Liz Carroll

Irish-American Fiddler
1994 NEA National Heritage Fellow
Chicago, Illinois
A woman playing a violin.

Photograph by Alan Govenar

Bio

Liz Carroll was born September 19, 1956, in Chicago, Illinois, the daughter of Irish immigrant parents from County Offaly and County Limerick, Ireland. Her mother, Eileen Carroll, loved Irish music, and her father, Kevin Carroll, a button accordion player, began teaching Liz traditional tunes when she was about five years old. Her first instrument was a toy accordion that her brother broke by accidentally stepping on it. To console her, she remembers, her father put his accordion in her lap, and, in a short time, she learned to play "On Top of Old Smoky." She played accordion at recitals in grammar school. Later, her parents decided that she should take formal music lessons. Although she wanted piano lessons, the violin was more practical, and there was a family connection: her maternal grandfather, whom her family visited in Ireland, played the violin.

On Sunday nights her parents often took her to Hanley's House of Happiness, a local music club, to listen to live Irish music. Carroll began taking lessons when she was nine from Sister Francine, a nun at her parochial school. But informal Irish musical gatherings, called sessions, proved far more influential to her development. Carroll honed her skills through years of playing at meetings of the Irish Traditional Musicians Association. This was complemented by her exposure to the music of veteran Irish musicians Johnny McGreevy, Joe Shannon, Seamus Cooley, Jimmy and Eleanor Neary, and others, who imbued her with a wealth of tunes, techniques, and stories that gave her a breadth of musical and cultural knowledge. Carroll's repertory includes horn pipes, reels, set dances, marches, and three kinds of jigs — single, double, and slip jigs — all associated with dancing.

In 1975, after a series of stunning victories in the junior division of the All-Ireland Fiddle Championship, Carroll, then 18, astounded the Irish music world in both the United States and Ireland by winning the senior division championship title. In accomplishing this feat, she was immediately recognized as one of the most outstanding Irish fiddlers of all time.

Carroll's artistry flows from a sense of deep connection and devotion to Irish music and culture. "It's just one of those ingrained things," she says, "the kind of thing you keep going back to." Carroll has never worked full-time as a musician, preferring to work as a professional nurse and stay close to home to raise her children. She regularly participates in the many sessions that take place in homes and community gathering places in and around Chicago. In the 1990s, she began to provide the music for the special choreography of the Dennehy School of Irish Dancing, and along with James Keane, Jr., is in demand for accompanying the championship competitions throughout the United States and in Ireland.

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Liz Carroll

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Transcript of conversation with Liz Carroll

That's Irish fiddler and National Heritage Fellow Liz Carroll playing The Didda Fly and Dodger, it's from her cd, Lost in the Loop.

Welcome to Art Works, the program that goes behind the scenes with some of the nation's great artists to explore how art works. I'm your host Josephine Reed.

Liz Carroll has been recognized as one of the great Irish fiddle players since she won the All-Ireland Senior Championship at the age of 18. And she's only gotten better.

Her first solo recording Liz Carroll, was chosen as a select record of American Folk music by the Library of Congress in 1988, and her 2000 solo recording, Lost in the Loop was named best in the Celtic/British Isles Category by The Association for Independent Music. Liz composes much of what she plays and the breadth of her musical ability is astounding. Her repertory includes reels, set dances, and three kinds of jigs. In 2010, she published a book of her tunes called, Collected, and it's now in its second printing.

Born and raised in Chicago, Liz regularly plays with other Irish musicians in and around her hometown. In fact, in 1999, Mayor Richard Daley proclaimed September 18, ;Liz Carroll Day in Chicago. But her musical reach has always been global.

And now that her children are older, she's added more extensive world tours to her calendar and became a founding member of the international musical group, The String Sisters In the mid 2000s, Liz teamed up with guitarist John Doyle. Not only was their CD, Double Play, nominated for a Grammy Award, but Liz and john played at the White House for President Barack Obama on St. Patrick's Day 2009. 2010 was a banner year for Liz Carroll. The Irish Voice named her one of the year's most 50 influential women. And she was honored at IBAM: Irish Books, Arts, Music with a Cultural Arts Award for Outstanding Achievement.

We at the National Endowment for the Arts like to point out that we were ahead of the curve when it came to appreciating the cultural contribution that Liz Carroll has made since we named her a National Heritage Fellow back in 1994. I recently spoke with Liz Carroll recently and began by asking her what makes Irish music, Irish music.

Liz Carroll: Well, that's a good question. <laughs> It's a very simple music, I'll say that. I know that when I teach, if I'm describing to them how to pick up by ear, let's say for example, if you have a core note, amazingly, everything is almost one note away or two notes away, and that's pretty rare in music. There's no gigantic hops. A lot of times--so if I say you're picking up something by ear, I'll tell them, "If you go one note away, up or down, and if you're wrong that time around, then just go the other direction the next time." But it is amazing how small the distances are between the notes. Now, with Scottish music, there's much bigger leaps, and you can really tell that that's just a different music. I also kind of say this, not to be going on, <laughs> but it can be very fast music, and a lot of times that's why a lot of people are out at the bar, and they're just kind of stomping their feet and throwing their beer about. <laughs> And when they're doing that-- but even with that very fast and happy music, if you slow it down, not only is it those small, little intervals between notes, but I would say that it also has the effect, when you slow the pieces down, of the very sad tunes, which are built to be slow. Does that make sense, Jo?

Jo Reed: I think it does. You know what? Why don't you give us an example?

