> 00:13:26.528
You listed some of the films you were on, which is something called The General, The Ballad of the Sad Cat, Hobo, Blinder.

00:13:26.568 --> 00:13:27.830
So yeah, lots of film work.

00:13:28.029 --> 00:13:28.671
Yeah, how was that?

00:13:28.691 --> 00:13:29.530
Was that all in Dublin?

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I'd just get a call from the studio and he'd tell me whether he wanted a chromatic or...

00:13:36.418 --> 00:13:37.679
diatonic kind of sound.

00:13:37.740 --> 00:13:43.589
So I'd go in and once or twice I came in and I thought I wouldn't be able, you know, I thought I wouldn't be able to do the session.

00:13:44.049 --> 00:13:47.154
One was for an Icelandic crowd that arrived in the studio.

00:13:47.495 --> 00:13:49.337
The guy asked me, he said, can you play chromatic?

00:13:49.357 --> 00:13:49.859
And I said, yes.

00:13:49.918 --> 00:13:51.061
And he said, can you read music?

00:13:51.721 --> 00:13:54.225
And I said, I can, but I wouldn't be able to sight read music.

00:13:54.285 --> 00:13:56.068
I could just, you know, so he said, well, come on in.

00:13:56.109 --> 00:13:56.549
It's okay.

00:13:56.789 --> 00:14:01.837
So I went in and when they opened the door into the main studio, there was a full orchestra there.

00:14:02.114 --> 00:14:06.678
and a microphone in the middle of the orchestra with music on a stand.

00:14:06.698 --> 00:14:08.321
And I knew, here we go.

00:14:08.461 --> 00:14:08.900
This is it.

00:14:09.001 --> 00:14:09.621
This is the big one.

00:14:09.642 --> 00:14:10.743
I'm going to get caught out here.

00:14:10.763 --> 00:14:15.849
I explained that the conductor came over to me and he is a really nice guy.

00:14:16.028 --> 00:14:18.292
And I said, look, I can't read like that.

00:14:18.371 --> 00:14:20.894
I have to go over it and, you know, study it a little bit.

00:14:20.955 --> 00:14:21.916
He said, cool.

00:14:22.015 --> 00:14:23.657
So he dismissed the orchestra.

00:14:23.697 --> 00:14:25.219
They were playing all day anyway.

00:14:25.239 --> 00:14:26.340
He said, go and get something to eat.

00:14:26.760 --> 00:14:30.345
And he sat with me and they recorded the piece and then the orchestra played afterwards.

00:14:30.644 --> 00:14:31.346
I never got to hear it.

00:14:31.745 --> 00:14:34.789
A few situations like that where they would expect you to read.

00:14:34.809 --> 00:14:40.677
I never actually got to be able to sight read perfectly, but I can read a piece, you know, at my own leisure.

00:14:41.077 --> 00:14:45.342
But I think it is kind of important to be able to know the makeup of cards and stuff like that.

00:14:45.383 --> 00:14:49.168
Not necessarily to read, but to be able to know what you're playing across.

00:14:49.808 --> 00:14:51.730
There's a guy here now called Maciek.

00:14:52.130 --> 00:14:53.633
He's a Polish guy and he lives in Galway.

00:14:53.653 --> 00:14:55.456
I've been up and down to him a few times.

00:14:55.916 --> 00:14:56.716
We had a couple of jams.

00:14:56.797 --> 00:15:00.402
He's a very interesting player because he plays saxophone and clarinet.

00:15:00.673 --> 00:15:05.120
He also plays chromatic and great diatonic player, overblows and stuff like that.

00:15:05.159 --> 00:15:07.263
But he really knows his way around music.

00:15:08.004 --> 00:15:10.346
But yeah, he's a great player and a nice guy too.

00:15:10.787 --> 00:15:13.150
But there's a lot of good players around now.

00:15:13.270 --> 00:15:22.182
It's because of the internet and there are a lot of good players around within the traditional world here and within the blues and jazz.

00:15:22.864 --> 00:15:25.106
Good teacher in Dublin called Michael Ginerney.

00:15:25.307 --> 00:15:26.989
He teaches a great course.

00:15:27.409 --> 00:15:30.533
He teaches jazz and blues, diatonic, tremolo.

00:15:30.850 --> 00:15:51.664
chromatic you've got a guy called Eugene Ryan he lives in Dublin too great chromatic player he plays with I think it's the Tonka Jazz Band or something like that in Dublin but he's a great player great chromatic and diatonic player you have a lot of good blues players in Dublin as well there was a good scene years ago they used to meet in one pub but it's It's kind of gone by the wayside now.

00:15:52.105 --> 00:15:56.072
Yeah, you mentioned the benefits of playing other instruments.

00:15:56.091 --> 00:16:01.561
So as a drummer, previously a drummer, what do you think maybe that brought to your harmonica playing?

00:16:02.101 --> 00:16:03.644
It has helped me over the years.

00:16:04.325 --> 00:16:09.394
It certainly helped my placement musically when I'm improvising and stuff like that.

00:16:09.754 --> 00:16:12.077
I never really have to think about timing.

00:16:12.546 --> 00:16:19.313
you know, it's feel, it's there from the drums because being a drummer for years, you're the one that gets blamed if it goes out of time.

00:16:19.333 --> 00:16:34.673
I was very strict on myself about timing and I would at one stage, I did practice with, I had, it wasn't, it was a drum machine I had and I would put on swing beats, practice along with that, put along reggae beats, practice along with that, whatever, whatever I fancied at the time.

00:16:34.692 --> 00:16:39.471
So, I did play quite strictly with the click tracks and stuff like that.

00:16:39.890 --> 00:16:46.940
And also gives you an idea of I can listen for the bass as well because I played with the bass player a lot in bands.

00:16:47.039 --> 00:16:48.581
We would try and play in unison.

00:16:48.841 --> 00:16:51.765
So it did help me that way as well when I got into band situations.

00:16:52.366 --> 00:16:54.089
I'd play a bit of concertina as well.

00:16:54.448 --> 00:16:56.692
I've kind of messed around with a lot of the instruments.

00:16:57.592 --> 00:16:59.355
Tin whistle at one stage.

00:16:59.475 --> 00:17:01.076
I had a saxophone for about a year.

00:17:01.096 --> 00:17:04.582
It kind of gives you an insight into the...

00:17:05.089 --> 00:17:07.972
you know, the complications that come with instruments.

00:17:07.992 --> 00:17:18.164
You know, I remember one time, just get back to Eddie now, not from the point of view, but just from the point of view of playing and the difficulties with instruments.

00:17:18.526 --> 00:17:22.830
I asked him at the time, I asked Eddie, had anybody ever asked him to teach them?

00:17:23.010 --> 00:17:24.071
And he said, they did.

00:17:24.413 --> 00:17:25.634
And I said, what did you tell him?

00:17:25.693 --> 00:17:29.258
He said, I told him to take up a different instrument, like the accordion.

00:17:30.259 --> 00:17:32.122
So he, even at the...

00:17:32.546 --> 00:17:54.692
level he was at he still thought it was a difficult instrument and troublesome you know he had a lot of trouble with the harmonica because he valves would get stuck and his reeds would go out of tune and the slide would the spring would break and he he had no skills that way Now, I think Rick at one stage had a workshop or a little workshop in Galway, and he might have fixed a few over the years for Eddie.

00:17:54.932 --> 00:18:07.391
But I often thought at the time that if Horner had sponsored him, just giving him free harmonicas whenever he wanted, there'd be a lot more people playing dramatic harmonica within the tradition here because it's not allowed into the conventions here.

00:18:07.891 --> 00:18:12.057
It's deemed as having an advantage over diatonic instruments.

00:18:12.557 --> 00:18:12.637
Yeah.

00:18:12.834 --> 00:18:16.277
You can enter with any of the diatonic instruments here, but not the chromatic.

00:18:16.517 --> 00:18:19.599
Well, yeah, so going back into your music.

00:18:19.640 --> 00:18:29.188
So let's talk about your 2002 album called Harmonica, which is, I think, the first album under your own name, yeah?

00:18:29.228 --> 00:18:29.628
Yes, yeah.

00:18:29.888 --> 00:18:31.089
Yeah, really great album.

00:18:31.109 --> 00:18:33.332
I've been listening to that a lot over the last few days.

00:18:33.632 --> 00:18:36.875
And lots of range of different styles of music on there, aren't there?

00:18:36.914 --> 00:18:40.557
Obviously, you're probably known foremost as playing Irish and traditional music.

00:18:41.219 --> 00:18:42.799
But there is, you know, there's lots of different styles.

00:18:42.799 --> 00:18:55.741
style so if we talk through that album a little bit so of course there are there are some Irish songs on there and you've got I think you're playing two songs on chromatic aren't you they're Rosalind's Children and the Canyon Moonrise they're both played on chromatics yeah

00:18:56.066 --> 00:18:58.828
Yeah, I used the chromatic a bit throughout.

