"Sweet Combinations of Sound" - Irish Folk Legend Andy Irvine

One of the things that fuels our lives here at Deep Water Acres is a love for various kinds of traditional musics, especially of the Anglo-American and European varieties (respect to our roots, y’know). And so we’re feeling especially honored to have been able to conduct an interview with Irish music legend Andy Irvine. Now, much as we hate to burden anyone with the baggage of over-fulsome praise, it’s hard not to refer to Andy Irvine in terms of “living legendry”. A mainstay of Irish folk music since the mid-1960s, he helped initiate a whole new approach to the tradition via his late 60s work with Sweeney’s Men, spurred the Irish cultural explosion of the 70s with the group Planxty, pioneered several “world music” string-band fusions, and continues making great music to this day. He’s recorded a bushel basket full of classic albums, toured nonstop in various duos and groups, and was a key force in revitalizing how the Irish tradition is both heard and played through his musical innovations, including the introduction of “outside” instruments such as the Greek bouzouki. Much like his counterparts Martin Carthy in England and Dick Gaughan in Scotland, Andy has both deepened and expanded what tradition can do and how it can work. And if all that ain’t enough to raise one to legendary status, I’m not sure I know what is.

Andy was kind enough to consent to a Deep Water interview via the new tradition of email communication, though it took a while to set up due to his constant nomadism (and a while longer to get into print due to our own psychic nomadism; the original interview was conducted a couple of years back). Once we got going he proved thoughtful and open to my questions about his earlier musical history, even in the midst of his busyness making new history, and we are most grateful for it. A true roving minstrel and a genuine bard of the people, Andy’s musical travels make for a fascinating story that includes more than a few major characters of folk music in the last half of the 20^th century. Many thanks Andy! [Except where stated, the quotes below come from our interview with Andy; a few are excerpted from his reminiscences on his website. Andy would like us to note that all of his writings are copyright him.]

Born in London in 1942 into a musical family, Andy’s earliest musical memories came from old records collected by his musical-comedy actress mother; he recalls “listening to old 78s on a windup gramophone behind the sofa in my parents’ sitting room. ‘Vocal Gems from Sunny’, ‘No, No, Nanette’ and ‘In a Persian Market/In a Monastery Garden’ to name a few!”

Andy’s first professional performing experience was not in music, but instead drew on the thespian aspect of his mother’s background. At the age of eight he landed a small role in a movie titled A Tale of Five Cities that also starred Gina Lollabrigida (if anyone knows where a copy can be found, Andy would love to know!), and he became involved more seriously in theatrical productions and even TV plays as a child actor. Meanwhile he was also studying classical guitar with a friend of his mother’s; but when the skiffle boom of the mid-50s both the classics and the stage went out the door in favor of the A1 Skiffle Band which, as Andy notes dryly on his website reminiscences, “was not a great success.”

His interests quickly led him deeper into the American sources of that musical style. Finding a reference to Woody Guthrie on the back of a Lonnie Donegan record cover, he sent off a letter to “Mr. Woody Guthrie, USA” that made its way back to him some months later. Guthrie was actually quite ill at the time, but after further efforts Andy was able to strike up a correspondence with Guthrie family friend Sid Gleason. And within a couple of years he had hooked up with Guthrie disciple Ramblin’ Jack Elliott and his comrade Derroll Adams after seeing Elliott perform at the Ballads and Blues Club during his extended London stay. Along with a young Davy Graham he became a steady fixture at the Elliott home; as a “shy 17-year-old” he was suddenly hanging out with Real Folk Musicians as the folk boom swung into gear, though he says the influence meeting Elliott, Adams, Cisco Houston and the like was more about lifestyle than sound. “I had already discovered Woody Guthrie when I met Jack and Derroll,” he says. “I don't think they were essentially musical influences – as Woody was and is. They were very motivational in terms of a life of music though.”

It was actually contact with other young musicians that extended his musical directions. He had moved to Ireland after the death of his mother and a couple of years’ work with a BBC repertory company, and stumbled into some like-minded bohemian youths. “I was doing mainly Woody and Old Timey American music when I met people like Johnny Moynihan and Ronnie Drew and later, Luke Kelly in Dublin in the early 60s. I quickly began to expand my musical interests as I heard these and other people at that time.”