Liz Carroll: Well, let's see what I can do here. Well, if I play a little bit of a, like a kind of a classic Irish eire, there's an eire that's called The Coolin', and it goes like this.

<Liz plays fiddle slowly>

Liz Carroll: So almost everything that was going on there, you can hear that the little jumps are like little thirds, the way people into music will know thirds. But if you think about it in terms of "do re mi," "do mi so" <laughs> would be like a little triad, so those are like little jumps of two notes apart. And, now, that's kind of what's going on there. If I play you a happy tune now, <laughs> let's see if I'm going to find a good one. Let's see.

<Liz plays faster tune in minor key>

Liz Carroll: So all these notes are very close together again. <laughs> but I'm playing faster, and you could stomp your feet to that. But if I slow that piece down...

<Liz plays same piece slower>

Jo Reed: Ah, yes. I can hear that.

Liz Carroll: Yeah. It's a funny thing. And for us that really know the tunes, I think a lot of people hear Irish music, and they might not be able to tell one tune from another. And in the worst cases, they think they're all the same tune. But in... <laughs> but for us that play it, like us, at some point we get fast enough that we can really pick them up at full speed. But as you're learning them, you really learn that there is a big difference there, that each melody is its own little game and its own little story, and we get to hear, even as we're going fast, we can hear this little character of it being happy, but yeah, being very sentimental at the same time.

Jo Reed: What attracts you to Irish music?

Liz Carroll: Well, it's beautiful. <laughs> I think it's in my blood. My father was an accordion player. My mom's father was a fiddle player. We heard not a lot of music outside of Irish music, but I really was attracted to it, and I always really liked it. I just have my brother Tom and myself. We just have the two of us in our family, and he avoided that Irish music like the plague. <laughs> It was not particularly his thing at all, so he was the guy that would be buying all the rock records and following that. He's come around since. But I wasn't particularly attracted to the---any to the rock or any of the things that were going on. I really liked <laughs> hanging out with these mostly older people, playing their flutes and tin whistles and pipes and fiddles. Who knows how you come to like that? I just feel like it was just born in me to enjoy it and to like it. You can like the Irish music on many different levels. You can really like the ballads of people like the Clancy Brothers. You can shun the Clancy Brothers and really only want to hear old-style sean-nos, which is the Irish word for "old-time" or "old-sound" singers that are unaccompanied, kind of with their eyes closed, sitting in a corner. You can have people that really want to have The Irish Washerwoman, you know, belt it out <laughs> on a fiddle, kind of like single bows for the whole thing, and there'll be a whole other gang of people who love Irish music, that would say they love Irish music, and yet that wouldn't be the Irish music that they love. It's a small world, but this is a big world, this Irish music."

Jo Reed: When did you start playing music in general, not just the fiddle?

Liz Carroll: Well, I started playing at my house. I think that my first instrument was the accordion. My parents got me a little toy, a little Coleco piano accordion. And I think for a lot of kids that like music, they do tend to be attracted to that part of the toy store. <laughs> So I was attracted to that part of the toy store. If there was a toy trumpet, anything to hit or play on, I liked it, so I used to get them little musical play instruments for presents, and I loved them. So I had this accordion. That same brother that I was talking about stepped on that same accordion, <laughs> and in the process of really crying over that, my father put his accordion in my lap, and so I started picking out tunes on there. The first formal lesson that I had at all was on the fiddle. There were no accordion teachers, and my dad didn't really teach anything. He just put it in my lap, you know? And it's kind of like, "Do what you can." And kind of he did that, too. He wasn't really somebody that could name a note or slow down a phrase. It's basically he would pick up the accordion, and he could start from here and go yea. <laughs> And somehow he got there, and it was quite funny as I was growing up, because I think it made me maybe particularly tolerant with just about anybody, for any reason, not just music, because it was just amazing that he played this lovely music, but if I slowed him down and said, "What is that one note?" Oh, it was just unbelievable that he couldn't pick it out. So that just told me that people are built differently, and to be a little bit tolerant of that, and that just because they don't maybe do it this way or that way doesn't mean that they're not making nice music. And so I went for violin when I was nine, Jo, and I have a little story on this. Do you want to hear it? <laughs>

Jo Reed: Oh, definitely.

Liz Carroll: This is kind of good. When we, living on the south side of Chicago on 55th Street, Garfield Boulevard it's called in that section of 55th Street-- and when my parents moved into this apartment building on the second floor, there actually was a piano in that apartment, and they asked did my parents want to keep that piano? And they said, "No, no, no." Because we were little, and they just thought we'd be making a whole racket with that piano. But when it came time for a chance to take lessons, and this was offered, I think, at--how old are you in when you're nine? Maybe fourth grade?

Jo Reed: Yeah.

Liz Carroll: Fourth grade. There was a nun there, a Sister Francine, and she taught piano and violin, and I really wanted the piano, so my parents bought a old upright piano and had it delivered to the house, and they couldn't get it up the front stairs, and they could not get it up the back stairs, and, like I say, the same nun was teaching violin. So my mom just went, "Come on, try the violin. Your grandfather plays. And if you don't like it in three months, you don't have to do it." So I went in, and I loved it, and who knew? So that was a big surprise to me that I just was infatuated with it, and I loved it, and I really just never put it in my case. I just kind of kept it out. Get home from school, grab it. If there was a chore to get out of, grab it. <laughs> I liked that it got me out of lots of vacuuming and dishes.

Jo Reed: Now, when you were given lessons, you were given-- I'm assuming you were given lessons in classical music or...?

Liz Carroll: No, the--

Jo Reed: More traditional Irish music?