00:18:59.230 --> 00:19:10.104
At the time, I was living in Dublin and because I was playing a lot of, I was playing in the blues club every now and then, I would go down and it was an open mic, so you'd get up at some stage and play.

00:19:10.564 --> 00:19:14.568
I was playing with a lot of different people, but I was playing with a guitar player called Martin Dunley.

00:19:15.029 --> 00:19:16.010
He was so interesting.

00:19:16.030 --> 00:19:18.634
He was the guy that played on the triple harp bypass.

00:19:18.894 --> 00:19:24.201
And he was a big influence on me because he was listening to all sorts of music and he was so musical.

00:19:24.240 --> 00:19:26.548
He could write great tunes, stuff like that.

00:19:27.008 --> 00:19:28.529
And I was there with a bit of advice.

00:19:28.829 --> 00:19:32.253
Great blues player, jazz player, funk player, traditional player.

00:19:32.273 --> 00:19:32.855
It didn't matter.

00:19:32.954 --> 00:19:43.728
He, you know, he'd studied, he taught in the jazz school, but he was a big influence on me himself and his wife who plays the harp, the Irish harp on a couple of things on my album.

00:19:43.928 --> 00:19:45.230
I used to play in a band with them.

00:19:45.470 --> 00:19:46.730
Martin had a big influence on me.

00:19:46.770 --> 00:19:48.472
So I was playing all sorts of stuff.

00:19:48.593 --> 00:19:49.875
I loved Rory McLeod.

00:19:49.994 --> 00:19:50.955
I love Brendan's playing.

00:19:51.036 --> 00:19:58.402
I love Rick's playing and There were accordion players I really liked, like Peter Brown and a guy called Donald Siggins who played banjo and bouzouki.

00:19:58.623 --> 00:20:00.386
I was just influenced by everybody.

00:20:00.606 --> 00:20:05.458
And I was playing with a fiddle player called Steve Larkin, who I recorded with later on our traditional album.

00:20:05.498 --> 00:20:09.445
But I was listening to all sorts of stuff and I was playing all the time.

00:20:09.626 --> 00:20:14.539
When I'd come home from work, I'd take out the harmonica and I was trying to get good at overblows.

00:20:14.660 --> 00:20:16.403
And so I was coming up with little patterns.

00:20:16.482 --> 00:20:20.749
And that's where some of these pieces came from, just practicing in my part.

00:20:20.949 --> 00:20:26.497
So on the Harmonica album, the song Lit My Reeds, that's something you use a lot of overblows on, isn't it?

00:20:41.857 --> 00:20:48.396
That literally came out of just practicing, trying to get overblows and to hit them clearly and cleanly.

00:20:48.457 --> 00:20:52.670
And then I started to expand on it a little bit, change a couple of chords in the middle.

00:20:52.930 --> 00:21:01.702
I could actually try it out at sessions because all these guys that played on that track were traditional players, but they all had an interest in blues and jazz and stuff like that.

00:21:01.722 --> 00:21:03.445
So they'd say, do you want to try out something?

00:21:03.486 --> 00:21:08.733
And I could try out caravan or autumn leaves or, you know, anything to practice my overblows.

00:21:08.753 --> 00:21:11.698
So I started playing Lip My Reeds and it worked really nice live.

00:21:11.857 --> 00:21:13.140
So I decided I would.

00:21:14.122 --> 00:21:16.865
Canyon Moonrise, yeah, that was just on a straight 280.

00:21:33.218 --> 00:21:38.067
I had a guy that was living, sharing the house with me called Niall O'Brien, did all the violins on that.

00:21:38.107 --> 00:21:38.789
He did all the parts.

00:21:38.809 --> 00:21:39.771
He's a classical player.

00:21:40.393 --> 00:21:42.998
Tango a la Torque was another thing I wrote myself.

00:21:43.278 --> 00:21:47.346
I'd been kind of experimenting around with tango beats and stuff like that.

00:21:47.428 --> 00:21:50.294
And I played percussion as well, congas.

00:21:50.625 --> 00:21:56.136
The Tango Alla Turk, you mentioned Michael McKernie earlier, Ronnie.

00:21:56.156 --> 00:21:57.479
He's done a transcription of

00:21:58.240 --> 00:21:58.520
that, hasn't he?

00:21:58.540 --> 00:22:01.727
Yeah, he sent me down a transcription, and he's doing this all the time.

00:22:02.028 --> 00:22:05.193
Blue Third is the name of the site that he has.

00:22:05.314 --> 00:22:10.307
And it's really good because he does transcriptions from all blues, blues, recordings.

00:22:10.548 --> 00:22:13.818
He's a great player and he will actually play them slow and play them fast.

00:22:13.858 --> 00:22:15.805
There's a lot of really good stuff on his site.

00:22:15.845 --> 00:22:17.529
He's working on something else now.

00:22:17.549 --> 00:22:19.395
I think he said he might do Lip My Reads.

00:22:19.958 --> 00:22:24.029
Yeah, he did a great job on Tango a la Torre.

00:22:36.961 --> 00:22:39.928
So yeah, a few more of the songs I pick out from the album, if that's okay.

00:22:39.968 --> 00:22:44.817
So they're probably not saying this right, but the Tiana Mugio, is that how you say it?

00:22:45.218 --> 00:22:46.138
Yeah, it's called Tiana

00:22:46.259 --> 00:22:46.780
Mugio.

00:22:47.000 --> 00:22:49.586
It's Gaelic, like a Tiana is the Lord Mayo.

00:22:49.926 --> 00:22:53.733
Yeah, I listened to a fella called Dermot Byrne.

00:22:53.794 --> 00:22:54.695
He plays on this album.

00:22:54.715 --> 00:22:55.998
He's a button accordion player as well.

00:22:56.038 --> 00:22:57.119
And I heard him playing it.

00:22:57.320 --> 00:23:06.605
I heard a few different people playing it, but I'd gotten the idea, Of the concertina and English concertina and harmonica from Rick, I'd heard Rick playing and I was just blown away by it.

00:23:06.645 --> 00:23:08.508
So I said I'd try and get it.

00:23:08.748 --> 00:23:10.529
Rick can play the melody at the same time.

00:23:10.549 --> 00:23:12.873
He can play harmonies at the same time as the harmonica.

00:23:13.113 --> 00:23:14.295
He's really, really good at it.

00:23:14.315 --> 00:23:16.297
He's the best I've heard at it.

00:23:16.718 --> 00:23:18.599
So, yeah, I decided I would do that.

00:23:18.660 --> 00:23:23.125
And it's a slow air, they call it here, or, you know, Fáin Máil in Irish.

00:23:23.145 --> 00:23:24.446
Yeah, so you're playing it together.

00:23:24.707 --> 00:23:27.590
It's quite long notes from the concertina, isn't it?

00:23:27.611 --> 00:23:30.173
But yeah, it's effective together and it's a nice sound.

00:23:30.465 --> 00:23:32.269
So you're playing the homilica on a rack?

00:23:32.450 --> 00:23:38.923
Yeah, on a rack, and it's an English concertina, so you've got the same note in and out, and you can play chords.

00:23:39.424 --> 00:23:42.211
It works out much nicer for accompanying yourself.

00:23:42.270 --> 00:23:47.923
If you use the Irish, or what they call the Anglo concertina, it wouldn't work out because it's a different note in and out.

00:23:48.222 --> 00:23:51.108
So yeah, it works for playing as accompaniment.

00:24:08.642 --> 00:24:13.827
And you mentioned Japanesey, which is a Brendan Powers song, which you do on there as well, which you used to play with him.

00:24:13.988 --> 00:24:17.571
So again, you get that Japanese flavour as well, bringing these different styles in.

00:24:18.633 --> 00:24:21.757
Yeah, and what a tune to practice bending.

00:24:22.837 --> 00:24:23.598
It's perfect.

00:24:23.679 --> 00:24:26.942
If anyone wants to get good at bending, play that tune.

00:24:27.282 --> 00:24:28.124
It's great.

00:24:29.065 --> 00:24:32.429
Because he uses the in-betweens, he uses the semitones as well.

00:24:32.469 --> 00:24:36.894
But it's a great practice for bending on the lower octave.

00:24:37.442 --> 00:24:39.842
Is that just the standard tuned diatonic?

00:24:40.306 --> 00:24:41.636
Standard tuned diatonic, yep.

00:24:57.538 --> 00:25:06.271
Yeah, and earlier on you mentioned Rory McLeod, and so you do the version of Take Me Home, which is from the Footsteps and Heartbeats album, which is a fantastic album.

00:25:06.311 --> 00:25:07.634
It's a really amazing album.