Living hand-to-mouth, the regular gang (including a young Anne Briggs) would spend their days poring over Child ballads in the National Library, and nights in the pub sharing what they’d learned. On his website Andy recalls practicing those “lovely modal tunes” in an unlikely spot at their favorite watering hole: “I used to sing them in O’Donoghue’s in the very early morning in the men’s toilet, smelling of disinfectant. There was something wrong with the cistern and a drone emanated from somewhere all the years I frequented the place. Singing against a drone is something I love to this day.” When not singing duets with restroom plumbing, they would also take trips “down the country” to try and learn tunes from the local traditional musicians, though their rough’n’rowdy “beatnik” ways perhaps limited the cultural exchange somewhat.

Money being tight, and with nothing to hold him down, Andy spent part of 1965 busking around Europe, catching a “traveling bug” that remains with him today. Back in Ireland in 1966 Andy hooked up with some old mates and decided to start up a group. Naming themselves after Suibhne, a pagan king noted for his tangles with the clergy, they settled on the anti-establishment name and concept of Sweeney’s Men. Andy still remembers this time with great fondness. “Sweeney’s Men was a great learning period for me. In the early days, playing with Johnny and Joe Dolan (from Galway) I was quite new to playing with other musicians and found it tremendously exciting. That first summer of 1966 was idyllic – the kind of life I had dreamed of. The only thing that could have made it better would have been freight trains!!”

Times were tough for the group early on, though in early 1967 they suddenly had a single charting in the Irish top 10 (the haunting folk-pop tune “Old Woman in Cotton,” sung by Andy, that in retrospect sets the tone for a lot of better-known “psychedelic folk” that would follow over the next decade), and abruptly everything changed. “In the winter of 1966/67 we had a hard time earning a living and when we began to gain some notice in the spring of ‘67, we suddenly found we had been sucked into the life of a professional music group. It was never quite the same again.”

With Dolan replaced by their friend Terry Woods, the trio started to tour in support of their singles, and in spring 1968 recorded their first self-titled LP in London. Heard from 30-odd years down the line it still sounds remarkable, bursting with invention in its arrangements of British and American songs, full of dexterous playing and raw inspiration. It also sounds like a template for much of the much of the Irish music revival that would follow in the mid-70s; many great bands seem to have lifted their sound directly from elements of the Sweeney’s Men sound.

Andy took a break from the group as his gypsy genes kicked back in. “I got an urge to get out and travel the world in the autumn of 1967 and, after recording the album Sweeney’s Men, nothing could have stopped me heading off to Eastern Europe! I did half hope that I might get back into the band again when I came home though and I was sorry to miss the opportunity of playing with Henry [McCullough, who briefly replaced him in the group], with whom I got on very well.” The personnel changes likely had something to do with the group’s changing sound as well. Andy says that, “At the time I left, […] the guys were beginning to get into bands like Traffic and maybe the Incredible String Band. Henry must have brought a whole new perspective to the band.”

I suggested to Andy that Sweeney’s Men might in fact be seen as an Irish counterpart to what the likes of Bert Jansch & John Renbourn, and even the early Incredible String Band, were doing in London at the time – stoking the folk flames, taking the old materials and forging new forms in line with the counterculturalism of the times. But he thoughtfully demurred. “Sweeney’s Men only took on this parallel after I left in May 1968. During my time in Sweeney’s Men we were interested in Traditional music. Okay, some of it was Old Timey American, some of it was Scottish ballads, but we would have been much more likely to be at a Watersons concert or listening to Maggie Barry or Seamus Ennis than the people you mention.” But he adds that, “That’s not to say that we didn’t like these people. There wasn’t nearly as much traditional or ‘folk’ music in 1966/67 as there is now. And all of it was interesting.”

