John Kennedy

The Girls Along the Road

Veteran VT137CD

Meeting John Kennedy is something of an 'Event' and a breathless one at that.  He will almost assault you with a non-stop mixture of friendly spoofing, asides and comment, allowing you little input and even less chance of verification.  This is entertainment enough in itself before he even begins to sing and is a phenomenom that the notes here and some additional information from Nicholas Carolan, Director of the Irish Traditional Music Archives (which supported the recording project), agree on.  'A marathon session of songs, tunes, anecdotes, jokes, conversation and good company …' writes Nicholas of the actual recording sessions.  'My God, Kennedy! Do you never cease?' is the introduction.  John's own contribution to the picture gives a smidgin of flavour:

…I had started work in Cullybackey, which is a village about three or four miles from my home, at The Maine Works, on the banks of the River Maine.  I was 14 years of age on a Friday in 1942 and started on the 4th September, 4 days later, from eight in the morning until six at night, and to 12.30 on Saturday, for one pound and eight pennies per week old money.  It was a bleaching and dying works …

Rosie Stewart has something of this perpetual energy and the late George Maisey (from Watchfield) comes to mind.  So does Hubert Green in Suffolk.  It can be exhilirating though, in prolonged bouts, side-splittingly exhausting but you never either forget the impact.  The two aforementioned photographs, taken at the Geordie Hannah Memorial Singing Weekend, are most appropriate in this as they confirm JK's pedigree.  Geordie had a way of fixing you with his eyes and daring any form of contradiction: 'Honnah's yer mon!'.  You can't, by a different but similarly effective token, escape JK.

The word 'performance' is, perhaps, relevant and the danger might be that this could be coupled with the word 'act': both, it seems to me, currently used indiscriminately in publicity for gigs and festivals and giving an awful impression both of the ego of singer (or musician or whatever) and the gullibility of a passive audience.  Nothing could be more inappropriate in respect of JK.  Certainly, though, the imprint of style and personality operates.  So that, in one way, the CD invited participation and one listened out for signs of response: the indisputable 'crack' that JK generates.  The choice was evidently made not to accommodate this - always a dilemma in recording - and, whatever the possible loss, what we have here is a beautifully clean job (given the odd noises attendant on venue, acknowledged on the cover of the notes) which allows untrammelled concentration on the songs and music.  Here and there, though, there is a strong urge to speak out and twit JK with the absolute conviction that he'd give better than got.  His version of The Shipcarpenter's Wife (compare Eddie Butcher's: both singers measure their material exquisitely) provides such an occasion.  Inevitably, JK's party piece,The Missus, her Mother, the Bulldog and Me, offers another: the kind of song that milks listeners.

With this in mind it comes as a surprise that one of the two overwhelming characteristics of this CD is to do with the lyrical tenderness of many of the songs - seven out of ten of them.  JK's way of singing is quite light with just the merest touch of that high edge of apparent strain which Len Graham, as an example, also employs.  Given the lovely melodic movement of the songs this creates a plangency akin to the 'high, lonesome' sound of the best fiddling.  The 'shiver' on certain notes, which becomes almost a stabbing break in the voice in Reilly the Fisherman, thus never becomes mannered but is always appropriate, not just an ornament but integral to the line of the song.  In fact, in this song, with a tune which is not the most obviously comfortable one, JK's way of singing, with a very slight lingering effect, actually reinforces the import of the song.  Stylistically, then, JK is able to turn from comic to serious with no disruption of his overall approach, the hallmark of which is a clear elegance.  The tickling humour of The Girls Along the Road, which opens the CD is, in this respect, followed easily by the gentle wooing of The Lass With the Bonny Brown Hair.  The Flower of Corby Mill is balanced airily and the movement of the song made satisfying.  A highish key and that sense of 'strain' already noted above as they appear in Glenarm Bay (three syllables) are contrasted by bottom voice register influx on words such as 'innocent'.  Overall, the way in which JK can make a song his own by the impact of style and personality can be found in The Corncrake … a widely-known song where the by now familiar 'strain' appears and, at the extreme edges, almost squeezes words out, but where also timing is paramount and there is, ultimately, a palpable invitation of sympathy for the narrative line. (sound clip)  If you want to hear another singer who has this ability and a similarly distinguishable approach to songs, listen to Jim McFarland, one of the finer of a relatively younger generation in Ireland.

