"Music is a pretty thing in fine company"

A weekend that ends with a re-entry stamp on your hand is not a wasted weekend. Just got back from listening to Gerry O'Beirne (guitars) and Rosie Shipley (fiddle) at Conor Byrne's down in Ballard, right across from the Tractor. I don't know enough about music to describe what Gerry plays ... he's not got the most powerful voice in history, but he does have excellent songwriting skills, and I think he must have made some deal with the devil to play guitar the way he does. He's irish, so that tradition is certainly present, but there's a lot of blues in his stuff, as well, and who knows what else. This man can even make a ukelele sound righteous. One of the highlights was "Long Beating Wing", a song about the moment inspiration strikes. He amped up the intensity about twice as much as the recorded version, and it sent chills down my spine.

I've seen him solo before, so it was fun to hear him play with another musician ... in this case, a young Cape Breton fiddler. So it was quite a mixed bag of musical styles we had this evening. She was also *great*. There's nothing like that extra jazz you get from watching someone live who clearly relishes what she's doing. The energy is terrific. It didn't hurt that we were maybe seven feet from them. I'm completely spoiled for seeing anyone in large venues anymore. The Moore or the Paramount is about as spacious as I'm willing to go. Big arena shows ... what's the point?

Listening to Irish traditional music just recharges me in ways I can't explain. It's not some heritage, "getting in touch with my roots" thing ... I just stumbled across it maybe five years ago, and fell in love. Something about the power and the rhythm, something about the energy of the collaboration between the musicians, the repetitions that just keep intensifying ... whatever it is, I'm hooked. I've tried to find my way into writing about it several times ... but I think it's hugely difficult to write about the experience of music anyway (opinions?) ... the relative placidity of a progression of lyrical lines just doesn't seem capable of doing justice to the sensory overload ... dunno. After tonight, I want to try again, though...

I'm not too sure about this Blogger spellchecker. It just tried to convince me to replace "songwriting" with "concreting". Or "consorting". Hmmmmmmm.....