Published Article

about the 2007 Cape Cod Celtic Festival.

Cape Cod Celtic Festival: Bringing Celtic Music Home
by Susan Gedutis Lindsay

Many a seasoned Cape Codder will tell you it’s hard to get the locals to go over the bridge—and that includes the musicians! But why should they bother, when Irish music blooms there as brightly as the Cape’s beach roses? The Cape hosts a small but diverse year-round Irish music scene that includes an array of talented singers, fiddlers, and the like—but for those times when the same old tunes just won’t do, they’ve devised a great way to bring the rest of us over to them: the Cape Cod Celtic Music Festival, which for four gloriously sunny days in late June celebrated its fifth anniversary with a dinner-size sampler of some of the best Celtic music the world has to offer.

In a day when Irish music festivals are getting bigger, louder, and increasingly commercialized, the homegrown Cape Cod Celtic Festival is a friendly, welcoming, community-based alternative. This small festival occurs around West Dennis, Yarmouth, and Orleans—what locals refer to as the Mid-Cape. This year, the festival was based primarily around O’Shea’s Olde Inn, a rustic, genuine-feeling pub owned and run by Joe O’Shea.

The festival kicked off on Thursday with a Clancy special. The Clancy Tradition, made up of fiddler Rose Clancy, her father Gene, and uncle Pat, opened for Aoife Clancy and Robbie O’Connell. They were joined by fiddler George Keith, whose touch is so light and lively that he seems to merely hold the bow while the instrument plays itself.

Several of the festival concerts sold out, but its primary performance venues—the Olde Inn, the historic West Dennis Graded Schoolhouse, and the Orleans Inn—are all relatively small, making for a naturally cozy and intimate feel at every concert. That welcoming feeling pervaded the weekend; you got the feeling that even as a spectator, you were very much a part of the event.

Between concerts, if you were so inclined, it wouldn’t have been hard to have a tune with (or at least near) fiddler Liz Carroll, chat with John Doyle about his three-year-old daughter, or share a joke with the great Cape Breton guitarist Brian Doyle. Bringing the downhome feel back to Irish music, the Cape Cod Celtic Music Festival reminds you that Irish music is not just about the fancy arrangements of tunes, flashy artist Web sites, and polished stage banter; it’s also about having a laugh with musical friends.

If you weren’t shy, you could have asked fiddler Eamon Coyne about the Liverpool Ceili Band or chat with his brother, uilleann piper Mick Coyne, about his piping workshops at the world-famous Willie Clancy School in Ireland. They performed Saturday night at the West Dennis Graded Schoolhouse with bodhrán powerhouse Mance Grady and the charismatic Dublin singer, guitarist, and fiddler Patsy Whelan, who lives and performs on the Cape. After the concerts, these fellows joined the rest of the musicians at the festival for late-night sessions at the Olde Inn. If you were up for dancing, you could see Cape Breton fiddlers such as Brenda Stubbert at nightly Cape Breton square dances that followed the concerts in the West Dennis Graded Schoolhouse.

Speaking of Brenda Stubbert—who will be forever immortalized through the tune of the same name—one of the featured guests was to be fiddler Jerry Holland, who could not make it due to illness. But the festival heart went out to him. Raffles were conducted at every concert, and more than $1,200 was raised to help Holland as he fights a battle with kidney cancer.

One of the nicest parts of the festival is that it also showcases local Cape Cod artists known from one of the Cape’s many Irish venues, including the Olde Inn, The Orleans Inn, the Irish Village, Liam Maguire’s, Shooter’s (formerly McGann’s), and others. For example, singer Dave Hickey, who opened at the festival for Liz Carroll and John Doyle, has lived on the Cape since 1984, and makes most of his living from gigs at the Irish Village, the Claddagh, and other Irish venues. Guitarist/singer Sean Brennan plays regularly at the Olde Inn, and also performs with talented fiddler Nikki Engstrom of Falmouth. There there’s Mike Connolly, who emigrated from Galway to Boston in 1962. Connolly’s band the Celtic Airs recorded two albums in the 1970s and 1980s. He retired to Cape Cod in 2002, and now runs two sessions at the Olde Inn, a teaching session and “regular” session on Wednesdays, and a session on Sundays.

Many of the regulars at Cape Cod Irish sessions form the backbone of the festival—and for these organizers, it has been a labor of love. They are musicians and music enthusiasts first, not professional event organizers—so the festival has not been without its bumps and bruises. For example, there are no driving directions on the festival web site. When you do find the place, there’s no shamrock-studded festival tent to indicate that you’ve arrived, just a small “Celtic Festival Headquarters” banner.

But that’s what makes the festival so darn nice—and the organizers learn from their mistakes. Each year the festival seems to get better, and they have much to be proud of this year. Sometime during the grand finale concert, Lew Taylor, festival director, founder, and former president of the Cape Cod Celtic Society, passed by and smiled as he said, “We nailed it this year! We’re in the black!” The festival made enough to cover last year’s losses as well, but it’s not intended to be a money-making venture. Taylor says that the heart of the festival is the instrument workshops, where for just $40, a student can sign up to learn fiddle, flute, bodhran, dance, guitar, piano, or a host of instruments from a highly accomplished if not world-famous teacher—then play a few tunes with them that night.

The weekend wrapped up with a grand finale brunch and concert, featuring special guests “The Dudley Street Connection,” a group of Boston’s veteran musicians who’ve kept the Irish tradition alive since they first played Boston’s Dudley Square dance halls in the 1950s and 1960s. Including Tommy Sheridan and Joe Joyce on box, Larry Reynolds on fiddle, and Mike Connolly on harmonica, these veterans played a great selection of classic Irish tunes accompanied by local Cape Breton keyboardist Janine Randall. This was followed by the “Master’s Concert”—a celebration of all of the groups who performed over the weekend. There was even a surprise visit by several members of the Maureen Haley School of Irish dance.

The Cape Cod Celtic Festival is run by a committee of just seven volunteers. They are musicians and Celtic music enthusiasts led by Taylor, who was first inspired by Cape Breton’s Celtic Colours festival. Lew and crew maintain a vital link between the two “Capes,” which is why the festival is just about half and half Irish/Cape Breton. This year, the Maritime contingent included fiddlers Chrissy Crowley, Timothy Chaisson, and Kim Fraser, guitarist Elmer Deagle, and keyboardist and dancer Mac Morin. Also featured was Cape Cod acoustic folk pop trio Tripping Lily.

Today, organizers are very much looking forward. They hope to fill the gap left by the Gaelic Roots Irish music school that was held at Boston College in the early 1990s. Like Gaelic Roots, the Cape Cod fest each year will bring in top Celtic musicians for several days of workshops, concerts, dances and sessions until the wee hours, boat cruises, and more. Don’t miss next year—scheduled for Thurs.-Sun, June 26-29. The Cape Cod Celtic Festival’s Web site is www.capecodcelticfestival.org