Liz Carroll: No, no. I didn't take the classical music very far, and I always kind of regret that now, because I kind of think if I had actually known what it was, I think I would've been more interested. But my parents, they didn't find the classical station on the radio, they didn't buy classical records, and so we really didn't know what that was, or I didn't know what that was, but I knew what the Irish music was, and so I really, really pursued that. At some point there's a flute player in Chicago whose name is Noel Rice, and he's still teaching and all here in Chicago, and he asked me would I teach Irish fiddle. So I, probably maybe 16 or 17, started doing that, and I used to do a good bit of it in Chicago. Now there's a lot of camps that are dedicated just to Irish music, and in those camps you might have maybe three or four fiddle teachers, two or three tin whistle and flute teachers, pipe teachers, piano, singing, like that. So there's loads of them now, and they're all really kind of all around the country. You could be in….you could probably do that for a living... <laughs> at this point, because there's enough. You could be in Colorado one week, you could be in New York the next week, you could be in Tennessee the next, you could be off in France the next, you could be off in Ireland the next. You'd be a lunatic if you did, but you could.

Jo Reed: There really is a resurgence in traditional Celtic music, isn't there?

Liz Carroll: Yeah. Yeah. It goes in different little stretches. A lot of people would point to that maybe Riverdance and Lord of the Dance brought the profile way up, and I think that's really true. The Chieftains are going to be in town here in Chicago, and I know they're on tour now, and The Chieftains is the name of a really great group out of Ireland, has been going a long time. I think it's their 50th year of existence. They've been very influential. I remember Eileen Ivers, who's a great fiddle player, and she used to play with Riverdance, and she talked one time about "the session" really being the great equalizer.

Jo Reed: What is a session?

Liz Carroll: It's where you just sit down with other musicians, and there's no show, there's no particular audience. You're just with other musicians, and you're sitting down, and you're playing from a repertoire of all kinds of tunes that you found interesting both growing up, and along the way something that attracted you off of whatever-- the latest album of this person. And it's a great spot to just kind of see what's going on. I don't know if most people would know that side of things. It probably doesn't even look that inviting <laughs> if you walk into a pub, let's say, and there is a session that night, and it can be a lot of people playing instruments, but basically they turn to each other in a circle, and if you're not playing, you're not really in that circle, or you're kind of outside of it, so you might be sitting at another table and not in the thick of that meeting. Yet, for people that really love the music, they say this is the bee's knees. This is the best thing, period.

Jo Reed: It would be like a jam session for jazz.

Liz Carroll: Yeah.

Jo Reed: When did you start composing, Liz?

Liz Carroll: I kind of started composing right off the bat. I don't know why. <laughs>

Jo Reed: You mean when you were nine?

Liz Carroll: Yeah. Yeah. Oh, I think probably before it. I was always picking out little melodies. So I don't know what that is. I know that you can definitely start later. You can be an adult and just suddenly find out that you can do this. For me, I always kind of did it. Before I knew how to write anything down, and before we had a tape recorder, I think there's probably--there's loads of lost bits of music along the way. And even when I started to learn how to read music, I still have bits of sheets of paper at home of just whole notes-- this would be just your little bagel-- on sheets of paper. <laughs> I don't know what any of those tunes are, either, and I think at some point, I realized, "Oh, I don't know what it is," because I didn't know how to put the timing in, and I didn't know how to put in the time signature, and I didn't know how to put in the key signature. <laughs> So there's a lot of lost tunes there, too. But they are there, so yeah, probably around eight and nine I was making up tunes, and probably before on the accordion, but those are completely lost because we didn't get a recording device till maybe I was around eleven, ten.

Jo Reed: Chicago seems to me to be really instrumental for you as an artist, as a fiddler, as a composer.

Liz Carroll: It's a great town. It's a great town for the Irish. I grew up on the south side, as I said, and there was a great gang of people that were there that moved from Ireland, including my parents. There was a great gang that moved to the north side of Chicago. On Sundays, we used to meet at the basement of Old Saint Pat's Church downtown, maybe not every Sunday, but maybe once a month--to play tunes and meet. It's a great town for Irish music. It's a great town for every music, though. So, as I was growing up, and, like I say, as that brother would be playing other music in the house, and as we got old enough to get the car and go out, we would go out and hear blues at Kingston Mines and Theresa's and different places, and there's always concerts coming through, and there was folk festivals that were near enough hitting distance, including the Chicago Folk Festival that just went by, and you could go there and you'd meet all kinds of people playing. So, what a great thing? So you got to hear, for me, I got to hear the violin doing a lot of other kinds of music.

Jo Reed: Now, Liz, you're playing this traditional Irish music in Chicago. When was the first time you took that music and sort of reversed it and went and played it in Ireland?