But he avers that, at least during his time in the group, they were definitely not a tribe of psychedelic weirdoes. “We certainly had some beatnik qualities that made the conservative people of Ireland look askance at us, but we were on very good terms with people like Willie Clancy and Martin Byrnes. It’s important, I think, to differentiate between the traditional and folk orientated first version of the band and the second more contemporary version that I was not a member of.” The later version of the group, down to the duo of Woods and Moynihan, recorded a well-regarded “acid-folk” LP titled Tracks of Sweeney in 1969, and before dissolving were supposedly the first Irish band to “plug in” and electrify their folk, though sadly no recordings of that period survive.

All the musicians stayed well within one another’s orbits however. Andy was in on the discussions that led to the formation of the initial version of folk-rock pioneers Steeleye Span, started by ex-Fairport Convention bassist Ashley Hutchings as that group started to send out spores, along with folk duo Maddy Prior and Tim Hart; instead however Terry Woods and his wife Gay ended up filling out the group for a brief & reportedly tempestuous time, before forming their own Woods Band and recording a classic folk-rock LP in 1971. Meanwhile, Andy sat in on the second LP by genuine psychedelic loons Dr. Strangely Strange (who really were an Irish counterpart to the Incredible String Band!); his distinctive bouzouki work can be heard gracing several tracks on 1970’s Heavy Petting. He also spent this time working with friend and fellow musician Donal Lunny in producing folk concerts as well as playing music together.

In the meantime, their old friend Christy Moore was building a following on the London folk scene; for the production of his first LP he decided to head back home to record with some of his mates. Calling on multi-instrumentalists (stringed things division) Andy and Donal, as well as traditional piper Liam Og O’Flynn and a few others, Prosperous was quickly recorded in the “dungeons” below Christy’s sister’s house in Prosperous, County Kildare, and boasts a natural echo that makes a wonderful raw setting for the traditional songs and Guthrie tributes on hand.

But in retrospect the LP is probably even more significant as a crucible for the legendary group that coalesced out of it. The album was doing well sales-wise, and rather than simply pull together a pickup band to tour behind it, the instinctive chemistry that had arisen during its recording suggested the more radical idea of forming a whole new band. Christy, Andy, Donal and Liam joined forces under the banner of Planxty, and as the cliché goes, the rest is indeed history. It is no great overstatement to say that no group in the last half of the twentieth century has been more important to Irish music than was Planxty. Certainly the feeling was already in the air for what would develop into the Renaissance that Irish music and culture underwent during the 1970s, but Planxty were undeniably the catalyst for the explosion.

Not that they were thinking much about this at the time. Offered a support slot for Donovan’s 1972 tour shortly after their formation, the first order of business was to develop an actual band repertoire. Andy recalls on his website that it was a quick and natural process: “Liam would bring the tunes, Christy and I would bring the songs and Donal would knit it all together. We discovered sweet combinations of sound. Like the day we discovered – on ‘Sweet Thames Flow Softly’ – that uillean pipes and harmonica went well indeed together. The mandolin/bouzouki interplay that Johnny Moynihan and I had developed in Sweeney’s Men was taken a step further with Donal’s more robust style.” The American influences had mostly gone by this point, and the band were playing a genuinely Irish music based in traditional songs and tunes but arranged with the excitement and drama of the best rock music, spurred onward by a bohemian spirit inherited from the ‘60s folk revival.

There was, however, no way to foresee the wild enthusiasm that would greet their performances right from the first night of the tour in Galway. Audiences were as surprised by the group’s music as they were appreciative (and the group felt the same way in return no doubt) and the four suddenly found themselves a cause celebre up and down the land. I asked Andy about this unexpected “crossover” success and the reasons behind it. “I don't think the word ‘crossover’ is that appropriate,” he commented. “In 1972 there was a large body of people interested in ‘music’. You’d often see the same people at a Rock concert as you would at a Jazz concert or a ‘Folk’ concert. It seems to me, and I have only come to this conclusion in the last few years, that when Planxty played that support gig to Donovan in The Hangar in Galway and the subsequent gigs in the Donovan tour, the people of Ireland were unconsciously waiting for exactly that music!” It was, however, completely out of the blue for its participants: “Personally, I was taken completely by surprise at the huge early success of Planxty. I had never contemplated success! I was into the music – as I am now – and ‘the bigger picture’ was not in the frame!”

