Gerry O'Beirne: News

Just back from New Orleans and another glorious Jazzfest. Randy Newman singing Louisiana brought tears to the eyes. One of the things i Love about the city is the relative absence of the corporate appearance that you encounter in almost every other American city and small town. You're not looking at the same half dozen corporate logos everywhere, and peoples' conversations on the street seem not so defined by speech patterns and drivel learned from tv. The streetcars are the same heavy iron ones, still going to Desire and the cemeteries. A really interesting place. And if you love food.... Bayona for garlic soup! N'Awlins Flava for po boys! Casamento's for oysters! Please come and support this magical place. The tent city under Interstate 10 still tells a powerful story.

We have a new taoiseach, or prime minister, to replace Slithers who is leaving rather than spend one more boring minute trying to recall old bank deposits. Like Slithers, Spliffo is from the ruling Fianna Fail Party, the political wing of the construction industry, as some genius once remarked. I remember seeing him years ago in Doheny and Nesbitts pub in Dublin when he was Minister for Health. Guinness stains all down his shirt front, a cigarette perched daintily between his lips, he seemed happier then.

The Bog Bodies And Other Stories: Music For Guitar". I thought that about covered it. "Congratulations on the birth of the Bog Bodies", a friend emailed helpfully. Then I had people at gigs saying " I'd like a copy of the Bog Babies please" and "two Bog People and a Half Moon Bay". It's been fun launching the new album and mostly it's been enthusiastically received. But Echoes, the American radio show which kindly gave it album of the month, while liking the music very well, expressed surprise that I should choose such a "macabre image". Poor Oldcroghan Man! Poor Clonycavan Man! I never thought of them as being macabre! I imagine you won't either if you go to see them in the National Museum in Dublin. To encounter them is to see two incredibly interesting people who have come to us from so very far away but who seem oddly familiar - the bog and time seem to have burnished and defined them into an essence of their persons and personalities, almost as if they have become works of art. It's fascinating, and I just wanted to tell their stories. Macabre indeed! Save the Bog Bodies!

Cloned back from my old web site by popular demand (well a few people have asked me about it) I hope this is helpful. Warning: If you don't play guitar you may find what follows excruciating. Even if you do...

Guitar tunings from my Half Moon Bay album and elsewhere:

I'm not a full-time guitar nerd--I don't buy the guitar magazines for example--but I’ve always had fun with tunings. I started out with some for slide guitar : DGDGBD and DADF#AD which I still use, but curiousity led me further afield. Perhaps too far - I remember tuning the 12 string to 12 different notes and writing a piece for it which luckily I’ve managed to forget…
I always imagine i know enough tunings to keep me busy but every now and then a new one emerges and gives me new colours, new architecture….

Anyway on the Half Moon Bay album, The Holy Ground is in a dropped D tuning – DADGBE. Dropped D tuning has the advantage of familiarity but has a grandeur about it and the additional bass notes are nice especially the droning low D. 1874, another old song of mine, is in this tuning.

Then Off The Rocks At Clahane is on the National Steel in DADF#AD which is also the tuning for Darkness Now and Silver Line Sarah and Caperucita. There’s something about this tuning that encourages melody writing on the top strings as well as bright poppy harmony. And fingerpicking is good and propulsive with it. I think John Fahey used to use this tuning a fair bit so it must have been popular too with the old country blues guitarists.

Then Long Beating Wing and Western Highway and Half Moon Bay are all in C tuning – CGCGCE.
C tuning has been fertile ground for me, particularly on the 12 string. It seems to bring out a lot of momentum and melodies that turn and hinge on the dominant chord. It makes you want to tell a story, to write a song.

Angel Angel is in EEEEBE, believe it or not, a very rocky sound which sometimes tends towards Middle Eastern music.
I once had about twenty guitarists jam on this tuning at a festival workshop in New Zealand, a splendid sound and just a tad anarchic. Like a pipe band without the, um, pipes.
Another variation on that is EEBEBE
If you can’t have fun with this one, well, maybe fun is not your thing.

Shades Of Gloria is in normal or, as you might say, missionary tuning. So is When you're Gone I Say Your Name. and The Days Of Joe O’Dowd , another old song I’ve been doing recently.

The ukulele for The Glass Boat is in normal uke tuning where the first string is a B - ADF#B. I tune the Tiplé to this as well for a piece called Fergus River Roundelay which will be on the new album.