Liz Carroll: I went to Ireland when I was younger because my grandparents were there, so we went over when I was five. We went over when I was 10, which was a great time, because I had just really started the violin. And, like I say, that grandfather played, and he was there, and we got to play together. After that, I was in an Irish dancing school in Chicago called the Dennehy School, and we went and did a tour in Ireland in-- I'm going to show my age now, but 1971, which was a very, very jolly, jolly experience. We had a lovely accordion player along on that whose named was Paddy Cloonan, who's still playing, and Mary McDonough was on the piano, and a young Michael Flatley was playing the flute and the whistle and dancing, and I was along on the fiddle. Just great fun. You just felt like, "Wow, finally we're in the thick of-- this is where it's at. This is"-- everywhere that tour went, musicians came out, and there were parties, and there was hanging and sessions, like I talked about, and relatives. <laughs> And so I really loved it. Eventually, I got to go back for the flackhills that were in Ireland. There's a competition over there that's called the All Ireland, and I went a few times to that, and I got a second my first time over there in the under-18, and I got first the next year in the under-18, and I got first in the senior the next year. And this kind of put you in maybe people started to know who you were, because the next nice thing that happened was that it was the bicentennial in Washington, D.C., in 1976, and I really don't know if people like myself and Jimmy Keane and Michael Flatley would've been known if we hadn't been going over to those competitions in Ireland, because when they were putting together people to play at it, they did come to Chicago, and all of us got to go, as young people. And again, here we are in the thick of it, and we're more and more realizing that we love it. And I got to go off on a tour with the Green Fields of America, something put together by this fellow Mick Moloney, and toured there, and yeah, who knew? I really, all the time, was going along, going to school, figuring maybe I'd be a schoolteacher, and then the wind blew another direction, and all these nice things have gotten to happen. I love going to Ireland. It's still the place to be inspired. You go there, and it's in everybody's blood, really, and you sit in there among them, playing, and it's a workout. <laughs> It keeps you honest. You learn a lot. It's a really high level, and I think that all of us American-born would really give kudos to Ireland to be the place that we just absolutely love to go, and it refreshes us, and it tells us why we're doing it.

Jo Reed: When you play, or when you compose traditional Irish music, is there strains of Chicago in it? Because it's very fresh, and you put your own stamp of individuality on it, and yet, at the same time, it remains traditional. That seems to me to be kind of a juggling act.

Liz Carroll: Yeah. I used to have people kind of say, "Well, you're an American fiddle player, and I think you were trying so hard to fit in with this tradition that you"-- I used to not like to hear that. But at the same time, I didn't really change what I was starting to do. I really liked chords. I think maybe that's the accordion player in me. So double stops on the fiddle really weren't kind of sort of being done in any of the old recordings of Irish music, or even when I started growing up, but I kept kind of wanting-- especially if it was a tune of mine, you'd want to kind of tell people what you were hearing, chordwise, if they didn't know the tune. And so in describing that, I think I did used to put in a lot of double stops, and I still do it. I still love doing it, and I still love just kind of pointing out what I'm hearing. And so if that makes me a little bit more American-sounding, then there, so be it. It's a funny thing that a lot of the musicians over there in Ireland now, I think, are really, really checking out American old-time and bluegrass music. I think if there's a particular thing, if I can say, in my playing, is at some point-- well, there's a kind of music that's called-- well, it's Kerry music. It's from County Kerry, and they play a lot of polkas there, and one move that they kind of do with their playing is this. Let's say if I was going to these four notes... <plays four notes on violin> okay? So that's a melody. If it was a polka, it might be going... <plays same four notes twice>, but they might put a little bit more of an emphasis into the second note by kind of dipping your bow onto the strings. In other words, you're pressing harder, and you're moving, so that you start to get a sound that goes like this. <plays again, putting emphasis on the second note> Does that make sense?

Jo Reed: Yes.

Liz Carroll: Because it's Kerry music, funny enough, these polkas, a lot of the bowing will go from the beat to the off-beat, like if you're going to do two notes on a bow. And, funny enough, American music also kind of goes from the beat to the off-beat, so that you're kind of going, you're tying these two notes together. <plays two groups of two notes> But in regular reel playing, you wouldn't really tie those first two and the third and fourth note together. Instead, you would've tied the second and the third note together, and then that sounds like this. <plays four notes with second and third notes slurred together> So that's a different animal, and funny enough, when I run into classical musicians, and lot of times if it's like these things where an orchestra is going to back up an Irish player--and this happens every once in a while, funnily enough, and sometimes I'll look back at the musicians, and I'll say, "You know, there's a little thing with the bowing." And all the violinists will go, "Yeah! What's, wait a second. What's going on? And I'll just tell them that, that it's really going, "Dump-dah-DUMP-dah-DUMP-dah-DUMP-dah," rather than, "Dah-DUMP-dah-DUMP-dah-DUMP-DAH-dum." And once they switch that over, they go, "Whoa." And if you switch that over, that's really Irish music. And so you don't have to do those stresses, but I've really started really kind of pushing those stresses, so I think that's part of my style, if you want to hear a little bit of that in a tune.

Jo Reed: I would love to, and actually I would love to hear some of that in a tune right now.

Liz Carroll: Fantastic. <laughs> Okay. Well, maybe I'll play it a first part that I don't do it, and then I'll play a first part again, and then I will do it, and then you can see what you think of that.

<Carroll plays violin>

Liz Carroll: And then, Jo, I can mix them up. <closer to mike> And then, Jo, I can mix them up, so then they can play off of each other. So would you like to hear the whole tune?

Jo Reed: Oh, yeah, please.

Liz Carroll: Okay.

<Carroll plays violin>

Jo Reed: Brava! That's beautiful.

Liz Carroll: It's just a great old trad tune.

Jo Reed: How did you hook up with John Doyle?

Liz Carroll: Well, I was doing an album a few years ago, and you were talking about the Chicago connection. It ended up being called Lost in the Loop. And when I was doing that album--

Jo Reed: And I just got that connection!

Liz Carroll: There you go. <laughs>

Jo Reed: Oh, my God. Where've I been? Oh, my God. That's so embarrassing. Oh!