“There was,” he says, “no conscious plan. We were delighting in each other’s company and differing skills. It was again a very exciting time and also a great learning curve. That first eighteen months was magical.” The group was an instant sensation in their homeland. Andy recalls that, “We played constantly from March 1972 till we recorded the first album in September of that year and onwards. The album came out around Christmas and was a huge success. The fact that it has outsold all the other albums put together should tell us something.” That self-titled LP, also sometimes known as the “black album” due to the shadowy live cover photo, launched a musical movement and remains a classic and a fan favorite today.

If anything though it’s bettered by its follow-up, 1973’s The Well Below the Valley. The performances seem stronger and more self-assured, the songs and playing tapping even deeper into their roots. In part, Andy says, this was out of necessity. “By the time we got to the early summer of 1973, we were still playing the same set, largely.” The group had been spending most of its time on the road, among other things touring England with Steeleye Span, and was forced to dig further for material. “The second album was difficult!” he says. “Like a follow up novel.” His own assessment of it is colored by the experiences the band was undergoing. “It’s good I think, but already a different approach to the music is recognizable. I think we had reined in a bit of the old ‘ballad group’ attitude that had made us so popular in the beginning. Sweeney’s Men was receding.”

But at the very least this didn’t hurt the group’s power, and Andy notes that, “I could be wrong. Certainly, I remember a gig in the autumn of 1973, just before Donal left, in Edinburgh, I think, as being one of the highest musical moments of my life.” Lunny split, in fact, to form probably the other most significant Irish group of the 70s, the fiery and equally legendary Bothy Band (along with, among others, Triona and Michael Ni Dhomhnaill from the earlier group Skara Brae, who are nearly as germinal as Sweeney’s Men). Andy says that, “Donal needed a new challenge. He had given notice of his leaving in July or August,” to be replaced by old friend Johnny Moynihan, with whom they recorded a third album, Cold Blow and the Rainy Night in 1976 before branching out their separate ways.

As a listener and musician, one of the things that has always knocked my socks off is the unique and influential musical approach developed by Sweeney’s Men and perfected by Planxty, in which the group seems to be playing the song or tune and yet “jamming” at the same time, tight yet loose, melodic and rhythmic simultaneously, and highly transportive both musically and spiritually. Andy agrees that, “For me, Planxty was like a musical extension of Sweeney's Men.” He says that, “The playing style of both Sweeney’s Men and Planxty was sometimes highly architected! At other times it was more free. Johnny and myself ‘invented’ the bouzouki/mandolin interplay one evening in his parents’ kitchen in Phibsboro’ while trying to work out an arrangement for ‘Rattlin’ Roarin’ Willie’” (heard on the first Sweeney’s Men album). The change in musicians helped to perfect the style. “Donal was a more rhythmically inventive player than Johnny. We had moments where we knew we could extemporize and other places where we would revert to the arranged.” In terms of the former, “‘Little Musgrave’ [heard on the later Planxty LP The Woman I Love So Well] was a good example, a long song with highly arranged moments but other places where we were free within the chord sequence; and we would sometimes ‘stretch’ the chords to play 9ths and 11ths. On the other hand, a song like ‘The Pursuit of Farmer Michael Hayes’ [from After the Break] required rigid adherence to the arrangement. It was a longish song with not much melodic variation and in 6/8. It needed all the rhythmic complexities we could muster to keep it interesting. This was largely Donal's work and he did it masterfully!”

Shortly after the recording of Cold Blow… Christy decided to pack it in as well. To fill in, the call went out to old pal and former Johnstons member Paul Brady (who had been considered for both Sweeney’s Men and Planxty but was always busy elsewhere). But the group was beginning to lose interest in the rigours of constant travel, and after discovering the damage that their accountant had been doing to them, decided to pack it in after a final tour across France with Malicorne, where they went over as strongly as ever with audiences.