00:25:07.653 --> 00:25:09.317
He's got some really good harmonica on there.

00:25:09.637 --> 00:25:13.002
So yeah, what made you choose that song to do as a harmonica instrumental?

00:25:13.483 --> 00:25:14.925
Because I heard him doing it live.

00:25:15.125 --> 00:25:17.109
You know, he uses a board for foot tapping.

00:25:17.269 --> 00:25:18.352
He has mics underneath it.

00:25:18.592 --> 00:25:22.117
He kind of just tapped them out with his feet and played the harp.

00:25:22.529 --> 00:25:24.833
and got off stage, walked down to the audience.

00:25:24.993 --> 00:25:26.075
He was so good.

00:25:26.336 --> 00:25:27.857
It blew me away.

00:25:28.317 --> 00:25:29.619
And I just loved the rhythm of it.

00:25:29.640 --> 00:25:33.144
And I was at home trying to get the melody back into my head later on.

00:25:33.204 --> 00:25:37.351
And then I got his album and kind of came up with slightly my own version.

00:25:37.372 --> 00:25:38.733
But it's quite near what he plays.

00:25:38.834 --> 00:25:41.738
But then I just went off on a bit of a tangent with it.

00:25:42.157 --> 00:25:44.080
But I think the Irish harp works well on that.

00:25:44.821 --> 00:25:47.105
I play an F harmonica reversed.

00:25:47.205 --> 00:25:50.109
So it's an E harmonica with the slide reversed.

00:25:50.402 --> 00:25:52.910
on Rosalind's Children and the Spamcom Gig.

00:25:53.049 --> 00:25:54.294
They're my own ones as well.

00:25:54.694 --> 00:25:55.979
Yeah, I think it was in F.

00:25:56.621 --> 00:25:56.800
Great.

00:25:56.820 --> 00:25:59.429
I know you've also got a couple of blues songs on there as well, haven't you?

00:25:59.470 --> 00:26:00.772
So a real mixture of styles.

00:26:01.394 --> 00:26:01.715
Yeah.

00:26:01.876 --> 00:26:03.442
Ben Prevost, See the Blues Tonight.

00:26:17.986 --> 00:26:20.188
Brendan had made me a high D at the time.

00:26:20.228 --> 00:26:20.808
That's what I'm saying.

00:26:20.888 --> 00:26:23.030
Brendan was always sending me things.

00:26:23.171 --> 00:26:26.375
If he had some ideas, he'd send them for me to try them out and stuff.

00:26:26.855 --> 00:26:32.040
And Rick, Rick was giving me, you know, he was advice most of the time.

00:26:32.141 --> 00:26:37.606
I actually went up to Rick at one stage up to his house in Sligo for a couple of days.

00:26:37.767 --> 00:26:44.413
And he taught me an awful lot about tuning and fixing reeds and embossing reeds.

00:26:44.577 --> 00:26:48.544
and arcing and all the kind of stuff that, you know, all the stuff he does there.

00:26:48.984 --> 00:26:49.846
It was really useful.

00:26:49.885 --> 00:26:53.451
I was able to tighten and compress my harps a lot better and they were playing better.

00:26:53.510 --> 00:27:01.163
Now, setting for overblows, it's different for different players, but might work for one player, might be too soft for another or too hard for another.

00:27:01.202 --> 00:27:03.707
A high D chromatic, yeah.

00:27:04.067 --> 00:27:04.907
A high D chromatic.

00:27:04.928 --> 00:27:07.571
And the way Brendan had set it up, it was half valved.

00:27:07.952 --> 00:27:09.875
So I was able to bend some of the notes on it.

00:27:09.935 --> 00:27:10.757
It was great.

00:27:10.777 --> 00:27:10.977
It was...

00:27:11.586 --> 00:27:12.708
Confusing a time, right?

00:27:12.728 --> 00:27:16.051
Because I get a bend out of where I couldn't before, you know, the chromatic.

00:27:16.093 --> 00:27:18.015
But yeah, I liked it on that track.

00:27:18.075 --> 00:27:19.136
I thought it really worked.

00:27:19.958 --> 00:27:22.481
Yeah, so a great album, that Harmonica album.

00:27:22.701 --> 00:27:25.465
Definitely worth people checking it out.

00:27:25.705 --> 00:27:28.390
Where can people get a hold of that album and contact you directly?

00:27:28.410 --> 00:27:28.430
I

00:27:29.632 --> 00:27:31.394
actually let it run out.

00:27:31.855 --> 00:27:37.202
I should get some done or maybe somebody advised me lately to put it up on Spotify or something like that.

00:27:37.222 --> 00:27:39.046
I just didn't get around to it yet.

00:27:39.682 --> 00:27:50.086
so yeah so moving on from that album now so you mentioned earlier on in playing in triple harp bypass with Brendan Power and Rick Epping so can you tell us a story about that I met

00:27:50.165 --> 00:27:55.468
Rick he was doing a workshop in Wexford now You've probably heard of the Murphy brothers.

00:27:55.528 --> 00:27:57.911
There was a family called Murphy's from Wexford.

00:27:57.931 --> 00:28:00.775
The father and the two sons played tremolo harmonicas.

00:28:01.115 --> 00:28:01.494
Really good.

00:28:01.535 --> 00:28:03.738
And they're really well known here as traditional players.

00:28:04.078 --> 00:28:05.319
They've got some lovely albums out.

00:28:05.420 --> 00:28:09.345
The father is deceased, but John and Pip are two brothers and they play in unison.

00:28:09.384 --> 00:28:10.605
Really beautiful music.

00:28:11.247 --> 00:28:20.478
Rick was doing a workshop there on the diatonic and I was doing a workshop on the chromatic and we met and I hadn't seen him for since 1975.

00:28:20.858 --> 00:28:23.501
I never really knew him, but oh, he was so good.

00:28:39.554 --> 00:28:43.076
And he was playing the combination with the concertina and harmonica.

00:28:43.096 --> 00:28:44.218
And it was just fabulous.

00:28:44.419 --> 00:28:47.781
And at that time he had the prototype of the, what was it?

00:28:47.902 --> 00:28:48.501
XB40.

00:28:48.883 --> 00:28:49.763
And he was playing that.

00:28:50.284 --> 00:28:50.463
Yeah.

00:28:50.743 --> 00:28:52.266
He was playing that in the rack.

00:28:52.425 --> 00:28:54.788
And I was, how is he bending these notes?

00:28:55.269 --> 00:28:57.130
It sounded like, you know, he was bending every note.

00:28:58.030 --> 00:29:00.292
But it worked beautifully with the concertina.

00:29:00.874 --> 00:29:06.659
Anyway, we talked afterwards and then Brendan was over and back and we were, we did a couple of projects together.

00:29:06.679 --> 00:29:14.432
And then he said, look, would you like to, join up with Rick and myself and we'll form a group and do a little tour and see what comes out of it.

00:29:14.491 --> 00:29:15.453
Maybe we'll do an album.

00:29:15.794 --> 00:29:19.018
So we did and we got that guitar player, Martin Dunley, that I was talking about.

00:29:19.378 --> 00:29:21.942
Martin could cross over into the different musical genres.

00:29:22.423 --> 00:29:26.167
We started out, we met at my place in Dublin, did a lot of practice.

00:29:26.648 --> 00:29:31.394
I think we did the tour first, went in, did a live take of all the tracks.

00:29:32.135 --> 00:29:33.278
The lads weren't happy with it.

00:29:33.657 --> 00:29:39.685
So then Rick was in the States at this stage and And Rick said, come over to Virginia and you can record.

00:29:39.726 --> 00:29:41.587
He had a little bit of a studio there.

00:29:41.949 --> 00:29:42.789
So that's where we went.

00:29:42.849 --> 00:29:47.056
We went over to Virginia where he lived and we recorded the album there.

00:29:47.415 --> 00:29:48.457
And then we came back.

00:29:48.478 --> 00:29:52.702
We went and did the Harmonica Festival in Bristol.

00:29:53.344 --> 00:29:54.826
Yeah, I saw you guys there, yeah.

00:29:55.165 --> 00:29:57.469
We had about 100 CDs copied at the time.

00:29:57.509 --> 00:29:59.672
And I think we sold a whole lot of them on that weekend.

00:29:59.952 --> 00:30:00.874
And we went to the...

00:30:01.153 --> 00:30:03.497
World Harmonica Championships in Trossingen as well.

00:30:03.696 --> 00:30:04.578
Yeah, that was great.

00:30:05.380 --> 00:30:06.642
The Horner Harmonica Festival.

00:30:06.682 --> 00:30:06.961
Wow.

00:30:07.883 --> 00:30:08.924
That was a joy.

00:30:08.964 --> 00:30:10.626
I'll never forget that.