Liz Carroll: Do you know what, though? I didn't think of it first, either. I was trying to think about how that tune worked around, and again, that brother of mine was helping me out, and saying-- "Okay," I said, "I can't come up with a name for this tune." And he says, "Well, what does the tune do?" And I said, "Well, it loops on itself. It keeps looping." And then he said, "What about The Loop?" And I said, "Well, what about Lost in the Loop?" And then we just went, "Oh, my God, look at the Chicago connection. It'll be perfect." <laughs> Plus, I've gotten lost in every section of the Loop. <laughs>

Jo Reed: Okay, so John Doyle.

Liz Carroll: Yeah, yeah. So... well, he was playing with a band at the time that was called Solas, and I had asked Seamus Egan, who is the leader of that band, to produce this album. And I hadn't really done a solo thing in a while, so I really wanted to have somebody else's ears, and I was really enjoying every recording that that band was doing. And their guitar player was John Doyle. And he's a terrific, terrific guitar player, and I think it was just exactly where my style was going right then. I just really kind of liked the dynamic playing that I was hearing from John. I don't think I really realized that he was also going to be the absolutely beautiful slow player that he is, and in fact who knew he was going to be just so well-rounded in every way? Because he's ended up going off and playing with an awful lot of people. But he's just terrific. And after making that album, my kids were just getting old enough that I could say, "Okay, I'll go off for a couple weeks and go on tour." So I went off to England and Scotland, and asked John if he'd like to come along and do that. As often happens--it sure happens in Irish music--as often happens, you could have a lot of people on a recording, but you can't go on the road with all of those people. Especially, a lot of the places really just kind of hold 100 or 200 people. You could never afford all the rooms and the traveling. But John was able to do it, just so as a duo we went off, and it was just such, as the Irish say, "a great craic." It was great fun. <laughs> So here he is. He's fun, and he's a great player, and he wanted to do it. And so I just feel like we've had a great run of doing, that he was on that album, he was on the next one that really just had my name on it, and then we got to do a couple of albums that had both of our names on it, and it's been fun.

Jo Reed: And you did Double Play, which was nominated for a Grammy.

Jo Reed: But you really are bringing Irish music into the 21st century in new and adventurous ways that still somehow honors the tradition.

Liz Carroll: Well, I would like to think that I've definitely tried, sometimes you could go bigger. I kind of find that I constantly go kind of smaller. I really like to look at a tune, whether it's an old tune or a new tune, and I really like to take a look and see what might be there, and so that's kind of maybe going more microscopic than big, but it's me being me. Luckily, I get to still do it. But it could be that I grab bass players and drummers and dancers and a big show, but I've really liked just going along this way, and just keeping it pretty spare. Would that make sense?

Jo Reed: Yeah, and we all like it, too.

Liz Carroll: Well, that's very nice.

Jo Reed: Now, you're working with Cormac McCarthy, who's a pianist.

Liz Carroll: Right. Well, Cormac is here in Chicago, amazingly, and just is a wonderful piano player, comes from Cork. And I was really just taking a look at the city after doing a lot of bopping around with John Doyle, and he was just getting into loads of other projects and wasn't going to be available, and Cormac had just moved to Chicago to go and do jazz at DePaul University, so he's over here, and I was like, "Wow, here's this really good piano player, and it's a different sound and it's a different person, and he's in Chicago. Holy Cow! This is-- this would be great." And there's a lot of musicians that are in Chicago, and they're all really great. It just was a chance to play with a piano, and I think all the piano players in Chicago right now, they have day jobs. <laughs> So here's somebody that's really playing music, although really his day job is jazz, not particularly Irish. But his roots are kind of like mine. He also grew up with traditional music in his home. His father's a flute player and a fiddle player, and he went to sessions, and his sister plays the concertina, and it's-- you know, it's funny. It's kind of like the same background. He was telling me the other day that he really was avoiding the whole Irish music when he was going to high school. I think that's very close to a lot of people in Chicago, too. Certainly, all the boys put away and hid their fiddles, <laughs> or stomped on them so they didn't have to carry them to school. It just was never a good look, was it? <laughs> So he was funny. He was like-- he was kind of the same way over there. They wouldn't be that anxious to be seen playing that trad music with those old guys, but he's come back to it, and he's really loving it.

Jo Reed: I'm going to ask you to play something else. Is that okay?

Liz Carroll: Sure. Let's see. What would you like? <laughs>

<Carroll tunes violin>

Liz Carroll: Well, the last thing I just played was a reel, so what if I were to play a jig for you?

Jo Reed: <gasps> Perfect.

Liz Carroll: And since it's around St. Patrick's Day, the tune that I was talking about before, The Irish Washerwoman, sometimes it gets a bad rap... <laughs> because it can be that fiddle player in a pub at one o'clock in the morning that has to play it really fast, and it's all about that. But it's actually a really quite sweet tune, and it is in old books of Irish music, and maybe I'll just play that little tune for you.

Jo Reed: Sounds great.

Liz Carroll: I also have some little variations. Plus, I might see what happens. Let's see. We'll just play it for you, okay?

Jo Reed: Okay. I'm ready.

<Carroll plays The Irish Washerwoman>

Jo Reed: That was fantastic! Is that as much fun to play as it is to hear?

Liz Carroll: <laughs> Yeah. It's actually a riot. I was just having a great time there.

Jo Reed: Liz Carroll, thank you so much for coming in. I really appreciate it. And thank you for playing.

Liz Carroll: Thank you, Jo. It's been a total pleasure. Happy St. Pat's to you.

Jo Reed: That was Irish Fiddler and National Heritage fellow, Liz Carroll

You've been listening to artworks produced at the National Endowment for the Arts. Adam Kampe is the musical supervisor.

