Humdinger! Now there’s an unusual word. A word used to describe something amazing, somebody or something exceptional or outstanding. That’s what we have in the new album from Paul Brock and Enda Scahill. Oh, it’s a humdinger all right. Could it really be the first full album of traditional music on melodeon and banjo? Isn’t it amazing that until now nobody else thought of recording at length this combination of instruments with the short, clipped, jolly sound that together recreate, in this instance anyway, the sound of a golden era some eighty to one hundred years ago? ‘Humdinger’ exudes that early happy go lucky sound of twenties and thirties
The pair first met and performed together about seven years ago when Enda was invited to join Moving Cloud, who at the time were in the final throes of their existence. Kevin Crawford had moved on to Lúnasa and Enda filled the gap created. Following the demise of Moving Cloud, Paul, with fellow founding member Manus McGuire, formed a new group, The Brock McGuire Band. Enda continued with them and every year they undertake several tours mostly to
Paul, an accomplished musician with several All Ireland titles to his credit, recently completed his Masters degree in Music Performance at
“I picked the banjo and Enda” Paul explains, “because it was an instrument that up to that point didn’t seem to be studied in any great depth. As well as that, I had been working musically with Enda.”
“That took me down the road of having an in-depth look at Enda’s playing and out of that, I started to look at the banjo itself, to put it in some kind of context and see where it came from. Side by side, I was also revisiting as part of the research, the melodeon and in particular the work of John Kimmel who was the very first melodeon player to be recorded.”
Its not surprising then that Kimmel is cited several times throughout the sleeve notes on ‘Humdinger’ along with The Flanagan Brothers, Dan Sullivan’s Shamrock band and many other early recording artists.
Another part of Paul’s course involved recording a number of pieces of music and again he spoke to Enda about that. “It would be an opportunity” says Enda, “to put material together with a view to going on and doing an album.” Paul smiles when I ask him about the music and suggest that on this project at least he is deeply influenced by that early golden era of the last century. “If you ask me how I have that interest” he says, “from the very time I started playing Irish music, when I was growing up in Athlone as a young boy, I was very lucky. A friend of my father’s was a
Enda Scahill in contrast grew up in the 1970s, starting on the tin whistle in school and progressing to the banjo when only eight years old. He studied classical music and attended
Both Paul and Enda recognise the compatibility of their music and their instruments together. “Paul’s style of accordion playing really appealed to me” says Enda, “the rhythm of it and it sits very well with the banjo. He has a bouncy style with kind of sharp rhythmical triplets which really matches what I do on the banjo. It just sits together very well”
“Enda is an extraordinary musician” says Paul, “I’ve seen his interest in the instrument and how he wants to raise the level of appreciation of it. I think he’s doing amazing things on the banjo. I’m very happy with the level of affinity that there is in relation to what we’ve tried to do with this look back at that golden era and not to slavishly imitate, because we’ve tried to do it freshly and a bit differently.”
The tunes on ‘Humdinger’ can only be described as classic – many will be very familiar to the listener, several will bring a smile to your face as a well known melody finds its way between the jigs and reels. There’s lots of energy in the music and a good element of fun thrown in as well. Accompanying the banjo-melodeon duo is the veteran percussionist Tommy Hayes and on piano, Ryan Molloy, a young and gifted musician from Pomeroy in Co. Tyrone. “The way Ryan plays, the piano is very much a third instrument rather than a backing instrument” says Enda. “It’s in the front line of the tunes.”
Following their launch in
Click here to buy Brock and Scahill's Humdinger at the .tradnet store on Amazon.
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