00:30:11.407 --> 00:30:13.391
And so what harmonicas were you guys playing?

00:30:13.411 --> 00:30:16.935
Were you playing a mixture of harmonicas or did you just keep swapping it around?

00:30:17.455 --> 00:30:17.856
We played

00:30:17.876 --> 00:30:18.237
everything.

00:30:18.277 --> 00:30:21.741
Well, Brendan, as you know, he's always changing.

00:30:22.103 --> 00:30:23.964
He'd have different tunings and stuff.

00:30:24.306 --> 00:30:30.134
He was using chromatic mainly, but sometimes it's hard to tell the difference with Brendan because his bending is so good.

00:30:30.529 --> 00:30:35.795
Sometimes I think he's playing one of his bendable chromatics and he's playing a diatonic or vice versa.

00:30:36.236 --> 00:30:40.559
Rick uses easy third, you know, where you tune up the first three drawn notes.

00:30:40.881 --> 00:30:42.762
And he uses octave harmonicas.

00:30:43.583 --> 00:30:49.548
So he will have high and low G on one hole and he gets this really powerful, loud sound.

00:30:49.970 --> 00:30:52.311
Of course, it's the work he does on his harmonicas as well.

00:30:52.873 --> 00:30:57.798
There's a new player now called Joel Anderson, young Swedish guy, great player.

00:30:58.145 --> 00:30:59.891
He's a customizer as well.

00:30:59.911 --> 00:31:02.237
He's a great traditional, Irish traditional player.

00:31:02.617 --> 00:31:05.223
Get back to the band, we got Martin on board.

00:31:05.305 --> 00:31:07.991
Poor old Martin, he had to listen to harmonicas all day long.

00:31:08.393 --> 00:31:13.405
We did a little tour of Ireland, as I say, recorded the album and really enjoyed it, I have to admit.

00:31:13.857 --> 00:31:15.441
Then everybody had to go their own way.

00:31:15.500 --> 00:31:19.647
People were busy and Rick was working for Horner at the time and he was trying to move back to Ireland.

00:31:19.788 --> 00:31:22.713
Brendan, of course, was doing movies and whatever was coming up.

00:31:23.355 --> 00:31:26.621
And I had a job I had to go back to and that was it.

00:31:26.641 --> 00:31:29.005
So the band kind of dissipated.

00:31:29.025 --> 00:31:30.748
Is the album available?

00:31:31.429 --> 00:31:35.477
I think when we finished, we said, look, just take a couple of copies each and sell them ourselves.

00:31:35.576 --> 00:31:38.321
But I think Brendan has them for sale on his site.

00:31:56.097 --> 00:32:00.487
So moving on, as you say, you've done lots of session work, playing with lots of different people.

00:32:00.507 --> 00:32:02.030
So I'll just run over a few of those.

00:32:02.151 --> 00:32:05.417
You mentioned playing with Steve Larkin, who's mainly a fiddle player.

00:32:05.438 --> 00:32:08.124
So that's an album of traditional music.

00:32:08.503 --> 00:32:10.087
Coleman's March is one that I know.

00:32:10.208 --> 00:32:12.633
So I guess that's a kind of old time song, isn't it?

00:32:36.961 --> 00:33:07.977
Coleman's March and I forgot to put it on my album but the credit has to go to Mark Graham I was listening to Jay Unger Jay and Molly Unger an album from years ago and they did Coleman's March and Mark Graham is playing diatonic in the background it's just beautiful it really moved me at the time and I kept trying to get a nice version he plays it I think on a B flat harp really nice key so I always played it after that and I used to play it in bands but then when I got the idea from Rick about the concertina really lent itself to that combination.

00:33:08.136 --> 00:33:08.217
I

00:33:08.576 --> 00:33:09.759
know Mark Graham.

00:33:09.778 --> 00:33:11.000
He did that great album.

00:33:11.121 --> 00:33:12.722
He did quite a few songs of his.

00:33:13.344 --> 00:33:15.787
He is a really great player over in America, isn't he, Mark Graham?

00:33:16.126 --> 00:33:16.807
Yeah.

00:33:16.867 --> 00:33:23.076
I mean, there's lots of brilliant players over there, but Joel Bernstein is another great player.

00:33:23.916 --> 00:33:28.001
You play with Josephine March, who's an accordion player.

00:33:28.502 --> 00:33:28.762
Yeah.

00:33:29.064 --> 00:33:30.305
Josephine is my partner.

00:33:31.105 --> 00:33:36.866
I started off playing drums in her band, and I recorded a couple of tracks on her album as well.

00:33:37.567 --> 00:33:39.010
I Can Hear You Smiling, it's called.

00:33:39.471 --> 00:33:45.784
So you've also recorded with Michael Flatley, the famous traditional dancer, on one of his albums as well.

00:33:46.365 --> 00:33:47.507
Well, I didn't actually meet him.

00:33:47.767 --> 00:33:50.792
You know, lots of that, all that stuff is done by his...

00:33:51.586 --> 00:33:52.787
musical director.

00:33:53.086 --> 00:33:54.409
Ronan Hardyman is his name.

00:33:54.449 --> 00:33:56.069
He's an Irish guy and he lives in Dublin.

00:33:56.550 --> 00:34:02.696
So Ronan will come up with the tunes and then he'll get an orchestra together or get a bunch of musicians together.

00:34:02.817 --> 00:34:06.119
And there was a really great guitar player called Dave Keery.

00:34:06.480 --> 00:34:07.681
He's with Van Morrison now.

00:34:07.740 --> 00:34:09.103
He's an Irish guy.

00:34:09.202 --> 00:34:09.782
He's from Limerick.

00:34:10.164 --> 00:34:13.065
And I had been doing some stuff for Dave in the studio.

00:34:13.567 --> 00:34:14.507
One day I got a call.

00:34:14.527 --> 00:34:44.565
I was working on the building sites and I got a call and I thought it was somebody winding me up that they wanted me to play on a an album called Celtic Tiger with Michael Flatley and I thought it was somebody winding me up but I said yes anyway so he sent me down the tracks and I went up to Dublin to do it and I didn't get to meet Michael I just went in and recorded over the tracks with the other musicians and it's out on CD and a lot of the tracks are up you know they're played at the show there's nobody playing the harmonica in the show but you can hear the harmonica in the background

00:34:45.666 --> 00:35:02.782
Showing your more pop and sort of jazzy you did a song with Melissa Elliot's called I'll Have No One as well it's quite a poppy sort of jazzy song music

00:35:17.057 --> 00:35:22.164
As I said, that guy, Dave Keery, Van Morrison's guitar player, he has a studio in Limerick.

00:35:22.425 --> 00:35:27.813
And before he joined with Van, he was doing a lot of work in the studio and he would get me in for a lot of sessions.

00:35:28.333 --> 00:35:29.235
And she was one of them.

00:35:29.295 --> 00:35:32.981
I did a couple of tracks on hers, one with Diatonic and that one with Chromatic.

00:35:33.280 --> 00:35:39.007
But yeah, I've done a lot of stuff for Dave, TV stuff and And he's a good writer as well.

00:35:39.027 --> 00:35:43.315
He will write a theme and then he'll choose a particular instrument.

00:35:43.355 --> 00:35:45.119
And he seems to like the harmonica.

00:35:45.179 --> 00:35:48.003
So he's got me on quite a few different projects.

00:35:48.666 --> 00:35:49.527
Yeah, I like jazz.

00:35:49.847 --> 00:35:56.842
And I find as I'm getting older, I'm 64 now, I'm really getting to like swing music.

00:35:57.217 --> 00:35:59.239
No, the kind of Django Reinhardt swing stuff.

00:35:59.601 --> 00:36:02.224
So have you any more plans to release an album?

00:36:02.244 --> 00:36:05.628
Because I think the Harmonica is the only album under your own name, is it?

00:36:05.648 --> 00:36:06.349
Or is there any more?

00:36:06.389 --> 00:36:09.152
No, that's the only one under my own name.

00:36:09.331 --> 00:36:10.193
I'm not sure.

00:36:10.253 --> 00:36:14.358
Myself and Josephine play a lot together now as a duo.

00:36:14.719 --> 00:36:18.744
Or else we'll bring in one of my sons to play with our guitar players or whatever.

00:36:18.983 --> 00:36:20.606
And we do a lot of stuff together now.

00:36:52.449 --> 00:36:55.896
She brought on an album last year that I played on as well.

00:36:55.936 --> 00:36:58.541
No, I've no kind of plans at the moment.

00:36:59.501 --> 00:37:01.385
You know yourself, you have to be inspired.

00:37:01.485 --> 00:37:07.315
And it's not that I'm not inspired, but sometimes I just don't have the time and the inclination.

00:37:07.396 --> 00:37:08.858
But I still love practicing.

00:37:08.958 --> 00:37:10.181
I will practice every day.