Excerpts  from  The Didda Fly and Dodger from the album Lost in the Loop, performed by Liz Carroll used courtesy of Compass Records Group. Excerpts  from Before the Storm/The Black Rogue from the album Double Play, performed by Liz Carroll and John Doyle, used courtesy of Compass Records Group.

The Art Works podcast is posted every Thursday at www.arts.gov. And now you subscribe to Art Works at iTunes U—just click on the iTunes link on our podcast page. 

Next week, Sarah Greenough, editor of My Faraway One: Selected Letters of Georgia O'Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz.

To find out how art works in communities across the country, keep checking the Art Works blog, or follow us @NEAARTS on Twitter.  For the National Endowment for the Arts, I'm Josephine Reed. Thanks for listening.

Liz Carroll, Seamus Connolly, Kevin Doyle and Billy McComiskey

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Josephine Reed:  You’re listening to fiddler Liz Carroll playing with accordionist Billy McComiskey. Welcome to a special St. Patrick’s Day edition of Art Works—the weekly podcast from the National Endowment for the Arts—I’m Josephine Reed. Today, we’re discussing and listening to Irish music with some its best practitioners in America: fiddlers Liz Carroll and Seamus Connolly, step-dancer Kevin Doyle, and accordionist Billy McComiskey. They’re acclaimed performers with extraordinary breadth and depth to their music popular in Ireland as well as America, and all four are recipients of our nation’s highest honor for folk and traditional arts: The National Heritage Fellowship. I had the good fortune to speak with all of them in past few years – and you might have heard the individual podcasts — well here are some excerpts from each interview – and it’s woven together, thematically. So let’s begin this tuneful exploration of Irish music by asking the question: “what makes Irish music, Irish music?” Here’s Liz Carroll. Liz Carroll: Well, that’s a good question. <laughs> It's a very simple music, I'll say that. Let's say for example, if you have a core note, amazingly, everything is almost like one note away or two notes away, and that's pretty rare in music. There's no gigantic hops. It is amazing how small the distances are between the notes. Now, with Scottish music, there's much bigger leaps, and you can really tell that that's just a different music. I also kind of say this, not to be going on, <laughs> but it can be very fast music, and a lot of times that's why a lot of people are out at the bar, and they're just kind of stomping their feet and throwing their beer about. <laughs> And when they're doing that-- but even with that very fast and happy music, if you slow it down, not only is it those small, little intervals between notes, but I would say that it also has the effect, when you slow the pieces down, of the very sad tunes, which are built to be slow. Does that make sense, Jo? Jo Reed: I think it does, but, you know what? Why don't you give us an example? Liz Carroll: Well, let's see what I can do here. Well, if I play a little bit of a, like a kind of a classic Irish eire, there's an eire that's called The Coolin', and it goes like this. <Liz plays fiddle slowly> Liz Carroll: So almost everything that was going on there, you can hear that the little jumps are like little thirds, the way people into music will know thirds. But if you think about it in terms of "do re mi," "do mi so" <laughs> would be like a little triad, so those are like little jumps of two notes apart. And, now, that's kind of what's going on there. If I play you a happy tune now, <laughs> let's see if I'm going to find a good one. Let's see. <Liz plays faster tune in minor key> Liz Carroll: All these notes are very close together again. <laughs> but I'm playing faster, and you could stomp your feet to that. But if I slow that piece down... <Liz plays same piece slower> Jo Reed: Seeing Kevin Doyle perform made me realize that step dancing is woven into Irish music itself, often serving as percussion for the music. Kevin Doyle: Yes, I totally agree with that because, to me, Irish music is dance music. And, you know, besides the beautiful songs and the eires that they play but any kind of the traditional jigs, reels, and hornpipes it’s dance music. It’s sort of like a natural reaction for people to hear the music and all of a sudden their foot starts tapping or their hands start clapping a little bit. And so when they see it danced out rhythmically with the feet as percussion it sort of, like, completes the whole picture to them. It all totally makes sense then. Kevin Doyle: I really loved it right away. I think it was my sense of rhythm that I just felt a natural draw to that, to the music. And I could fit my steps to the timing. A lot of dancers sometimes struggle with the timing with the musicians, and the different music that’s played. And I always had a gift of being able to accent the rhythms with my feet, so it was, often times it was said to me that, "You really dance right to the music." And so I had a rhythm in me that just seemed to fit with my feet, and whatever I was listening to I could just impersonate that percussion with my feet. Jo Reed: One thing these musicians have in common — they all had parents who played or danced —they grew up with the music. Billy McComiskey – winner of the coveted All-Ireland Championship for the button accordion was born and raised in New York City and what he remembers is the music. Billy McComiskey: It was all about music, but it wasn’t just about music – it was about Irish music. My grandmother, Nora Sweeney, was a step dancer, and all her brothers played a little something. Maybe they all had flutes and fiddles, and if they didn’t do that they’d sing, and they’d enjoy a bit of a “jar”, as they would say. And my grandfather though, he was like a pretty quiet fellow, and he loved to dance. He was a step dancer, and he loved to play the fiddle and was very, very good. My mother, she was Mae McComiskey, she was an Irish step dancer and her two brothers, Matt played the accordion, and Andy was a flute player, and they all had – everybody had – regular jobs, that kind of thing, and managed just living there in Brooklyn. And my father came out, – oh, I guess it would be 1948 – right around the time this accordion was built. The first time I remember doing a gig was at my uncle’s house up in the Catskills, and he’d have these house parties in his boardinghouse. He didn’t charge anybody to stay there, but if you could sing or dance or you’re a bit of fun then you enjoyed it. He’d just give you a room, and then everybody would go, and there would be a bit of a party and so he was