Winnie Horan (Solas) Phone Interview 1999?
I know I'm shouting because I'm in the middle of traffic here in Manhattan. Why are you in Manhattan? I live in Manhattan. You... Yeh, Seamus and myself live in Manhattan. And John Doyle, the guitar player, lives in Brooklyn so we're kind of based in New York. I think you might wanna say in about 5 sentences who you are and what you do. OK. I play fiddle with Solas and my name is Winnie. And that's about it. When did Solas get together. Oh, it got together about 3 years ago. I think it was about February of 1995, when we did our first gig and our first gig was in Washington DC. And then we recorded our first album shortly after that and it's been pretty much non-stop since then. I think when I talked to...I guess John Williams isn't with you anymore, but when I had talked to him he said that was going to be his last year teaching and that was a couple years ago, because he was getting so busy... Oh, yeh, and then him and his wife had a set of twins, so he had to fulfill his family obligations and he couldn't travel or tour anymore so he had to leave. (Honk) Oh Dear! Manhattan traffic! We have a new accordion player. He's from Ireland, name is Mick McCauley. I had heard of him before but cant place...would he have... He played with several people who you would have probably seen on tour over here. He played with the Niamh Parsons' band, Loose Connections. I think Niamh was up at the North Texas Irish Festival. That's right, I think so! And you were too, and that's the last time...the only time I've seen you guys and I was just amazed by the amount of energy and sparkle and things like that. Thank you! It's sort of a great band and has sort of an interesting sound to it. You're playing traditional music, right? Right. But you're bringing something else into it, and I was wondering how you would describe what you're bringing into it. Well, as a band collectively a lot of what we're doin' probably stems from the different backgrounds that each individual comes from musically. I'd say Karen the singer, she's steeped in the Irish tradition but she's also studied classically, and she's a huge jazz fan, and she brings that. And then John Doyle...his guitar playing, I guess you'd say that it has a bit of a rock n roll element to it, he's coming from sort of a blues tradition. Also steeped in the tradition of Ireland, he comes from a family of Irish traditional singers. And then I studied classical violin for years. And then Seamus... Are you from New York?
I'm originally from New York. I was brought up, spent a few years up in Boston, and then came to New York about six years ago. Go ahead. And then MickMcCauley, he's very versatile, he sings and plays whistles and concertinas and accordion, so everyone's coming from different backgrounds and so I guess when you put it all together it makes a stew. Its interesting because you're not really an Irish band from Ireland. Well, like everybody, the scene, the traditional scene in New York where I grew up has always been pretty heavy. And Seamus as well, when he relocated back to Philadelphia, he was always involved in the Irish traditional music down in that part of the country. Karen and Mick and John, the three of them were born in Ireland, so in the last few years, they spent...like John lives here in New York now, he's spent 6 or 7 years, so we pretty much started, like born, in New York but we definitely have very strong Irish connections. Both musically and geographically, like Karen and Mick actually live in Ireland, and the three of us..John, myself and Seamus live in New York, so... Is it more lucrative living here, I've heard that Ireland...everybody wants to immigrate over here because it's a better market. I wouldn't say...well, being a musician isn't actually lucrative anywhere unless you're really doing well, but we find its so much larger. There are so many more places we can travel and do gigs, but recently we've started to tour in Europe as well. And we've done a few yours in Ireland, but I'd say, yeh, there are so many more opportunities here for musicians to actually make a living, which is what we're trying to do. So it works out well for us to be based in New York, but having a chance to travel in Europe and actually working in Ireland as well. Do you teach as well, do you teach workshops? All of us have. Some of us have privately, participated in workshops in festivals or summer camps, things like that, but it would be...with our touring schedule now everyone is kind of pretty much devoted to just touring an gigging so we've had to put everything else on the back burner sort of. Which is fine because things are going well for us now. At least where it's full-time,so we really don't have time for other projects like teaching or...in the future I hope we can get back to that. So where are the hot spots as far as touring? Over here, the whole country's been great. I mean, we're traveled up the west coast, we've been to Alaska. The Midwest, the East Coast. The big cities are great, like Washington, New York, Chicago, San Francisco, but we manage to hit quite a few out of the way spots in the past few years. So over here I'd say every tour is packed with