Upon return Andy and Paul decided to continue as a duo, though Andy was also sitting in with De Dannan (the third of the “holy trinity” of ‘70s Irish groups along with the Bothy Band and Planxty) since their singer Dolores Keane had left after their brilliant debut LP; when the conflicts got too great Johnny Moynihan took over Andy’s place in that group and can be heard on their classic second album. Focusing in on work with Paul, the two quickly developed a rare chemistry and by mid-1976 were ready to record an album. Andy remembers that simply getting to the studio was half the battle on that one: “We were due to start recording in Wales on a certain Tuesday in August of 1976. It was two days after the never to be forgotten Sherkin Island Festival of that year (there was another wonderful one the following year). Donal and myself were there but Paul had decided not to go. We were to leave the island on the Sunday evening and make our way to Dublin and on to Wales. The boatman who had brought us over to the Island was a law unto himself and on the Sunday evening after our instruments had been lowered into the boat, he decided it was too full and rowed off before we could get in! Paul was left kicking his heels at the studios for 24 hours or so.”

Once assembled though, they proceeded to lay down what many connoisseurs consider the finest Celtic album ever recorded. Indeed, it holds up today as a stark and masterful piece of string-tangling, varied in tone, approach, and arrangement but unified by the vision of the artists involved and their drive to make tradition speak beyond temporal boundaries. However, Andy says, “I don't remember that much about the recording. I remember Paul recording an almost perfect version of ‘Arthur McBride’ and then discovering he had sung ‘Said Arthur I wouldn't be froud of your clothes’! As he had recorded voice and guitar at the same time, there was nothing for it but to start again.” The recording was also fairly experimental in approach, a quality shared by much of the great Celtic music of the ‘70s “revival”, trying out new arrangements & combinations of instruments, adapting songs in novel ways – basically, willing to try anything that worked in the service of the music. Andy’s other standout memory of the session has to do with the droning, modal air “Lough Erne Shore”: “We recorded the hurdy gurdy drone about 4 times with the string tuned to different notes so that when we came to mix it we were able to cross fade the drone from one note to another to fit the chord changes. It’s very subtle and you can't really hear it on the recording but it was very exciting as we did it!”

After successful tours of the States and Europe, Andy was involved in a car crash back home that left him laid up and left Paul playing dates solo, a situation he found he quite liked, and the duo amicably dissolved. Andy was hardly sitting on his laurels in the wake of his accident, and 1978 saw him guesting with the Christy Moore band and playing on Christy’s excellent album The Iron Behind the Velvet, and the idea was mooted amongst them and Liam that perhaps Planxty should swing back into existence. Meanwhile, the Bothy Band was on its last legs, so Donal was easily convinced to rejoin the fold, bringing with him flautist Matt Molloy, and Planxty was reborn!

This revived group was to record three LPs over the next few years (minus Molloy on the last LP and a half, who split for the more sedate environs of the Chieftains), and listened to with hindsight, if anything they actually better the original trio and stand as neglected classics. Andy recalls on his website that, “There's a difference of opinion among a lot of people regarding the music played first time around and the music played in this incarnation. Many more people seem to be trapped in the time warp of the Black Album than the After the Break period. Personally, much as I cherish the memories of the original band and its music, I find the music we played on After the Break, The Woman I Loved So Well (my all time favourite Planxty album) and Words and Music to be more satisfying.” Though it was impossible to be as freewheeling as they had been in the old days due to families and other responsibilities, the group was more mature as individuals and as a unit and it comes across in their playing and recording. And they were wiser about touring as well; instead of the mammoth marathons of the past they took smaller and very well received jaunts around Britain and Europe.

At the same time though, Andy was continuing his own busy and peripatetic ways, in late 1979 finding time to record his first (and perhaps best) solo album, a rarity in his catalogue of bands and duos, though with help from all the usual suspects. And in between Planxty gigs he found time to tour Europe with Donal, and again with Mick Hanly, and yet again with Gerry O’Beirne. An impromptu recording session in Germany brought him back together with Derroll and Jack, as well as Dolores Keane and John Faulkner, legendary Scots folksinger Dick Gaughan and others. Andy and Dick’s fun experiences there led them to make a duo LP together in 1981 that also remains among his fans’ favorite records. “The Dick Gaughan one was recorded in Germany. We had had a couple of rehearsals in Dick's place in Leith and my place in Dublin but mainly of my songs as Dick didn’t really decide what he would sing till we got to Germany. He did a fantastic job on my material. The more so because this was my ‘really really complicated’ period! Whenever we meet, we always make plans to do another one! Don't know if it will ever happen...”

