late night session

"the control room"

we're up late tonight recording rick.

we ate a fine dinner of beans on toast and poached eggs, lay down for an hour and then got started around 11pm. it's a pretty quiet place in general (we're the last house on a dirt road), but in the middle of the night we don't have to fight the tractors, birds and cows for recording time. the only noise we have to worry about is our own. rick, adrian and i are all sitting in the same room so if we shift in our seats, can't control a cough or sneeze or type a little too loudly on the laptop, it's picked up on the recording. in virginia we're used to recording in the studio where the control room is separate from the live room, and sometimes we forget that we're in the room with rick! it's been quite funny - we've started to develop our own silent language of mouthing words and making gestures - sometimes we understand each other perfectly and other times we think we understand each other but really don't at all! there have been some interesting miscommunications so far. i bet by the end of this month we'll be reading each others minds.

rick has been playing some great traditional american tunes tonight including "see the devil", "billy in the low land" and "texas barbed wire".  we shot a video of rick playing "billy in the low land" with a wonderful view of the farm next door in the background, but the internet hasn't been strong enough to post it. maybe something to post when we're back in the u.s of a.

here are a few pictures of our night thus far:

"the live room"
rick playing harmonica and irish banjorine

(we're recording in a one room cottage - the same cottage we're sleeping in  - in fact, that's our bed that rick is sitting on!)

adrian listening

just a few out of the extensive harmonica collection

lobster day!

 

ben bulben 

         as you walk out the back door of the epping house and look to the horizon, you will see green green grass, fence lines and the flat top mountain they call ben bulben (ben = mountain). just beyond that is the west coast (irish/atlantic ocean) where rick's wife joan grew up with her six brothers and sisters. their father's family lived and fished on the small island of inishmurray*, and fishing and the ocean remains to be a large part of the family's livelihood and recreation. joan's youngest brother philip lives only 50 yards from the house they grew up in; he raises five children and and works for his sister who runs a lobster and crab distribution company. three to four times weekly phillip visits many west coast fishing villages to buy lobster and crab from the local fishermen. upon return phillip deposits the crustaceans into a large saltwater pond and soon after they are picked up by french distributers and taken to be sold throughout france and spain. the irish lobster is sold for twice the amount of american and is said to have a sweeter more delicate taste (which we confirmed later).

         yesterday we went out with philip on his county mayo route - an opportunity most visitors don't experience.

                                                                 the peat bogs:  the irish harvest peat to fuel fire

 we packed in three across in philip's refrigerated van and started south west, winding through small towns from county sligo to county mayo.  houses became scarce, the green fields gave way to grayish brown peat bogs, and signs protesting shell popped up like miniature american billboards on the interstate. ireland recently found loads of oil just off the shore of county mayo and nearly gave it away to shell in a recent corrupt political deal. some of the locals went to work for shell and others protested angrily thus creating a fraction and stress within the surrounding communities. shell has already started laying pipeline, importing tech savvy employees (no long employing the locals) and the irish can't hardly to a thing to stop it. as phillip pointed out, with the aid of the best lawyers around the world shell's contract with ireland is surely glued shut. the fisherman are wary of busting pipes (as we saw last year with BP) and some folks in the greater communities fear the close proximity of pipe laying to their houses and livelihood. in porturlin, our first stop, the air was thick with unresolved disagreement between fishermen; some hardly uttered a word to each other on the docks.

                                                                              adrian and a retired fishing boat

                                                                                          county mayo lobster

over the next 8 hours and three stops we heard stories of the hard life of irish lobster and crab fishermen - an occupation that knows well the loss of life taken by the dangerous and unpredictable atlantic seas. phillip told us that the boats will quite commonly travel an upwards of 60 miles out (taking about 10 hours) to set the traps. every year they venture further and further and the boats are rarely adequate for such distances and unforgiving storms. the cliffs of the coast line are tall and sharp and the weather is a cold and wet shade of gray.

        alex on the porturlin docks



         we saw a good portion of the western coastline of ireland including a neolithic farm site (reportedly the first farm in european history) and the site of the french landing in 1789. we learned what 30 kilos of crab and lobster look like in the plastic containers coming off the boats and what 1500 kilos look and smell like in the back of the van! we traveled from ballysadare down to porturlin around killala bay to kilcummin pier to lackan and then back home to ballymote. we also met a few modern irish gypsy families running their horses into the frigid sea to break and train them for racing.