planned. I was five or six, and he said, “Do you want to help me with this?” I said, “Sure, sure.” So he handed me two spoons, and I just rattled away behind him on the table with the two spoons, and I just absolutely loved it. <music> Jo Reed:  By his mid-twenties, Seamus Connolly had won the Irish National Fiddle Championship ten times, a feat that's still unequalled. He grew up in a home where music was central. Seamus Connolly:  Both my parents played. My mother played. She used to scrape a few tunes on the fiddle but she played piano and played the accordion. My father played the flute and whistle and he was a sean-nos style dancer. Different in that he made his own steps up. Just tapped out his own dancing. He was a great dancer, you know? So we had music in our home pretty much all the nights of the winter anyway, when our homework was done, another brother who played piano and a younger brother, he plays the accordion. He won the national championship a few times too on the accordion and now he makes accordions. Yeah, so we had music in our home all the time. Jo Reed: Now how did you become a fiddle player? Why the fiddle? Seamus Connolly: My uncle played the fiddle and in 1954 there was a big series of immigration again, to America this time and my uncle left for America, he and his family for New York. They had at that time what they called an “American wake”, a going away party. Strange kind of a title, an “American wake”. But it was the notion at the time that people who left for America that they'd never been seen again. It was almost like a death in the family. So they had this big party. There was all the local musicians, my uncle was playing the fiddle and then during the evening he put the fiddle on the chair and was down talking to people. I went up and sat in the chair and picked up the fiddle and pretended to play and, in fact, some people thought I was playing. That will tell you what they thought about music or know about music, you know. But I went home and I said to my parents "I'd love to get a fiddle to try it out." So my father found me a fiddle, and so somebody put strings on it and they didn't know how to tune it up or anything so I tuned it up as what I thought it should be tuned. I tuned it in fourths, do, me, so, do. And that would be different from tuning in fifths. So I was playing away for about maybe six months and I'd play and getting all the sounds out of it the tune, but I didn't use my little finger. I'd slide my third finger up, which was strange. So anyway I was playing for six months and the tunes were coming out and so my uncle was the local barber. And he was cutting a man's hair one day and he didn't know who the person was so my uncle asked him, "Where do you live?" And he said, "I just moved to the town," he said "I play the fiddle." "Oh, my nephew plays the fiddle." And the guy said "I'd love to hear him." So I went to meet him and I played for the man and he's looking at me fascinated and then he said, "Well give me the fiddle." And he went to go play and he couldn't play. So he tuned it into, I suppose you would call it international standard tuning. And then he played away. He was a great player. And then he gave it back to me and I couldn't play it anymore. So I went home. My mother was in bed. I went up to say goodnight to her. She says, "How did you make out with the man?" I said, "I was doing it wrong. I have to start all over again." She said, "Don't listen to him." She says, "You're doing fine." <laughs> Jo Reed:  There's a mother for you. Seamus Connolly: Yeah, yeah. "Don't listen to him," she says, you know. (music) Jo Reed:  Liz Carroll has been recognized as one of the great Irish fiddle players since she won the All-Ireland Senior Championship at the age of 18. She grew up in Chicago — where Irish music ran deep on both sides of her family. Liz Carroll: My father was an accordion player. My mom's father was a fiddle player. We heard not a lot of music outside of Irish music, but I really was attracted to it, and I always really liked it. I just have my brother Tom and myself. We just have the two of us in our family, and he avoided that Irish music like the plague. <laughs> It was not particularly his thing at all, so he was the guy that would be buying all the rock records and following that. He's come around since. But I wasn't particularly attracted to the – any to the rock or any of the things that were going on. I really liked <laughs> hanging out with these mostly older people, playing their flutes and tin whistles and pipes and fiddles. Who knows how you come to like that? I just feel like it was just born in me to enjoy it and to like it. Jo Reed:  Kevin Doyle was dancing from an early age, winning several competitions throughout New England. He was born and raised with a tradition of step dancing that went back two generations on his mother's side Kevin Doyle: Well, I first started learning at the age of eight years old from my mother, who came from Castlerea, County Roscommon in Ireland in the 1930s. And she was a wonderful step dancer that she had learned from her mother and she brought her folk art to this country. So it was sort of like a natural thing for me after seeing my mom dance at so many occasions and parties, and it was something that I wanted to do as well as part of our community and part of our heritage. Jo Reed: And you danced with your sister Maureen, correct? Kevin Doyle: Yes, Maureen was six years old and we would have to do homework and then we would do a little bit of rehearsing of the steps that we had learned. And my mom would keep them fresh in our minds. So her way of doing that was every morning before we went off to school with – St. Matthew’s school – with our uniforms on, Maureen and I would be in front of the kitchen sink and my mom would be lilting “McLeod’s Reel” for us. Lilting was a form of mouth music that they used often times in Ireland when there was no instruments in the house or no musicians. And she would lilt “McLeod’s Reel” which is something like <lilting> and we would do the beginning steps of the reels, the sevens and the threes. And then off we’d go, she’d send us off to school. And often times she’d give me a shot of this Geritol stuff to think that maybe I would have a growth spurt on the way but the dancing worked out a lot better than that. <music plays> Jo Reed:  While we generally refer to Irish music, it’s important to remember that it’s not one sound. It contains many, many different styles of playing. Billy McComiskey, for example, — he goes for the East Galway style. First, here’s Billy giving us its history, and then a demonstration. Billy McComiskey: As it turns out, as I look