Planxty Mk II dissolved slowly in 1982 as Donal and Christy became involved in the more directly “crossover”-orientated group Moving Hearts. In between various Irish sessions, Andy also started spending more time in Hungary, playing with musicians who occupied similar positions w/in Eastern European folk music, becoming close friends with the group Muzsikás who would become quite well known in “world music” circles later in the 80s. With assistance from that group, plus some other Hungarian musicians, and Donal (back again), Andy put together an experimental cross-cultural group called Mosaic that toured to ecstatic reviews but was, sadly, too short-lived to record. Andy reminisces on his website that, “In retrospect, Mosaic was a bit like a throw back to that first summer of Sweeney's Men. We were a very happy band but we had the sense to leave it at just the one summer! Still, I don't think I'll ever forget Márta Sebestyén playing the gárdon, a Transylvanian percussion instrument that looks like a stone age cello, on sets of Irish reels!!”

Amidst his incessant musical wanderings, Andy found himself part of a US tour in 1985 alongside Gerry O’Beirne, former Bothy Band fiddler Kevin Burke, and ex-De Dannan accordionist Jackie Daly, billed as the “Legends of Irish Music.” Andy notes in his reminiscences that, “We were somewhat embarrassed by the title but America is the country of hyperbole and we pulled in massive crowds.” Encouraged by the response, and with Arty McGlynn replacing O’Beirne, they decided to continue under the guise of Patrick Street. Monickered after the most common street name in Ireland, the group has recorded some eight albums and toured regularly during its (mostly on-again, sometimes off-again) twenty-year career (and they still field questions about “Which one of you is Patrick…?”). I noted to Andy that Patrick Street seems like a very comfortable group, like an old coat that fits just right; he says that, “Patrick Street jokingly decided, at its inception, to stay together for 20 years and become ‘an institution’!” The most recent edition of the group is almost identical to the original, with McGlynn replaced by guitarist and singer Ged Foley, previously with the fine House Band and an excellent fit with the group. Andy says that, “We’ve been through a few ups and downs and personnel changes and we were particularly down at the time Ged joined the band. What’s that? About 10 years ago? He gave the band a big shot in the arm, mainly by being such a great guy! He’s a good guitarist too!” Instrumentally fine, the group has toured regularly and is perhaps best caught in a live setting where the fire behind their delicate lilting style takes on added oomph.

In between Patrick Street engagements Andy found time to record a couple more solo albums during the ‘90s of original songs that continue his “music of the people” connection with Woody Guthrie, and he tours regularly as a duo with Dutch multi-instrumentalist Rens van der Zalm. And the traditional folk musician has also entered the new world of high-tech. In 1997 he decided to try a break with the non-artist-friendly world of the larger record companies and attempt working independently via his website, www.andyirvine.com. It’s a fun place to visit, chock full of Andy’s reminiscences, great old photos, concert dates, exclusive CD offers, and other items of interest.

Now, it’s easy to come up with examples of musicians, however innovative they may have been at one point in their careers, who seem to slide into a comfortable middle-of-the-road in their later years. And with all this history and music-making behind him, it would certainly be easy to understand if Andy chose to coast into his sixth decade on the planet. However, if anything exactly the opposite seems to be the case, and the early years of the new millennium find him, like his English counterpart Martin Carthy, revitalized and swinging as strongly as ever.