I appreciate that this is something of a hobby horse, but it is necessary for singers to sing through and beyond their influences in order to find their own voices.  This could never be better illustrated than by someone like Jim and, most particularly, by Kennedy.  He's is so utterly at home with his songs in a way which is yet understated - and this contrasts vividly with the big sound, made prominent by some over here who, whatever the intrinsic quality of voice, boom out in unrelieved monotony, seemingly much more in love with their own voices than with the songs.  It's a kind of 'shanty effect' hardly appropriate in other circumstances, I'd have thought, and it leads, amongst other things, to a great surge in sound in comfortable registers and a virtual disappearance of voice at top and bottom, a sign of poor pitching (and, even, inappropriate choice of song) in the first place and an even more poor appreciation of the span of one's voice.  The impulse in these two general cases is not just a question of kind and purpose: the former is mindful, while the latter is merely indicative of someone who sings songs but is not, as JK is, a singer.  It should be said that this is neither an overtly, nor exclusively, English fault.

One of the grosser developments at the Willie Clancy school over the years has been the takeover of Marrinan's pub by those who have two songs and, therefore, fancy themselves as singers and who not only monopolise but have the temerity to announce that Marrinan's is, by some kind of perverse definition, only a singers' pub: a manifest contradiction in all ways.  The claim would also come as a surprise to many including Jim and Noirin Marrinan.  To finish this plaint, I find such an attitude even worse in the context of playing tunes, where the excitement of managing simply to caper at speed converts to rash and characterless lack of judgement.

Since the occasion's fresh in my memory I'd cite Éamonn Ó Bróithe's playing at the National as kindness itself to tune, to companion players and to emotional satisfaction, and his intense, passionate but not overblown singing as a tasty example of one who can use the 'big' sound - and a pertinent contrast to that of JK.  Consider above all, as example, basic good manners, thoughtfulness for the parameters of a song, necessary sense of timing and, finally, intrinsicality in nuance and effect.  Big words, maybe - so, naturally, pick your own fruit in this respect.

To come back to earth, however, but also to do exactly as I've suggested, it is worth taking special account on this CD of JK's management of rhythm where, for example, the tunes of the two songs The Girls Along the Road and The Cloghmills Factory Girls are similar in construction and melodic phrasing but where JK pushes them along with individually relevant control and discernment to produce a marked jauntiness, shared in the whistle tunes.

If I had a slight quibble it might just be that these tunes are all bar one in march or virtually march time though not necessarily labelled so.  On the other hand, only one is at all familiar - to me.  Clearly, one has a lot to learn about the spectrum of fife-band tunes at the least and this CD is a painless introduction.  JK's choice was, apparently, dictated by his own history of learning from such as Hugh Surgenar.

He used to write the music on the whitewashed walls where we worked together and it was whitewashed over again every Summer Holidays and then we could start all over again!   Him and I fifed to the Lambeg drums for nearly 30 years together.

The second overall characteristic of the CD is a most welcome concentration on what appears to be very local material.  This is no mere gesture: an Irish girl, a Scotch lad … but detailed: Butler's Fair, McMullen's Brae and Mrs. Butler's pub in The Flower of Corby Mill; Glenone, with its road to Bellachy and the 'dark foothills of Curraghmore', nonetheless a modern song with space-ships, men on the moon, tractors and 'dozers, a very direct expression, if on the edge still, perhaps, of sentimentality.  This concentration on locality is not, of course, an exclusive pattern.  Both The Flower … and The Lass With the Bonny Brown Hair, for instance, employ many familiar broadside conventions of expression; but it is a measure of the quality of JK's singing that he can invest them with meaning and emotion and, as it were, draw them into a personal (and local) ambience.  Glenarm Bay would seem to be a relatively late reworking of such conventions for local attachment: again - by the way, there's a bottom register 'croak' as part of emphasis in some lines.  Further, in terms of the general point, here we have a selection of songs which allow a glimpse of a particular work-setting previously, perhaps, only known in England by comparatively scattered references such as are found in The Factory Girl.  The notes underline the 'unusual' face of JK's local culture, straddling rural and industrial experience.  This alone would be recommendation for buying the CD.  Listen to a few bars of The Cloghmills Factory Girls as illustration (sound clip).

The point is that this kind of local material is not a feature in English song as a rule (references such as are found in As I Was Going to Aylesbury tend to be generic) and whilst songs can be adapted - and have been - to different cultures it is well to be reminded of a specifically Irish tone in both English-language and Irish-language traditions, redolent of land and locality.  You can then look at your 'own' songs with an informed enthusiasm and value.

As a final emphasis on the element of locality on this CD: JK got his songs from his mother, his grandmother and his neighbours and friends, though he was aware of such as Paddy Tunney and of music-hall and travelling performers.  Some songs were actually put together in his locality - Glenone, for instance.  The notes suggest that people were 'obssessed' with music and song and that 'Learning began at home and continued in the factory'.

To finish: take any suggestion as invitation not law and then simply lie back and enjoy Kennedy.  For this is an excellent production all round, allowing us the fun and privilege of encountering The Bard of Cullybackey (!), and it follows, excitingly, Veteran's Maggy Murphy CD.

Roly Brown - 13.5.99

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