00:37:10.221 --> 00:37:13.045
I will play the harmonica every day if I can.

00:37:13.409 --> 00:37:20.101
But I would rarely leave it a week or two weeks, and then I'd be getting worried I'd have to take out the harmonica and play again, you know.

00:37:20.461 --> 00:37:21.824
I love the instrument.

00:37:21.844 --> 00:37:22.445
Yeah, I'm the same.

00:37:22.545 --> 00:37:25.289
I play every day, yeah, pretty much without fail, yeah.

00:37:25.329 --> 00:37:26.150
So it's great, isn't it?

00:37:26.731 --> 00:37:30.818
I mean, one thing just to talk about, you know, we talked a bit about Irish music.

00:37:30.858 --> 00:37:36.969
I mean, what is it, do you think, about the harmonica working so well with traditional music, Irish music?

00:37:37.409 --> 00:37:38.251
For a start,

00:37:38.331 --> 00:37:42.918
I think it really lends itself to playing with the fiddle and not just in traditional music.

00:37:42.938 --> 00:37:51.670
But if you listen to old time music like like Mark Graham or Joel Bernstein playing with a fiddle player, it's just there's something magic about it.

00:37:51.730 --> 00:37:53.952
I think it's kind of a real wholesome sound.

00:37:54.454 --> 00:37:58.760
Or listen to Rick on the Unwanted album playing with Jamie O'Dowd on the fiddle.

00:37:58.860 --> 00:38:00.762
It's just I think it really suits.

00:38:00.862 --> 00:38:03.025
There's something down home about it.

00:38:03.585 --> 00:38:10.637
So I always like that combination and particularly the diatonic harmonica with the chords and that kind of second position.

00:38:10.759 --> 00:38:11.161
If you can...

00:38:11.585 --> 00:38:29.842
find a tune that has that mixolydian has the flattened seventh in it play it because it's a nicer sound you've got the chords and you've got the rhythm there you know but i i know a lot of the old-time tunes are in in first position which work great as well but i just think it's it's the sound is that combination is beautiful

00:38:30.362 --> 00:38:48.422
i think uh which is available on youtube i'll put a link to is you do this talking harmonica right which is this sort of sunny terry tribute thing where you know um sunny terry does i i want my mama so you've extended did that so uh the harmonica is kind of doing that talking thing and you do mary had a little lamb which is really effective and the crowd really love it

00:38:49.362 --> 00:39:06.268
mary had a little lamb its fleece was white as snow and everywhere that mary went the lamb was sure

00:39:08.530 --> 00:39:10.494
to go

00:39:11.297 --> 00:39:15.666
Yeah, being honest, the first time I heard that was a recording of Salty Holmes.

00:39:15.925 --> 00:39:21.436
And I think I got it from Rick, the recording, because when we stayed with Rick, Rick wouldn't have run-of-the-mill albums.

00:39:21.516 --> 00:39:28.887
He always had really interesting old stuff like Peg Leg Sam and all those really old recordings of great diatonic players.

00:39:29.309 --> 00:39:36.521
But I think I might have got that where Salty Holmes did it, but he had a woman singer with him and she would...

00:39:36.929 --> 00:39:39.373
you know, ask the question and he would answer it on the harmonica.

00:39:39.753 --> 00:39:40.934
But I mean, I couldn't do that.

00:39:40.954 --> 00:39:41.916
So I had to do it myself.

00:39:41.976 --> 00:39:46.342
But I started thinking about different phonetics that I could use on the harmonica.

00:39:46.382 --> 00:39:51.510
So I tried different letters and words and stuff like that to see if they were possible within a bend.

00:39:51.750 --> 00:39:53.032
And that's what came up.

00:39:53.331 --> 00:39:59.300
It was a combination of probably Lost John and Salty Homes as Mary had a little lamb.

00:39:59.480 --> 00:40:03.965
I added a few, as you say, a few things in the phone call and the little guy calling in.

00:40:03.985 --> 00:40:06.489
I was down at Streetwood and kids love it.

00:40:06.818 --> 00:40:08.981
Because they're looking around, they don't know where the voice is coming from.

00:40:09.581 --> 00:40:10.583
Yeah, very effective.

00:40:10.682 --> 00:40:14.708
I mean, I've done the Sonny Terry, you know, I want my mama thing a little bit.

00:40:14.748 --> 00:40:17.753
But what you've done with it is kind of extending it more.

00:40:17.873 --> 00:40:19.494
It's such a crowd pleaser, isn't it?

00:40:19.514 --> 00:40:22.219
It's something that I think I'll start to put in more myself.

00:40:22.318 --> 00:40:24.641
And, you know, we should see it more.

00:40:24.661 --> 00:40:26.304
I think it works really well in harmonica, yeah?

00:40:26.664 --> 00:40:27.065
It does.

00:40:28.027 --> 00:40:30.570
You've got a tuition book out, yeah?

00:40:30.650 --> 00:40:33.074
Blue's Heart from Scratch by Mick Concella, yeah?

00:40:33.134 --> 00:40:33.213
Yeah.

00:40:33.409 --> 00:40:35.273
Yeah, it's not actually mine.

00:40:35.353 --> 00:40:39.278
I did it for a company called Music Sales years and years ago.

00:40:39.498 --> 00:40:41.641
When I moved to Dublin first, I met a guy.

00:40:41.961 --> 00:40:46.309
Now, he was doing a lot of different books, banjos and things like that.

00:40:46.349 --> 00:40:49.233
He had done a lot of the books, Don Baker's books.

00:40:49.393 --> 00:40:50.014
Do you know Don?

00:40:50.394 --> 00:40:51.295
Have you heard of Don Baker?

00:40:51.315 --> 00:40:55.242
He's a great player here in Dublin, a guitar player as well, a great singer.

00:40:55.762 --> 00:40:56.643
He's an actor as well.

00:40:56.664 --> 00:40:57.865
He's acted in a lot of films, but...

00:40:58.338 --> 00:41:03.110
Don, he approached me and he said he wanted a tutor on what I write out some pieces.

00:41:03.130 --> 00:41:05.976
I wrote out a few tunes and exercises.

00:41:06.257 --> 00:41:07.760
And then he would send them off to...

00:41:07.800 --> 00:41:09.826
He had someone to transcribe them.

00:41:09.945 --> 00:41:12.713
They would come back and I'd have to watch them because if I played something high...

00:41:13.250 --> 00:41:13.851
on the C.

00:41:14.291 --> 00:41:18.918
Sometimes their ears weren't attuned to the harmonica and I would have a flat note instead of a normal note.

00:41:19.117 --> 00:41:44.891
It took a little bit of back and forth until we got it right and then I went in and I recorded it with Don Baker's band in the studio and then I just got a fee for it at the time and it went off and then I could see it popping up on Amazon and we were in France last year playing, myself and Joseph, and we had the kids with us and one of them wanted to go into this piano store and when I went in I looked over in the corner and there was the lose heart from scratch in French.

00:41:45.673 --> 00:41:49.079
Yeah, unfortunately, I didn't get the proceeds from that.

00:41:49.159 --> 00:41:52.545
But I started a traditional one at one stage, too.

00:41:52.626 --> 00:41:54.690
I still have the plans for it for chromatic.

00:41:55.130 --> 00:41:56.693
I found them again the other day.

00:41:56.713 --> 00:41:59.157
I had a lot of work done on it and tunes written out.

00:41:59.418 --> 00:42:01.422
So maybe I might get around to releasing that.

00:42:01.461 --> 00:42:04.788
We're working on a book at the moment of Josephine's tunes.

00:42:05.329 --> 00:42:08.313
So we're quite busy at the moment trying to get that together and

00:42:08.641 --> 00:42:11.965
Your Blues Heart From Scratch is still available on the internet.

00:42:12.045 --> 00:42:13.086
I'll put a link to it up.

00:42:13.106 --> 00:42:16.411
So yeah, you've got a, always good to have a book out in your name, Mick.

00:42:16.431 --> 00:42:17.972
So well done for getting that out there.

00:42:19.235 --> 00:42:25.742
So we've talked a little bit about playing, obviously you play diatonic and chromatic probably more or less equally.

00:42:25.802 --> 00:42:30.309
So, you know, what do you see about the advantages of the chromatic and the diatonic?

00:42:30.329 --> 00:42:34.373
And when do you choose, you know, the diatonic or the chromatic particular song?

00:42:35.010 --> 00:42:36.090
Normally, when you go into

00:42:36.130 --> 00:42:40.936
a studio, if I'm doing something in a studio, they will probably ask for whatever instrument they want.

00:42:40.976 --> 00:42:45.059
You know, if they want kind of a chord or more chordal stuff, I'll use the diatonic.

00:42:45.621 --> 00:42:48.262
Because I overblow, I can attempt some tunes.