different sorts of venues, including out of the way experiences. And then in our touring in Europe has been so far pretty good. We played in festivals in Spain and Belgium and Austria and Ireland, then. Ireland's a great spot. We've had great fun playing and performing in Ireland so I wouldn't say there is a place we wouldn't go back to. Wow. It's been great. Do you want to talk about albums that you've made? Oh sure. We actually have three now. The first one we did was recorded in '96 or '95. Not sure, I think it was '95. And the second one came out in '96. I might be off a year. We just finished a new one, that just came out this past Tuesday, and it's called The Words That Remain. It's a quote from a Beckett piece called Ends Game. So we're really thrilled about this one because we have some guest artists playing with us. Iris Decent does a vocal track with Kagan. That's kind of scary! Yeh, that's kind of interesting. When we were putting together our list of people we'd love to work with, she was at the top. Karen is a huge fan, actually we're all huge fans. And so...we also have Bela Fleck playing the 5 string banjo on a few tracks. You're starting to sound like the Chieftains with all those guest artists. Well... It's very sophisticated to have those guest artists. Its very interesting and it's nice to be able to play with other people. Enjoy what they bring and vice versa, so it was fun to do, very interesting and I hope successful. Your albums are changing every time you do one, is that it? Or stay about the same? Besides having Iris Dement in them? I would say they're probably changing. Change is good in any art form, like we wouldn't want to sound...I mean the core sound is about the same, but we're starting to use more original compositions, maybe expanding our arrangement ideas. Maybe using some percussion in vocals, just actually tapping into some of the other hidden talents that people are only starting to become comfortable with, in public, like the singing and people playing different instruments. Like straying away from their main instrument and straying away from that on the recording process trying to beef up the tracks, you know, add different textures, so I'd say this album is probably different from the first two. Its probably more experimental. A little bit more. Only because if we have to do the same thing, WE'D get bored, so a lot of the change or different approach that we took on this one were actually to keep ourselves stimulated as well. Hopefully people that are buying the album are listening to what we're doing. Is there a trend in Irish music today? It's a hard question to answer because each individual band...artist is probably experiencing different result from this Celtic Explosion. You know the revival that is going on, which is all great, but I would hate to call it a trend, because a trends sometimes die out quickly so...hopefully it's not a trend, hopefully it will be around for a long time. It will keep growing and expanding and reaching larger audiences. Pour into the mainstream which is what is going on with the large...a lot of Irish projects everywhere. Movie scores and Broadway productions. There was a question I was going to ask Seamus about getting to do a movie score. I can answer that! It was pretty much by chance. He had been on a tour...this banjo tour...about four years ago, 4 or 5 years ago, and he ended up meeting one of the camera men that was working on that movie. I think you're probably talking about "The Brothers McMullen," Right, yeh. Just by chance he gave one of his CDs to the camera man who was working on this production, not even knowing that he was involved with the movie. And a few weeks later, the director, Ed Burns called and asked him if he would allow him to use Seamus' music for the rough version of the film that was being submitted to the Sundance Film Festival out in Utah or Colorado. I don't know. Yeh, so any way the result was that the film ended up winning the grand jury prize and they got a little bit more money to actually work on the score. And then Seamus went in and he was actually in the process of recording and they used some of the tracks off his new...I guess, When Juniper Sleeps...that album and then Seamus actually wrote some tracks specifically for sort of a movie vibe, you know. And then they ended up using more than Seamus originally thought they would which was great, and it was actually by chance and Ed heard the music and liked it and it was such a lucky break. Well, he has the...he can put that on his resume now I guess. Who, Seamus? Yeh. Oh yeh, it's not a bad thing to have on your resume, so I saw the movie, I thought it was a good movie too, so >Yeh, very good. You want to talk a little bit about yourself now, as a fiddler. Sure, I don't know what to say. You started out on classical... No, I started out on traditional Irish music when I was a kid. My parents were from Ireland and I grew up with 5 brothers and sisters in the house learning to dance, and everyone played fiddle and whistle, basically like any other Irish family that has music in the house. Just...you dabble wit everything and play with whatever instrument is lying around the house. But then