                                                                                                                                                    

        it was a rare chance to spend a day in the life of the irish fishing industry, and tonight we were delighted to taste 

the fruits of our adventure: a wonderfully fresh and sweet lobster salad prepared by joan - yumm! 

port turlin docks

* INISHMURRAY: 

i did a little research to find out more about the island where joan's father grew up:

the island rests just 4 miles off the coast of county sligo, covers 228 acres and today is uninhabited. the population peaked at just over 100 in the 1880s but the last residents moved to the mainland in 1948, when the peat turf (fuel for fire) ran out; with them was joan's father. on the island are the remains of an earlier irish monastic settlement founded by st. molaies in the 6th century. to this day the island preserves a certain mystical presence and has a strong history in religious/spiritual practices; one of which was a curse ritual that many of the islanders practiced and/or fell under…

another fun fact: turns out joan's father was, by birthright, the king of innishmurray! 

here's a great website with some interesting pictures and stories:  http://inishmurray.com/

tuesday night shoot the crows pub session

after a nap and a hearty vegetable lasagna dinner (thank you joan!) we ventured out with rick to attend our first trad music session at shoot the crows, a pub in the near by town of sligo.  rick and two other musicians have been the pub's tuesday night source of entertainment for the last three years, and tonight were joined by three others; completing the circle of two fiddle players, one who played both bazouki and tenor banjo, an accordion player, a mandola player and rick who brought along and irish concertina and five harmonicas which he built and tuned himself. in a dark corner, the six gathered 'round a small pub table close to the busy entranceway to shoots.  one tune melded into the next with seldom a word to indicate key or melody, which was visually demonstated by rick, who frequently switched between differently tuned harmonicas to be able to keep up with the churning melody.  the six took turns starting the medleys, and rick told us later that all the tunes were traditional irish and the majority originated from county sligo. when we arrived at 10pm the crowd was slim, but just a few minutes later when the group had played through no more than a couple, it was difficult for us to maneuver over to the bar for another round (we did manage, not to worry!). the entire pub, focused on the music, stomped their feet, closed their eyes, laughed and sipped their choice fluids till around half twelve (as they say). next week we'll be joining rick again for another session - and hopefully by then we'll find some better internet to post a video clips of the good time tuesdays...

Day One (of Twenty-Four)

Tuesday, April 12th, 2011

The train hums, squeaks and rattles, the snack cart rolls by, two young men in suits and ties with " church __  jesus __" on their name tags scan the audience, a Pakistani man yells into his cell phone and the elderly couple next to us, seemingly bitter in the direction of the loud cell phone user, attempt to bond over a crossword puzzle. It seems as if we could be anywhere in the world, and yet - this is our view…

Oh Ireland (sigh...), even if I hadn't tasted your sweet (Guinness) fruit minutes ago I would have cooed still. 

Technically it's 6:32am for us (EST). Over the last fourteen hours we've flown from Richmond to Philly then to Dublin, eaten a proper Full Irish Breakfast, conquered our first Guinness (no time to waste!) and hopped on the train to Ballymote (Irish for "Town of the Moat"). We're carrying with us a 50 lb. bag of microphones, preamps, cables, headphones, a couple cameras and a portable audio recorder and are desperately hoping Rick (Epping - harmonica player and reason for the adventure) will be waiting at the Ballymote Station to whisk us away into the land of the leprechaun. 

Drowsy from lack of sleep and breakfast beer I stare out the train window full of gratitude and excitement. Over the next 24 days I know we'll learn a lot, meet many a fine lad and lass and add yet another one of a kind chapter to the ol' book.