00:42:48.382 --> 00:42:48.643
All right.

00:42:48.664 --> 00:42:52.628
You know, and if it's a diatonic and they want an improvisation, I will.

00:42:52.668 --> 00:42:54.650
I'll use overblows and do it that way.

00:42:54.909 --> 00:42:58.893
But as I say, now I'm starting to play the chromatic a lot more.

00:42:58.914 --> 00:43:02.697
I really like the accuracy of the, you know, the semitones.

00:43:03.233 --> 00:43:06.840
as opposed to having to think about the overblow when it comes along.

00:43:07.661 --> 00:43:13.010
Now, when you hear players, you know, really good players like Howard, Levy playing, you don't hear that.

00:43:13.391 --> 00:43:14.893
Is it Sebastian, Charlier?

00:43:15.135 --> 00:43:19.001
When you hear players like that, you don't hear the overblows that they're so good at.

00:43:19.422 --> 00:43:22.547
If it's a difficult piece and I'm in the studio, I don't want to waste anybody's time.

00:43:22.648 --> 00:43:23.710
I will learn it on the chromatic.

00:43:24.001 --> 00:43:29.329
If I can't do it well enough on the blues harp, but I love both and I switch back and forth.

00:43:29.650 --> 00:43:31.333
Sometimes I'll try and play it on both.

00:43:31.413 --> 00:43:44.934
If I'm tackling a tune like Coquette, it's a swing tune and I'm trying it on both, but it works really nice on the chromatic and you can swing a little better on it, but it works good on the diatonic as well.

00:43:45.378 --> 00:43:52.070
They're great exercises because you have to learn to play through the chords, you know, and to change, you know, the beat part is different.

00:43:52.672 --> 00:43:54.596
But I also play for traditional music.

00:43:54.675 --> 00:43:59.784
Rick showed me how to set up octave harps for myself and how to cut the plates up.

00:43:59.965 --> 00:44:04.153
What I do is I use a ten hole in chromatic tuning.

00:44:04.481 --> 00:44:08.646
So I'll start on the low G, and it's in octaves all the way up.

00:44:09.208 --> 00:44:12.052
And because there's no slide in it, you get a lot more volume.

00:44:12.411 --> 00:44:15.677
They're really loud, and they're great at a session.

00:44:15.797 --> 00:44:18.079
I've got one in C, one in D, and one in G.

00:44:18.539 --> 00:44:20.563
Now, you don't have the slide on them.

00:44:20.963 --> 00:44:24.929
I have worked out a couple of different ways of doing the ornamentation with breath

00:44:24.969 --> 00:44:25.369
control.

00:44:25.969 --> 00:44:29.213
So are these octave harps, are they chromatics or are they diatonics?

00:44:29.994 --> 00:44:31.818
Initially, they would be chromatics.

00:44:32.130 --> 00:44:39.739
What Brendan and Joel Anderson use, I think, were the auto valves and a lot of detuning.

00:44:39.798 --> 00:44:44.804
And with their tuning, they don't have much to do because they're using the easy third.

00:44:45.063 --> 00:44:46.826
So it means they can buy one of those.

00:44:47.347 --> 00:44:50.030
You know the way the auto valve is tuned like a diatonic?

00:44:50.349 --> 00:44:54.255
Down at the bottom octave, you don't have a full, you have an incomplete scale.

00:44:54.695 --> 00:44:57.398
Mine is exactly like a chromatic.

00:44:57.798 --> 00:45:00.541
Mine will start, say, it will just take C for reference.

00:45:01.153 --> 00:45:03.197
The first hole will be C, draw is D.

00:45:03.778 --> 00:45:05.902
Next hole is E, draw is F.

00:45:06.364 --> 00:45:08.166
Next hole is G, draw is A.

00:45:08.487 --> 00:45:09.809
Then I've got a B to C.

00:45:10.251 --> 00:45:15.400
And then it starts again, C, D, E, F, G, just like a chromatic, except I don't have the slide.

00:45:15.420 --> 00:45:19.909
And each hole has four reads per hole, two for draw and two for blow.

00:45:20.130 --> 00:45:22.034
So you get that big octave sound.

00:45:22.530 --> 00:45:24.253
I've never tried one of those, yeah.

00:45:24.432 --> 00:45:25.875
Interesting, yeah.

00:45:25.934 --> 00:45:29.179
They're really good, and the volume from them is incredible.

00:45:29.280 --> 00:45:33.347
If you get them nice and tight, emboss them, they work out great.

00:45:33.567 --> 00:45:35.670
Can you buy them, or do you have to make them yourself?

00:45:35.931 --> 00:45:39.215
No, you'll have to either make them yourself or get a customizer.

00:45:39.275 --> 00:45:42.179
Now, I think Joel Anderson makes them.

00:45:42.340 --> 00:45:43.442
He'd probably make anything.

00:45:43.702 --> 00:45:49.050
He's a brilliant technician when it comes to harmonicas and stuff, and he really understands the harp and reeds.

00:45:49.632 --> 00:45:52.768
Besides being a great player, He can just make anything I'd say.

00:45:53.148 --> 00:45:54.351
That's what I would use at sessions.

00:45:54.411 --> 00:46:02.003
I use the chromatic as well, especially if I'm playing at a, like if I'm playing with Joss and we have a lot of stuff worked out for chromatic, so I'll play it on with her.

00:46:02.382 --> 00:46:09.835
Then I use diatonic with her as well for some tunes because she plays the fiddle and I'd switch to diatonic or the octave to play with her on those.

00:46:10.576 --> 00:46:17.545
A question I ask each time, Mick, is if you had 10 minutes to practice, what would you spend those 10 minutes doing?

00:46:18.807 --> 00:46:19.528
Probably...

00:46:19.969 --> 00:46:48.454
practice bending notes on the diatonic because i don't think there's a better exercise for either instrument chromatic or whatever is just stepping down through the bends and back up it's different pressures and find if i do that before a gig if i just take out an a or a g and just play the bottom half of it bending up and down bending of it it really gets my embouchure straight And I find that if I don't do that for a while, if I don't do any bends on the, it kind of affects both.

00:46:48.474 --> 00:46:49.998
It affects my chromatic playing as well.

00:46:50.420 --> 00:46:53.349
So yeah, I would practice bending on the diatonic.

00:46:53.634 --> 00:47:04.083
A bit like yourself, I'm interested in playing lots of different styles in the harmonica, but I love playing traditional music on there as well, playing quite a lot of old time and some Irish as well.

00:47:04.123 --> 00:47:13.992
But when I'm playing these songs, because they're often quite fast and there's not much room to breathe or swallow in between, I often find that's quite challenging on the traditional.

00:47:14.072 --> 00:47:22.119
So any particular tips about how you can play these fast tunes which don't have many breaks in them or no breaks in a lot of cases?

00:47:22.298 --> 00:47:23.539
How do you...

00:47:23.599 --> 00:47:26.985
your breathing, in particular swallowing is a problem that I have

00:47:27.025 --> 00:47:27.226
with them.

00:47:27.286 --> 00:47:30.371
First thing I would say, and this is probably the most obvious thing, right?

00:47:31.393 --> 00:47:32.996
And it's a bone of contention here.

00:47:33.476 --> 00:47:34.117
Slow down.

00:47:34.157 --> 00:47:37.483
There's no need to play traditional music really fast.

00:47:37.724 --> 00:47:39.346
Sometimes it's out of hand over here.

00:47:39.385 --> 00:47:43.012
You go into young people's sessions and they're just technical wizards.

00:47:43.293 --> 00:47:48.945
So they play at whatever tempo it starts and then There's no going back after that, then you can't slow it down.

00:47:49.186 --> 00:47:57.963
So I prefer going to a sedate session where it's played a lot slower and you get the chance to breathe, or as you say, a chance to swallow.

00:47:58.463 --> 00:48:02.030
If you're playing it at speed, I don't think it's going to be really good music.

00:48:02.311 --> 00:48:03.554
But for me, it isn't anyway.

00:48:03.614 --> 00:48:05.177
I'm not going to be able to play at that speed.

00:48:05.496 --> 00:48:10.045
Now, I can play at a modicum of speed, but I don't like fast sessions.

00:48:10.434 --> 00:48:11.295
I really don't like them.

00:48:11.436 --> 00:48:15.101
And I was guilty of it myself when I started out years ago.

00:48:15.181 --> 00:48:16.824
I was a speed merchant.

00:48:17.164 --> 00:48:20.188
But now I hate listening to myself playing like that.

00:48:20.588 --> 00:48:23.853
So yeah, I prefer to find someone that will play nice and slow.

00:48:24.335 --> 00:48:26.478
Not painfully slow, but slower.

00:48:27.300 --> 00:48:28.661
Get the right instrument too.