eventually my dad, who was actually a classically trained pianist and a jazz trumpet player, he just wanted to get us involved in the classical world and get us, in his words, sort of master our instruments and know our instruments in that sense, in a classical sense, to expose us to different repertoires, totally different music. So I actually enjoyed it and loved it and stuck with it. And I ended up going to Conservatory, New England Conservatory in Boston to study violin. And I did that for a long time and played in some symphony orchestras. You know sort of community orchestras and did auditions for symphony orchestras and kind of got frustrated with the whole competitive discipline of that., of that world, and never really lost site of my Irish connections and when I got back to New York, I met up musicians down here and just sort of fell back into the way...the music I learned when I was growing up, became reacquainted with it and realized I had missed it. That's basically it. I was going to ask you had less driocht because of that. Have I got less what? Less driocht. I had learned a term for "spirit" that is supposed to sort of emanate in Irish music. And what was your question, I'm sorry? The traffic's really bad out here, I'm calling from outside a... You're calling from outside? Yeh, I'm on Second Avenue in Manhattan. I'm on a cell phone. I actually didn't hear the question. Having a classical discipline, does that make it harder to have it actually come out as spirit or driocht or whatever you want to call it. Oh...Oh God, I actually don't think so, because you know I actually wouldn't trade it in for the world now, because it actually did give me some different ways and a different technique in order to be able to express things. I think so anyway. There is also the fact that I was brought up doing Irish music, I never did lose touch with that spirit. It wouldn't be your typical fiddlers approach I don't think to tunes and backing songs and stuff, but its just...all it is is a different musical sensibility. Its not saying that it's better or less spirited, I guess it's just a different way of expressing a musical idea or...if it was up to me I wouldn't trade it in. OK, you answered it. Since you learned over here, I've heard about different regional styles in Ireland. Do you have any kind of regional style? I wouldn't think so. And also, in this day and age, I mean those regional styles do definitely exist, but to a lesser degree than they would maybe 50 60 70 years ago. The world has become such a smaller place and those regional styles have sort of broken down because people are playing with more people and being exposed to different styles, whereas back 70 years ago when people didn't leave their town in Ireland and just played with people in their town, that style would be developed 100%, whereas nowadays, I don't think diluted is the word, but definitely watered down and not in a bad way, but the styles are not as pronounced anymore. You know what I mean? Yeh. But that's not to say people over here who grew up learning Irish music wouldn't have had their heroes, like Michael Coleman, who played in the Sligo style or Johnny Doherty or people like that, they would be fans of a certain style so that definitely comes through in their music. Or the way they approach their playing. Like Martin Hayes for example. Martin has huge followers that are completely and utterly into the Clare style of playing. I mean it still does exist of course, but I don't think it is as pronounced as it would have been a couple dozen years ago. Now he certainly has a style. Oh yeh! Is there somebody you particularly admire who plays? Oh yeh, gosh, I have so many people. Are you talking about the band collectively or just myself? If it's the band collectively I can tell you a fact, just from touring with them and spending so much time with them, each of us has heroes that we would look up to musically and they wouldn't actually just be Irish music, like our collection of CDs is pretty eclectic, so we can go from classical to jazz to Prince to Emmy Lou Harris to, I don't know we listen to everything. In the Irish traditional sense I'm a huge fan of, I mean I have 5 6 7 8 fiddle players I listen to all the time, like Liz Carroll or Martin Hayes, Frankie Gavin, Cathal Hayden of 4 Men And A Dog and it goes the same for the rest of the band, like Karen has her favorite singers. I think it's crucial, I think you have to listen to other musicians. Do you listen to people who are playing other instruments and base things on ... Oh sure, yeh. Definitely, I wouldn't want to listen to fiddle all the time. I listen to my favorite fiddle players and I'm inspired to imitate or rethink something that they've stated in a certain way. That goes for other instrumentalists as well, it's music first. So it doesn't matter what instrument it's being played on, like you take what you can get and hopefully it works the same way. It's a give and take. No. we definitely listen more than...actually, we should probably listen more. Sometimes you burn out on it and sometimes it's to your advantage not to listen to anything for a while. Clear your head and come back with a fresh approach.