Who's here?

  1. M.Marmot
    M.Marmot
    2013?

    ?
  2. Curley
    Curley
    I'm here but I just joined the group ten seconds ago. Probably not what you were going for when you asked!
  3. Ed McGarrigle
    Ed McGarrigle
    I live in a suburb of Chicago, so a long way from Ireland but hope to visit Ireland for a second time , next year. I started playing Trad on the mandolin at the start of the pandemic. I make frequent use of Aidan’s web site and currently working on The Little Stack of Wheat (Thank you, Aidan). And, I’m very happy to announce that I recently received my Irish citizenship by descent. Perhaps to realize a pipe dream of someday relocating to Ireland or much longer stays
  4. Aidan Crossey
    Aidan Crossey
    Glad to have been of help, Ed... and maybe we can get this group "rocking and reeling". As opposed to rocking and rolling - I'm sure there are other groups for that! :-)
  5. Richard Carver
    Richard Carver
    I live nearly as far from Ireland as you do, Ed (in Washington DC suburbs). Unfortunately my Irish-born mother never availed herself of the Irish passport that was her right - so I can't have one either, stuck with a post-Brexit British one instead. I do, however, play a lot of Irish music... (also having made much use of Aidan's website).
  6. Ed McGarrigle
    Ed McGarrigle
    Richard,
    Your mother need not have gotten an Irish passport. My citizenship is based on my grandparents, specifically my grandfather from Cashelard, Donegal.
    I needed his birth record, my grandparents marriage license, my father’s birth certificate, my parents marriage license and my birth certificate. If you have your mother’s birth record in Ireland, you’re in business. 1 of my 6 brothers got his and 1 of my 3 sisters got hers today ( we got a bit of the Irish Catholic thing going on)
  7. Richard Carver
    Richard Carver
    Thanks, Ed. But my grandparents were not born in Ireland, unfortunately. My grandmother was of Irish descent, but born in England, as were her parents I think. It was happenstance that my mother was born in Ireland.
  8. Aidan Crossey
    Aidan Crossey
    Hi all...

    I’m originally from Derrymacash, a townland outside Lurgan in County Armagh. Now living in London. I play mandolin, octave mandola (although I am an OM-free zone at the time of writing) and tenor guitar and - when a session demands somewhat heavier artillery - tenor banjo.

    I come from a family who have music in their DNA. My maternal grandfather - Arthur John Donnelly - was (among other things) a dancer in his youth and I have a collection of medals he won back in the early 1900s for his efforts. My paternal grandfather - John Crossey - was a singer with a fine repertoire of come-all-ye’s and ballads. My father sang, too. A big, brawny, bearded man, he sang and “played” guitar (I’m being somewhat unkind, but he’d probably agree that his guitar playing was rudimentary at best) in a group called The Bordermen - a band in the vein of The Dubliners. My dad’s brother Patsy Crossey was into the tunes in a big way as an accompanist on guitar but - most importantly - as a catalyst and a source of encouragement to fellow musicians, young and old, in and around Lurgan.

    My younger sister, Josie Crossey, is a singer and guitarist. Blessed with a rich and powerful, stunningly clear voice, she has a wide repertoire from traditional songs through to contemporary ballads. She’s the woman to do justice to all of them!

    And yet despite all of the above, I came to playing the tunes rather late in life. My musical tastes took an altogether different direction during my teens and into my twenties. It was only during a month or so of bumming around in 1995 or 1996, when I had tipped into my thirties, that I spent time in the company of a number of great musicians. On my return to London, my head full of pleasant memories and my liver less pleased, I bought a cheap mandolin, began to navigate some rudimentary tunes and after several more years had passed, sought out some local sessions…

    And I was pretty well immersed from that point onwards.

    I’ve drifted in and out of the world of sessions over the course of the past 20 years. I used to be an avid “2 or 3 times a week” sessioneer. But a combination of age, overfamiliarity, a few changes of address, demands of work and - sadly - a form of social anxiety which has crept up on me have meant that I increasingly find sessions hard work. Particularly the high volume, high intensity, high velocity, competitive scrums that we come across from time to time.

    That’s not to say that I have come to dislike playing music with others. Far from it! But these days I’m more likely to get a buzz from playing with one or two other players. In someone’s house, free from the distractions of the pub environment and free to go on playing until the pale light of dawn if the mood takes us.

    Interestingly, I’ve had a few chats recently with friends of a similar vintage who have also drifted away from the tunes at various points in their lives. Some haven’t found their way back. But some have and, indeed, some have with renewed vigour. We’ve all held on to *something* about the music when we veered off-track for a while. In my case there were a handful of albums which I returned to again and again when I needed a quick fix of some authentic, tasteful, inspiring music. Among them:

    Gerry Harrington, Eoghan O’Sullivan, Paul de Grae - The Smoky Chimney https://thesession.org/recordings/512
    James Kelly - Capel Street https://thesession.org/recordings/1447
    James Kelly, Paddy O’Brien, Daithi Sproule - Traditional Music Of Ireland https://thesession.org/recordings/630
    Noel Hill and Tony Linnane https://thesession.org/recordings/27

    I run a mandolin website called The Irish Mandolin. You can find it at www.theirishmandolin.com The "learn some tunes" section is the heart of the site and continues to attract the most visitors. I hope that some of the tunes here have provided some inspiration to mandolin players who frequent the Mandolin Cafe…

    In addition I have created a "companion" youtube channel where many of the tunes from my website are available to browse and - hopefully - learn. The videos are (deliberately) basic - just a soundtrack comprising myself playing the tune over a screenshot of the tune tabbed out for mandolin (often with sheet music included alongside the mandolin tablature). Both traditional tunes and some of my own compositions. Go to http://youtube.com/theirishmandolin to find out more.
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