00:48:29.182 --> 00:48:31.867
Playing traditional music, there are a couple of different approaches.

00:48:31.907 --> 00:48:39.358
You can play diatonic, but if you're playing a normal diatonic, you're going to run into problems because a lot of the tunes dip down to the bottom octave.

00:48:39.681 --> 00:48:41.465
It's very hard to roll on a bent note.

00:48:41.744 --> 00:48:44.789
If you have to do ornamentation on a bent note, you're not going to do it fast enough.

00:48:45.250 --> 00:48:47.293
So people modify their harps.

00:48:47.313 --> 00:48:52.139
I know that Rick and Joel use a combination of different tunings, but one of them is that easy third.

00:48:52.460 --> 00:48:59.429
And then they'll use ornamentation, fast diaphragm movement, very kind of flutter of the diaphragm will give them rolls.

00:48:59.469 --> 00:49:01.273
Rick is really an expert at it.

00:49:01.313 --> 00:49:03.235
Like he's got some really unique ones.

00:49:04.157 --> 00:49:05.619
Or you can approach it from the chromatic.

00:49:05.878 --> 00:49:07.782
You could use the Eddie Clark style.

00:49:08.193 --> 00:49:10.617
Brendan uses Paddy Richter tuning.

00:49:11.436 --> 00:49:18.625
Now, over here, the preferred instrument at a lot of sessions and a lot of players in the competitions is the tremolo.

00:49:19.025 --> 00:49:20.387
You're a good tremolo player.

00:49:20.407 --> 00:49:21.628
It's unbelievable.

00:49:22.009 --> 00:49:24.251
There's some great players here, like Noel Battle.

00:49:24.630 --> 00:49:25.731
He's an older man.

00:49:25.773 --> 00:49:26.934
Fantastic player.

00:49:26.974 --> 00:49:28.615
If you heard him playing on the...

00:49:29.076 --> 00:49:30.617
He played at some of those concerts.

00:49:30.657 --> 00:49:32.920
Have you seen any of those concerts from the Willie Clancy Week?

00:49:33.099 --> 00:49:34.101
Yeah, there's a lot of those up.

00:49:34.121 --> 00:49:34.782
You should...

00:49:34.882 --> 00:49:35.603
Have a look at them.

00:49:35.643 --> 00:49:39.536
There's the Irish Traditional Music Association, the ITMA.

00:49:40.237 --> 00:49:44.168
They put up podcasts of a couple of the concerts over the last few years.

00:49:44.481 --> 00:49:49.326
And if you look at that ITMA Mouth Organ, they usually call it here, or Harmonica concert.

00:49:49.505 --> 00:49:53.130
Myself and Rick teach at this festival called the Willie Clancy Week every year.

00:49:53.170 --> 00:49:57.572
We've been doing it for 13 years and we have 17 or 18 students every year.

00:49:57.592 --> 00:50:00.615
And we teach diatonic, tremolo and chromatic.

00:50:01.036 --> 00:50:03.978
And we teach a little bit about maintenance as well and how to tune.

00:50:04.018 --> 00:50:05.260
And so it's really interesting.

00:50:05.280 --> 00:50:06.061
I love that week.

00:50:06.300 --> 00:50:10.143
It culminates in a concert on the Friday night and we'll usually get a couple of guests.

00:50:10.384 --> 00:50:11.405
Brendan did it once.

00:50:11.846 --> 00:50:13.646
There's a woman called Katie Hewson.

00:50:14.007 --> 00:50:37.105
She's a harmonica player she's English and her musical partner and they guested with us as well and it's quite interesting you'll see the Murphys on that and you'll see a couple of local guys here you'll see Noel Battle the guy I'm talking about there's a lot of great players around that are playing trad now and playing it really well but a lot of them use the tremolo harmonica It's usually the first weekend in July.

00:50:37.144 --> 00:50:39.507
It starts on that weekend and it goes for a week.

00:50:40.007 --> 00:50:42.490
And we teach from 10 o'clock in the morning to one o'clock.

00:50:42.871 --> 00:50:44.452
And then we have a concert on the Friday.

00:50:44.954 --> 00:50:46.335
Everything slows down for this.

00:50:46.574 --> 00:50:47.596
So it's great.

00:50:48.036 --> 00:50:49.137
I slow down my playing.

00:50:49.177 --> 00:50:50.478
Rick slows down his playing.

00:50:50.539 --> 00:51:00.990
And I always feel a sense of accomplishment after it because, you know, I find I earn things at it as well because I've slowed everything down and played it at a pace that people can play.

00:51:01.391 --> 00:51:03.773
So again, back to the slowing things down.

00:51:04.289 --> 00:51:06.092
But yeah, so we've been talking about gear now.

00:51:06.592 --> 00:51:07.893
What harmonicas do you play?

00:51:08.215 --> 00:51:10.317
I usually play Special 20s.

00:51:10.797 --> 00:51:12.039
I love the Special 20.

00:51:12.480 --> 00:51:16.005
Handmade, you know, not the MS versions of harmonicas.

00:51:16.684 --> 00:51:21.771
So I love Special 20, and I find it's got a lovely mellow tone, and that's the way I like playing.

00:51:22.072 --> 00:51:24.795
And I can set them up usually to play overblows.

00:51:25.295 --> 00:51:26.577
I also love the crossover.

00:51:26.878 --> 00:51:29.440
I got a B-flat there a while ago in a crossover.

00:51:29.481 --> 00:51:33.025
And when I started playing everything that 4, 5, and 6...

00:51:33.378 --> 00:51:34.500
Over blue, straight away.

00:51:34.840 --> 00:51:37.244
The minute I picked it up, they were just playing perfectly.

00:51:37.664 --> 00:51:40.108
I think that's down to Joe Felisco, as far as I remember.

00:51:40.128 --> 00:51:41.550
He upped the ante a little bit.

00:51:41.990 --> 00:51:42.791
Lovely sound.

00:51:43.152 --> 00:51:44.213
I love the shape of it.

00:51:44.293 --> 00:51:46.217
I love the volume from it, everything.

00:51:46.978 --> 00:51:49.742
I find either those, or I'll go back to the Special 20.

00:51:50.382 --> 00:51:56.833
For traditional music, my C that I use at sessions, C down to B, is actually one I detuned.

00:51:56.873 --> 00:51:59.315
It's a 280, or 64 as I call them.

00:51:59.556 --> 00:52:03.101
So I've got the four octave range, and my D is the same.

00:52:03.554 --> 00:52:04.715
I detuned it myself.

00:52:04.755 --> 00:52:07.539
So I've got a D and a C in four octave range.

00:52:08.099 --> 00:52:10.744
And I'm playing the CX-12 quite a lot now.

00:52:10.784 --> 00:52:11.585
I really like them.

00:52:11.605 --> 00:52:16.391
They're slightly different when you go from playing the 64 to the CX-12.

00:52:16.811 --> 00:52:19.556
The embouchure is a little different for each one.

00:52:19.596 --> 00:52:21.438
So, yeah, you have to be careful.

00:52:21.920 --> 00:52:24.844
You play a couple of sets with one and then a couple of sets with the other one.

00:52:25.605 --> 00:52:26.846
Yeah, I use the octave harps.

00:52:26.887 --> 00:52:30.331
They're ones I've made myself under Rick's instruction.

00:52:30.371 --> 00:52:32.014
But I got some of the plates from Rick.

00:52:32.481 --> 00:52:35.027
cut them up myself and embossed them all the usual.

00:52:35.389 --> 00:52:35.769
And I got...

00:52:36.070 --> 00:52:40.943
Brendan made me some of the combs for the ten holes, octave ones.

00:52:40.963 --> 00:52:41.965
Yeah, he's great.

00:52:42.005 --> 00:52:47.237
So anything you want, you can either ask either one of those guys and they'll have it or they'll have an idea.

00:52:47.277 --> 00:52:50.244
Do you have a favourite key of harmonica?

00:52:50.264 --> 00:52:50.525
I mean...

00:52:50.657 --> 00:52:51.197
I do.

00:52:51.539 --> 00:52:52.199
It's a B-flat.

00:52:52.420 --> 00:52:53.601
I just love the B-flat.

00:52:53.621 --> 00:52:55.521
I love crossharp in F.

00:52:55.742 --> 00:52:56.862
There's something about it.

00:52:57.083 --> 00:52:58.744
And I like an A-flat as well.

00:52:59.284 --> 00:53:01.547
I've got one kind of set up here now for overblows.

00:53:01.668 --> 00:53:02.447
I like that, yeah.

00:53:02.909 --> 00:53:04.190
We touched on tunings a little bit.

00:53:04.210 --> 00:53:06.472
So do you use different tunings?

00:53:06.891 --> 00:53:08.733
I don't actually use any different tunings.

00:53:08.893 --> 00:53:11.135
I have used them on the Harmonica album.