On the one hand, Andy’s interest in forging a dialogue between various musical traditions has continued unabated. Of late he’s been working with a new band called Mozaik, a wide-open ensemble that first came together for an Australian tour of Andy’s. The group, whose name plays on Andy’s innovative 80s ensemble, brought together Donal Lunny, Rens van der Zalm, Bulgarian mega-instrumentalist Nikola Parov, and American fiddler and banjoist Bruce Molsky. Musically the group combines elements spanning Andy’s entire career: Irish music of course, but also American old-timey and Eastern European folk traditions. In 2004 their first CD was released, culled from live dates on that Aussie tour, and it’s a fiery and inspirational cross-cultural string-band outing, the band flying impressively through various styles and intricate arrangements with an often remarkable vigour. Here’s hoping for more to come.

As if that weren’t enough, early 2004 also saw the return of the original Planxty, re-formed for a dozen Irish concerts that were apparently rapturously received by the assembled multitudes. Fortunately for the rest of us, the shows were documented in audio and video form and released later that year on by Columbia UK on CD and DVD. While the set featured a fair brace of the “hits” and longtime classics (Christy’s rendition of “Little Musgrave” is especially gorgeous), it also found the band in fine fettle – no mere nostalgia trip, this – the original quartet playing as gracefully together as if they’d never stopped.

Nearly 40 years on the road, more classic recordings than you can shake a bouzouki at, a deep and abiding commitment to the tradition, to its expansion, and to doing things his way, and no sign of slowing down. We should all be so blessed. So if Andy passes your way be sure to buy him a pint and get him to tell you some stories. Oh, and say “Hi” for us, would you?

Essential Irvine Audio

• SWEENEY’S MEN (1968) A fine album on which the seeds of things to come are clearly audible. British and American old-time tunes played with verve and a real sense of discovery, this suggested a whole new way to play the traditions and launched as much other good music as anything else you could name. A really germinal moment that still, heard with the right ears, sounds exciting 30+ years later. The 2CD Legend of Sweeney’s Men anthology on Castle is the best available collection of the group’s music; also includes the second album, singles, and various related tracks.
• PLANXTY – The Well Below the Valley (1973) While the first Planxty LP (the “Black Album”) seems to remain the fan favorite, for me their second goes deeper and heavier into its Irish roots, and with a slightly fuller sound too. Capped by Christy Moore’s singing of the very mysterious and wyrd title song, the whole group acquit themselves masterfully. An essential album. Available on CD from Shanachie (though an original LP will sound a lot better for you).
• ANDY IRVINE / PAUL BRADY (1976) As mentioned above, a true classic of any-style folk music. More bare-bones than Planxty, rough & ready, but also sophisticated & experimental. Varied arrangements (w/help from Donal Lunny & Kevin Burke), superb song selection, and a great rustic atmosphere. Available on CD via Green Linnet.
• PLANXTY – After the Break (1979) All three of the second-time-round Planxty albums are excellent, but this is probably the cream of the crop, and my own favorite Planxty LP overall. Their most exploratory album, you can really feel the band stretching themselves by incorporating different modal scales and Eastern European/Slavic folk music into their Celtic base; brilliant arrangements on the songs, and the tunes are as hypnotic as they are knees-up. Pretty timeless stuff. Available on CD from Tara Records.
• DICK GAUGHAN & ANDY IRVINE – Parallel Lines (1981) Andy and his equally legendary Scots counterpart Gaughan trade brilliant performances from their respective traditions, plus Gaughan’s cover of Dylan’s “My Back Pages.” An album of excellent contrasts, Andy’s hyper-complex arrangements of Irish tunes and traditions alongside Gaughan’s more bare-bones readings. Culminates in Gaughan’s heartbreaking singing of “Flooers o’ the Forest” with its soaring electric guitar solo. Available on CD from Green Linnet.
• MOZAIK – Live from the Powerhouse (2004) As noted above, this is Andy and his string band supreme tearing through a set of songs and tunes drawn from Celtic, Eastern European, and American sources, all executed with verve and aplomb. The Irish songs are as fine as expected, here cast in a broader context by the earthy mountain music and field hollers on the one hand, and the droning modal intricacies of the Balkan and Macedonian tunes on the other, forging unexpected cultural border crossings as though it was the most natural thing in the world – as for instance an uptempo reimagining of the old trad chestnut “A Blacksmith Courted Me” that gradually turns into a flying modal Balkan tune without missing a step. Available on CD from Compass records.

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