Paddy Keenan Phone Interview 1998
Here I thought Paddy had a really sexy voice and then he apologizes for being hoarse.
Hello Paddy Umhmm Are you there? Sure We were talking about how you had been in the Bothy Band back there in the 70s. Uh huh. And you wanna explain what the Bothy Band was? It was a six piece band consisting of a vocalist, guitarist, bouzouki player, flute, fiddle, pipes. And as I remember this was supposed to have been a landmark band, sort of like the legendary Bothy Band, right? That's what they say. I was part of it and I ...it's hard to say stuff like that when you're part of a band. But this is what they say. It has a huge influence on traditional musicians all over the world. Particularly here in the States. That's what I'm hearin' today, for the last few years since I came to live here. Was there something different about what they were doing than had been done before? No...well, it always held onto the roots of traditional music but we were all from different backgrounds. I think that we all had enough control of the instruments to more or less speak our moods through the instrument and because of the styles of playing and the control of the instruments...the lead instruments that is, and then the backing instruments, the rhythm section and all that sort of thing, I think that sort of took it to a new level in the 70s and I think it sort of opened up more gateways. The culture for music at the time was very...it wasn't heard tell of to have bouzoukis and guitars playing with uillean pipes, Irish pipes, or flutes and fiddles at the time, and I think that in a way sort of helped to spread it further afield and...it's just what I've read about the band. I didn't see it that way at the time at all. I saw it on stage playing and having a good time arranging stuff and recording it and playing it live, you know. Now did you grow up uillean pipes or did you learn later? No, my father was a musician, and he taught me...I learned to play tin whistle when I was 8 years old, seven or eight and my father played quite a few instruments, so all of the family they learned to play different instreuments, banjo, fiddle, pipes, and I...he chose me as the piper. I started playing pipes at the age of ten, and various other instruments.of course, but mainly the pipes. Now you're from Meath? County Meath Northeast of Ireland. It's...where is it situated? I left there when I was born! My father was a travelling man...I think you might have read that somewhere along the lines. A travelling man in Ireland was equivalent to a gypsy if you like. And they were possibly evictions of Cromwell in those days. He travelled around. I was born in Trim, Co. Meath and then immediately afterward...a few days after I came out of hospital he whisked me...we moved to Dublin, we settled in Dublin and that was where I was raised.
So you were more of an urban traveler. Yeh, I settled there for maybe 5 or 10 years. Was the style you learned from where they had lived before? Well, it's the travelling style, they call it. It's the style that was played by some of the greats of the past, like Johnny Doran, and the Cashes, those were pipers, and similar styles with Coleman a fiddle player.. And Morrison. Those people. But particularly Dorans, because they were travelling people. And a lot of its related to that. My father being a traveller, obviously, he mixed with those people and his style was influenced by a lot of the older stock at the time. I'm going to change the subject completely. You have a new album out, right? Right. Well, new since last year. I haven't recorded in something like 13 years. Wow. And I released a CD last year. So are you playing solo mostly? You live in Boston, right? I live in Cambridge, right next door to Boston. Cambridge, Massachusetts, yeh. It's all the same to us down here, Massachusetts is the all the same. Do you play in sessions there? Not really. I used to do a lot of session playing in a pub. It just got too much for me. I think I got too old. I got burnt out with the sessioning and drinking. The drink...alcohol did go a lot with the Irish music. If you were out in the pubs at the time of the seventies, if you were out there playing and you didn't drink you were an oddball. But there was a lot of sessioning and a lot of partying, all night playing and drinking and having fun in general, but in the last five or ten years I have gotten away from pub life, sessioning and stuff. So are you playing in concerts now? I do concert work. And the occasional pub concert and a lot of coffeehouses...coffeehouse gigs and theatres and I'm putting a band together at the moment. I played last...this year in Celtic Connections in Glasgow, Scotland with the band, four piece band and hopefully we'll have this band out here sometime before the end of the year. Who's in your band? Well, at the moment there is Cathal Hayden from Four Men and A Dog, and Tommy O'Sullivan, who may be known for a CD he did called Sliabh Notes. And there's a percussionist and myself. In your new album are you aiming toward a particular style? Not really. I'm doin' more original music and writing more stuff, and at the moment I've been in the studio...yesterday and the day before to start on a new album, a new solo album, and hopefully there will be quite a few tracks that will be composed by myself, and always, always there's traditional music in there, trad music in there from the past...there's so much of it there anyway, there is a well of it, there will be a mix of it I'm sure. But with a band it's...again there will be a lot of traditional music. Hopefully a lot of self-composed stuff between the 4 of us. But there will be vocals as well which I havent got on this one. So is this album being distributed around the stores? Is it being distributed? I did it myself because...oh it's along story. I was very disillusioned with record companies, particularly back in Ireland.We had our own company back in Ireland. And that's a long story. I decidedto release it myself, but recently...I'm selling to companies, I'm supplying them to companies to distribute anjd Green Linnet have bought some, some CDs they'll be available from Green Linnet but they are also available on the web from...driectly from me, my own company which is on the web or over the phone...<clip> I have one final question. What kind of music do you like listening to? All kinds. Judith, I'm into all kinds of music. Anything that's nice, worth listening to whether its classical to punk. I like music in general and I've always done so and I think does make part of my own cultural music or the music I compose, and I have no preference really. Good music is good music. OK, thanks a lot for talking to us. Thanks you and I'm sorry I'm a bit hoarse here and I must be hard to hear on the phone. Where are you situated, sorry! We're in Bryan-College Station, Texas. In Texas? Texas. You're talking to Texas, yeh! I was down there late last year at the Revels. Oh, down in Houston. Uh-huh, We played with Seamus Connolly and David... I had done an interview with Aine Minogue, I think she was there. She was there as well.