00:53:11.315 --> 00:53:13.177
I did use the fifth tuned up.

00:53:13.398 --> 00:53:19.163
I think it was on the slow air because I couldn't overblow it while I had it in the rack.

00:53:19.463 --> 00:53:20.623
And there was one really...

00:53:20.623 --> 00:53:45.230
stood out and I needed it so I brought up the five and I bent it down to the note below it at a certain stage because in traditional music you can have in a lot of tunes just say it was the key of G you will have a C sometimes and sometimes in a melody you'll have a C sharp So if it's one where the melody really sticks out and you have to play it, I find you either need the chromatic or you need the ability to bend it.

00:53:45.570 --> 00:53:47.572
But no, normally I don't use any other tunes.

00:53:47.632 --> 00:53:52.077
I just use the diatonic set up for overblowing or my chromatics reversed.

00:53:52.699 --> 00:53:55.121
You're a lip purser, yeah?

00:53:55.282 --> 00:53:56.302
Yeah, lip purser, yeah.

00:53:56.623 --> 00:53:58.965
Obviously, when I'm playing octaves, I tongue block.

00:53:59.306 --> 00:54:02.750
Yeah, but it's all lip pursing and on the chromatic as well, yeah.

00:54:02.978 --> 00:54:04.719
And what about amplifiers?

00:54:04.980 --> 00:54:08.643
Do you use amplifiers or are you mainly going for clean sound and going for the PA?

00:54:09.063 --> 00:54:14.628
Being honest with you, the kind of gigs I do don't really lend themselves now because I'm living in the country.

00:54:14.887 --> 00:54:15.708
I'm not in the city.

00:54:15.748 --> 00:54:20.532
If I lived in the city, I'd probably maybe playing with more kind of bluesy bands and stuff like that.

00:54:20.572 --> 00:54:25.757
But because I'm playing traditional stuff at the moment, it's all just I have an SM58 and that's it.

00:54:25.818 --> 00:54:27.659
I just go into a desk and play that way.

00:54:27.900 --> 00:54:29.360
But I do love that sound.

00:54:29.380 --> 00:54:35.550
I've looked at some of Jason Ritchie's setups with the Lone Wolf pedals and it's fantastic the sound you get.

00:54:36.391 --> 00:54:38.536
Maciek Zawaronek is very good at that as well.

00:54:38.556 --> 00:54:41.181
He's got a lot of different amps and pedal setups and stuff.

00:54:41.202 --> 00:54:49.818
He gets some great sounds especially when he's playing live you know you can switch to something out of the blue and he's playing away with this unusual sound, you know.

00:54:50.259 --> 00:54:53.242
So do you use any effects pedals at all or a bit of reverb?

00:54:53.501 --> 00:54:55.603
Just into the PA with a bit of reverb, yeah.

00:54:55.684 --> 00:54:56.905
And I like the 58.

00:54:57.005 --> 00:55:04.030
It's kind of an all-round, you know, because it's omnidirectional and it's got an all-round sound in it, you know, that seems to work wherever you are.

00:55:04.090 --> 00:55:04.931
Like, I really like it.

00:55:05.313 --> 00:55:07.114
Are you usually cupping the

00:55:07.193 --> 00:55:08.936
SM58 or do you put it on a stand?

00:55:09.115 --> 00:55:10.336
No, I've never done that.

00:55:10.396 --> 00:55:21.086
The only time I've cupped the SM58 was on Japanese and because Brendan told me that he had recorded a couple of times and I remember seeing him in the studio, he always liked to cup the harmonica.

00:55:21.307 --> 00:55:24.711
And as a result, I think I got a really unusual sound on Japanese.

00:55:24.751 --> 00:55:25.552
It's quite full.

00:55:25.932 --> 00:55:31.039
But now when I'm playing live, I will just play back from the mic so I can control the sound I'm getting.

00:55:31.119 --> 00:55:33.603
And if I want to mute it a little with my hand, I can do that.

00:55:34.304 --> 00:55:36.347
What about when you're recording harmonica?

00:55:36.367 --> 00:55:39.250
Are there any particular preferences for which microphones you use?

00:55:39.791 --> 00:55:41.914
No, I don't really like directional mics.

00:55:42.373 --> 00:55:44.556
Like, is it a 57?

00:55:44.577 --> 00:55:48.342
Although I bought a 56 years ago when I was at that Hohner thing.

00:55:48.737 --> 00:55:49.358
I bought a 56.

00:55:49.458 --> 00:55:51.539
It looks like a 57, but it's an older mic.

00:55:51.721 --> 00:55:53.422
And it had a switch, an on and off switch.

00:55:53.742 --> 00:55:55.684
Now, I bought it because it was so bassy.

00:55:55.963 --> 00:55:58.766
I tried it out in Horner on an amp that a guy was selling.

00:55:58.806 --> 00:56:01.009
And I really liked the bottom end sound of it.

00:56:01.068 --> 00:56:02.789
And I used that a little bit live as well.

00:56:02.809 --> 00:56:04.751
That's the only kind of directional mic I would use.

00:56:05.251 --> 00:56:09.956
And you don't get that kind of air popping from it, whatever setup they have on it.

00:56:10.177 --> 00:56:15.661
But normally, I don't like the 57 because it pops when you get near it with air.

00:56:16.021 --> 00:56:17.623
No, just a 58 normally.

00:56:17.882 --> 00:56:18.704
No effects, no pickups.

00:56:18.704 --> 00:56:29.416
I went up with Matjek one day and he set up all the pedals and you know it was fantastic playing to it you know when you can sound like a trumpet synthesizer quite unusual and it's fun

00:56:30.217 --> 00:56:39.686
Final question then obviously we're in pandemic time at the moment and things are a bit quiet but have you any particular plans coming up or after the pandemic that you're working towards?

00:56:40.327 --> 00:56:47.016
Well I would love to get back playing obviously I love the swing now That's what I'm doing every day.

00:56:47.076 --> 00:56:54.726
I'm practicing stuff like minor swing and coquette and swing 39, trying to get the melody and to swing with them.

00:56:54.925 --> 00:56:59.713
It's tough enough, but I find that's the most interesting thing I'm doing at the moment.

00:56:59.913 --> 00:57:01.795
I'm not great at it, but I'm getting there.

00:57:01.835 --> 00:57:02.456
You know what I mean?

00:57:02.516 --> 00:57:03.557
I'm gradually getting there.

00:57:03.597 --> 00:57:13.130
So I would like to maybe end up to be able to play a full set of swing stuff and just go out because there's a couple of good swing bands in Ireland and swing players.

00:57:13.431 --> 00:57:14.994
So, you know, maybe something like that.

00:57:15.521 --> 00:57:19.369
Yeah, I used to play with a couple of guitar players and they love the gypsy jazz.

00:57:19.409 --> 00:57:22.215
So I used to play quite a lot of gypsy jazz music with them.

00:57:22.275 --> 00:57:25.840
So yeah, it does lend itself quite well to the Daytona.

00:57:26.382 --> 00:57:26.802
I've heard,

00:57:26.842 --> 00:57:28.806
is it Philip Jars?

00:57:29.248 --> 00:57:30.150
He's a brilliant player.

00:57:30.329 --> 00:57:31.552
I think he's, is he Swedish?

00:57:31.612 --> 00:57:31.813
Sure.

00:57:31.992 --> 00:57:33.936
But he plays chromatic and blues as well.

00:57:33.976 --> 00:57:38.726
He has a recording up of just a backing track with minor swing and he's a brilliant player.

00:57:39.010 --> 00:57:40.010
Really, really good player.

00:57:40.231 --> 00:57:42.494
Constantine Reinfeld, he's great too.

00:57:42.795 --> 00:57:46.960
Like all these guys are giving out information on the internet and stuff like that.

00:57:47.001 --> 00:57:49.384
It's a much better time for harmonica players, I think.

00:57:49.684 --> 00:57:58.096
You can listen, go on and listen to interviews from, I'm not putting myself on a pedestal here, but the likes of Charlie Mackay or Howard Levy or Brendan and stuff like that.

00:57:58.135 --> 00:58:00.298
You can get an insight into how they started.

00:58:00.860 --> 00:58:03.103
So thanks very much for joining me on the podcast today.

00:58:03.342 --> 00:58:04.465
No problem at all, Neil.

00:58:04.505 --> 00:58:05.266
I really enjoyed it.

00:58:06.273 --> 00:58:07.838
That's it for another episode, folks.

00:58:07.938 --> 00:58:14.996
Thanks so much for listening, and thanks to my sponsor, the Lone Wolf Blues Company, with purpose-built effects and amplifiers for harmonica.

00:58:15.697 --> 00:58:17.280
Mick, take me home.

00:58:39.458 --> 00:58:39.679
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