A new one for me is BABEAE and I wrote a song with it about Ned Kelly the outlaw which is called The Burning Ground of Glenrowan and also a song called Sekou Camara about an immigrant to Ireland from Guinea . And I’m working out some instrumental passages with this tuning for the next album.

Winter Sun, a long 12 string instrumental piece is in a modified C tuning, CGCECE. So is a new piece, Cloneycavan Man, which is inspired by one of the two new bog bodies on display in the National Museum in Dublin. The other new bog body piece, Old Croghan Man, is in regular C tuning.

Some guitar music I wrote for the film “Shannon – River of Dreams” is in DF#DEAD.

When I’m accompanying Irish traditional music, I most often use a CGDGBD tuning which if you capo on the 2nd fret, gives you an open A chord with a D bass note. From there you can reach all the usual keys without all that annoying moving around of the capo. Even if you use a Drop D tuning and are always moving the capo I think it’s a shame that you’re not getting all the voicings that a guitar can give you. The same with DADGAD.

Well there’s always more tunings but that’s plenty to be going on with. It’s all about pursuing your own journey in music. If you get lost, just keep going. And be sure to write.

The annual Dublin winter gig looms. It's next friday in the Cobblestone. Expensive silks and fine Donegal tweed emerging from mothballs, intensive rehearsal already under way in Raheny Castle, a punishing fitness regime on the sand dunes of Bull Island, an all out media blitz being contemplated for friday afternoon some time - all the usual trappings. No detail too small etc. Now all we need is yourselves.

New Orleans. For any music lover it's a pilgrimage.
A city forsaken and its people insulted and still in deep trouble but it's wonderful to be there.
I went to Vaughan's in the Bywater last thursday night to see Kermit Ruffins and the BBQ Swingers for more fun than is decent and Tuesday night in the Maple Leaf with the blaring Rebirth Brass Band. Going to a dance or a gig there(I'm not talking about Bourbon Street) is to see just how good music can be, absolutely everyone having the best time they could possibly have and no bullshit of any kind. Then of course there's the food and most of all the people. You seem to remember every conversation you ever had in New Orleans with friends, taxi drivers, strangers. When you're leaving town have beignets and coffee in the Louis Armstrong airport terminal and listen to the only decent piped music you're ever likely to hear. Thus fortified, you can more easily dance through the security cafuffle, laptop out, shoes off and away from what is still sheer magic. Having said all that, will most of the people of New Orleans ever be able to return? It doesn't seem likely, and that is an incredible tragedy. There are worrying signs too, of police crackdowns on second line and Mardi Gras Indian marches. Insanity.

I saw "Shut Up And Sing", the Dixie Chicks movie last night in Nashville. It's a good documentary, and great fun. They're as well out of country music it seems to me. It's the political season in the states, and hard to see the coming election being anything other than a train wreck seeing as an electronic vote isn't worth the paper it's written on, to paraphrase Louis B Mayer on the subject of verbal contracts. Meanwhile I'm heading out to Atlanta, Savannah and Dataw Island for the next few days, and then down to the beloved and betrayed City of New Orleans.

Thinking about it, an odd World Cup this year, shaping up to be a great one and then somehow leaving a funny taste with some disappointing matches, though I thought the Italians were good enough overall for their win. But I was very proud of my Ghanaians, going down to Brazil without their best player. The Black Stars shall rise again!

I haven't seen him since we both lived in L.A. years ago, so I was glad to see Robin Williamson this weekend in St James' Church, Dingle, and at the top of his form. In an era when folk and traditional music is so bound by musical conventions, so very straitlaced, what a treat to hear someone be very much himself. A great picture he makes too, with his harp and bass drum.

Surely the most offensive sight in Ireland these days is all the SUV's on the road. I understand you need something big and mighty to get around in northern Michigan in winter, but Ireland? Anyone caught with an SUV on Irish roads should forfeit their apartments in Turkey and Croatia and be made to go on Big Brother for the rest of their lives.

I just heard the sad news that Micheál O'Domhnaill passed away. Micheal was a fantastic singer and guitar player who of course was best known for his part in the incredible Bothy Band. I was privileged to work with him on his album with Kevin Burke, "Promenade". Amazing rhythm in his guitar and emotion and soul in his voice, both of which went to the very heart of him.

Hello everyone. Heading back to Ireland. See you at the Midnight Well reunion in Sligo next weekend.