Dervish and Lúnasa, The Birchmere, Alexandria, Virginia, U.S.A., 3 March 2005
St. Patrick's Day came early to the Washington, DC area this year as Irish super bands Dervish and Lúnasa presented an evening of high-energy Irish folk music at the Birchmere in Alexandria, Virginia.
After a harrowing 20 minutes of circling the insanely confusing intersection of Braddock Road, King Street and Quaker Lane -- Northern Virginia's version of the Bermuda Triangle, I got to the Birchmere parking lot to find it full -- something I hadn't seen in the 14 years I've been going there. (Later, the people at my table informed me that the Birchmere had been packed an hour before the concert's start time).
I circled the parking lot several times and I finally found a space which I had to share with a very large thornbush. As I parked, it occurred to me that I'd come to the concert in the mystic Celtic way, via the Spiral Path. I raced into the venue at 7:35 to find this was the first time in Folk Music History that a concert started exactly on time and I had missed part of Dervish's opening instrumental.
Cathy Jordan served as Dervish's spokesperson. Her persona was that of a sassy sprite, and she introduced her performances with fractured folksong fairytales that would have Cecil Sharp rolling in his grave with laughter. Her strange, somewhat hypnotic body language when she sang was at times as fluid as a belly dancer's, but at other times as jerky as a marionette's. She and Lúnasa were engaging in a good-natured rivalry regarding the merits of their home counties -- County Sligo (pronounced 'shligo') for Dervish and County Clare for Lúnasa -- so she took every opportunity to stress the superiority of Sligo.
For their Birchmere performance, Dervish stuck pretty closely to previously recorded material. They started off with "An Spailpin Fanach" from At The End Of The Day. Next was the stately instrumental, "The Lark on the Strand" from the Midsummer's Night album. Though their material was familiar, they did some new arrangements. The version of "Bellaghy Fair / The Ploughman" they performed was different from the version performed on Harmony Hill. While Cathy Jordan sang "Bellaghy Fair" without accompaniment on Harmony Hill, at the Birchmere she was supported by a playful, minimalist, highly syncopated bouzouki accompaniment. Next, a jet propelled "t'Athair Jack Walsh" segued into a languid "Boots of Spanish Leather." They followed this up with the "World's End Set" from their Live in Palma CD. The set, Jordan explained, was named after a London Pub which closed just after Dervish left London to tour due to a sudden lack of customers.
Two slow songs followed. "Erin Gra mo Chroi" was a standout, both for the quality of Cathy Jordan's singing and for beautiful and very tight doubling between the flute, fiddle and squeezebox. "The Cocks are Crowing," whose tune sounds very similar to the Clancy Brothers' chestnut "I'm a Rover (Seldom Sober)," featured a beautiful vocal and unforgettable lyrics. Sample line, "I'll drink nothing but my truelove's tears."
After this slow, sad interlude, the band shifted into a higher gear with "The Wheels of the World," played on jaw harp, flute, fiddle, harmonica, squeezebox, bouzouki and bodhran. It was a grand, loping instrumental set that morphed into a Celtic-inflected "Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves." Dervish closed their part of the gig with a set of Sligo tunes.
It was an exhilarating show, and I'm hard put to think of how it could have been better. Well, okay -- the Birchmere's usually perfect sound was slightly treble heavy and Cathy Jordan's powerful voice threatened to overwhelm the instrumental mix.
It seemed a bit strange to me that Dervish, not Lúnasa, was the warm-up act. Both are great bands, but in previous performances Dervish had impressed as the band to bring the house down. I admit I'm biased towards bands with singers. Also, I'd seen Lúnasa in other performances where they'd been a bit distant; technically perfect but lacking in rapport with their audience.
This evening was very different. It had a strong "insider" feel about it. There was a large turnout by members of DC Ceildh Club who cheered themselves hoarse every time Irish fiddle greats such as Michael Coleman and Tommy Peebles were mentioned. It was also a very friendly evening; members of Lúnasa addressed audience members by name and chatted with them while other band members were tuning.
After an intermission, Lúnasa's flute, whistle, and bodhran player Kevin Crawford pretended to be Cathy Jordan and complained about the horrors of touring with "that other band." As the band finished setting up, Crawford detailed the band's surreal experience taping a St. Patrick's Day segment for National Public Radio. "It was a very strange day—we had to pretend it was St. Patrick's Day." To help them get in the mood, NPR staff dressed as leprechauns served them green beer in a studio festooned with shamrocks--"and this was for radio!"
With the other members of the band assembled, eagle-eyed members of the audience noticed someone was missing. Ace Guitarist Donogh Hennessy was not there. It seems he'd left the band and was replaced by Paul Meehan. The rest of the Birchmere lineup consisted of fiddler Sean Smyth, piper Cillian Vallely, and Bassist Trevor Hutchinson whose "bass" looked very much like a Chapman stick which he sometimes plucked and sometimes bowed.
Again, being a vocally-oriented person, tunes just don't stay in my memory as clearly as songs. Though I've heard a lot about the brilliant rhythmic interplay between guitar and bass in Lúnasa's arrangements, what impressed me was the incredibly close doubling on flutes (an almost impossible thing to achieve) and the stunning interplay and interweaving of flutes, whistles, fiddles and pipes. The band also made occasional forays into polyphony, playing one melody on fiddle while another melody was being played on flutes. The "Easter Sunday Set" was especially notable for this, with pipes, fiddle and low whistle interweaving, sometimes playing in unison, sometimes veering off in very different melodic directions.
Lúnasa seemed much less stiff than at previous concerts, perhaps proximity to Dervish and the Ceildh club loosened them up. The evening's music ended with both bands playing "The Tarbolton" together as an encore.
Going to the old Birchmere used to be a rite of passage; an ordeal that proved your worth as a fan. Back in the 1980s, Arlandria, the neighborhood where the Birchmere is located, seemed immune to the gentrifaction that had transformed neighboring Alexandria. The streets around the club were mean, rather than funky, and the parking lot was famous for muggings.
The club itself was a drafty old building that looked like it had originally been a car showroom. The kitchen inspired fear and loathing. Luckily, the Birchmere served up some of the best Celtic, folk, rock, blues and country music in the Nation, and even the kitchen staff couldn't ruin bottled beer. The old Birchmere had a store that was crammed with a wonderfully eclectic collection of new and used records and music instruction books. The old Birchmere also was the source of my favorite graffiti. The bathroom stalls were very tiny. On the inside door of one of the stalls there was a knothole. Next to it, someone had scrawled, "insert nose here," with an arrow pointing to the knothole. I was mystified until I leaned forward to lower my jeans and found my nose in the knothole. The stall was so narrow that the knothole was essential!
All of that colorful sleeze is gone now. The Birchmere moved to a larger location several doors away about a decade ago, and gentrification did the rest. The parking lot is safe, the club bathrooms accommodate bodies larger than leprechaun size and the kitchen produces safe and satisfactory bar food. Better yet, the bar selections include two fine local beers, Dominion and Virginia Native. A half-hearted attempt was made to pretty the place up a little with exposed wood and brass railings, but the Birchmere was never about charm. What it has is great acoustics and great music in an atmosphere that's conducive to serious listening.
