I'll admit that my view of the Stone Hill Irish Festival was pretty
much limited to the dance tent. I occasionally ventured out to
hear little snatches of heavily amplified Irish and other international
tunes and songs fortified by powerful drums and driving electric
bass. One such excursion was to locate a band playing cajun tunes,
although I didn't catch their name.
My attention would quickly return to traditional Irish dance music
however when I heard wonderful sets of jigs, reels, hornpipes,
and polkas played by the Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Eireann
and the Ceol Tradisiúnta na hÉireann ceili bands.
I've been playing regularly at the monthly dances in the Boston
area by both Comhaltas and Ceol Tradisiúnta na hÉireann,
and when I got an official invitation to come to Stonehill and
play for set dancing I jumped at the opportunity.
Ceol Tradisiúnta na hÉireann was scheduled to start
at 2pm at the dance tent. When I arrived, things were running
late, and the Angel Band was still finishing up their set. I'm
not sure why they were scheduled for the dance tent, as they specialize
in non-dance "listening" tunes. I noticed a few days
earlier at another festival that they were also mistakenly advertised
as an "Irish dance band." Their forte is presenting
the harp music of O'Carolan and they have developed the biggest
performance repertoire of his music of any band that I know of.
Leading them was the accomplished Irish harpist, Mary Paul, from
Greenland, New Hampshire.
As they finished their act at 2:30 pm, the dance floor quickly
crowded over and the Ceol Tradisiúnta na hÉireann
ceili band took the stage. A wall of accordions faced the dance
floor and I sat behind the accordions at my portable piano along
with drummer Paul Mangion, who is also a percussionist with the
Crawdad Wranglers. My pleasure at playing hot sets of jigs, reels,
and polkas was periodically interrupted however, when an overloaded
generator would cause voltage fluctuations to shut off my piano
amplifier. We played high energy tunes for 3 hours straight, though,
until it was time for for the Comhaltas band to take the stage.
I took a break at this time to visit some of the vendors tents
and ran into Charlie Clarke of Ossian USA who was in good spirits
at his booth, and enjoying the festival. I returned to the dance
tent to listen to the Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Eireann
ceili band. The musicians were led by Mike Reynolds on accordion,
and included a fiddle section, whistle and flute section, other
miscellaneous instruments, and piano back up by Brendan Dolan,
my piano teacher. After a while I joined the band with my fiddle
and sat close to Brendan to pick up tips on his fine accompaniment.
I stayed at the dance tent until close to 9 pm, as the weather
got so cool as to require every extra layer of clothing that we
had brought along. Cool weather is perfect for dancers however,
and it was great fun to watch them as we played. I overheard one
of the male dancers mention that he was a marathon runner, and
the majority of dancers that I observed also ably managed to enjoy
hour after hour of high speed sets for one of the most fun types
of aerobic exercise imaginable!
Ryan Thomson