back on it now, it’s being – it’s regarded in this broader perspective now, so it’s kind of now called the Slieve Aughty style. So there was two guys. There was Joe Cooley, from Galway, and this other guy, Paddy O’Brien from Tipperary, and they both played in this incredibly good band at different times – the Tulla Ceili Band. It was Joe Cooley that brought Irish traditional music to the public’s eye here in America. The amazing thing that happened around 1950 is these guys figured out how to play this old music from the 1600s, 1700s – it really goes back. Turlough O’Carolan, the harper – the great harper and composer – people started writing his music down in the early 1700s. Ireland, England, Scotland and Wales, they refer to it, it was just raging with music. It’s what the Celts did. It’s what they love to do; it’s how they express themselves socially. East Galway music in general is kind of long and it has – <plays music> – if that makes any sense. There’d be maybe flat sevens mixed in with regular sevens. A triplet would become a roll, instead of three notes it would be five – <plays music> – and how does this all fit? How can you take this little instrument and make it sound compatible with these instruments from 200 years ago? <music plays> Jo Reed:  Here’s Kevin Doyle explaining the musical differences between reels, jigs, and hornpipes.   Kevin Doyle: What’s different about each piece is the timing. The jigs are always in the six-eighth rhythm. Reels would be four-four times, which is a pretty fast four-four time. And hornpipes would be four-four but they’d be very, very – the steps would be choreographed very much to the music. So you would hear the hornpipe stepped right along with the music and it would almost dictate what you would be dancing. Jigs being very quick and lively. And reels, of course, they were done with soft shoes and hard shoes. They’re all unique in their own way. But what my old style is about is a very old, traditional, close to the ground rhythms, where you do a lot of work very close to the ground. And, as with the dance masters of the old days, it wasn’t common to show the sole of your feet. You would actually get mocked off in competitions for that back in Ireland. <music plays> Jo Reed:  Liz Carroll finds her inspiration from County Kerry Liz Carroll: I think if there's a particular thing, if I can say, in my playing -- well, there's a kind of music that's called – well, it's Kerry music. It's from County Kerry, and they play a lot of polkas there, and one move that they kind of do with their playing is this. Let's say if I was going to these four notes, <plays four notes on violin> okay? So, say, that's a melody. If it was a polka, it might be going, <plays same four notes twice>, but they might put a little bit more of an emphasis into the second note by kind of dipping your bow onto the strings. In other words, you're pressing harder, and you're moving, so that you start to get a sound that goes like this. <plays again, putting emphasis on the second note> Does that make sense? Jo Reed: Yes. Liz Carroll: Because it's Kerry music, funny enough, these polkas, a lot of the bowing will go from the beat to the off-beat, like if you're going to do two notes on a bow. And, funny enough, American music also kind of goes from the beat to the off-beat, so that you're kind of going, you're tying these two notes together. <plays two groups of two notes> But in regular reel playing, you wouldn't really tie those first two and the third and fourth note together. Instead, you would've tied the second and the third note together, and then that sounds like this. <plays four notes with second and third notes slurred together> So that's a different animal. So you don't have to do those stresses, but I've really started really kind of pushing those stresses, so I think that's part of my style, if you want to hear a little bit of that in a tune. Jo Reed:  And actually I would love to hear some of that in a tune right now. Liz Carroll: Fantastic. <laughs> Okay. Well, maybe I'll play it the first part that I don't do it, and then I'll play the first part again, and then I will do it, and then you can see what you think of that. <Carroll plays violin> Liz Carroll: And then, Jo, I can mix them up. So then they can play off of each other. So would you like to hear the whole tune? Jo Reed: Oh, yeah, please. Liz Carroll: Okay. <Carroll plays violin> Jo Reed:  Brava! That’s beautiful. Liz Carroll:  It’s just a great old trad tune. Jo Reed:  These days, it’s difficult to talk about Irish music without talking about sessions —think of them as Irish musicians, coming together, to jam. Billy McComiskey. Billy McComiskey: So a session would be – these people were like enormously talented, and it’s an oral tradition so they didn’t know how to read music, they didn’t know much about music theory, and they’re, “Jesus…Paddy no – how do you have to – how do you turn the second part of that tune?” “Turn” would be, “How does the second part of the tune go?” and a fiddle player and a flute player would sit and they’d be negotiating a little tune. And I remember like it was yesterday sitting with Sean McGlynn, and we were trying to figure out how to play this Martin Wynne fiddle tune, and in the course of two bars it covered two and a half octaves. It really took a long range on it, and we were trying to figure out how to finger this tune – it’s kind of like how a pianist would do – myself and Sean McGlynn. And when we finally got it Sean says to me, he says, “There’s the difference right now,” and he says, “They’re all down in the bar singing and dancing and having a great time, and here we are, sitting in the kitchen worried about one note.” <laughs> The way they would discuss the music, and, or, “I – Well, no, you have that all wrong.” So you’d meet these guys, and the next thing, “Well, we should try, we’ll have a session,” “I think he’s – that usually,” <mumbles> “We’re going to have –,“ and you’d have to sit down and try to find out what you have in common because it’s just very, very important. And to keep yourself calm you’d have a little something to drink and then there would – the next thing would be the next day. That’s what a session is. Jo Reed:  Liz Carroll Liz Carroll: It's where you just sit down with other musicians, and there's no show, there's no particular audience. You're just with other musicians, and you're sitting down, and you're playing from a repertoire of all kinds of tunes that you found interesting both growing up, and along the way something that attracted you off of whatever-- the latest album of this person. It's a great spot to just kind of see what's going on. It probably doesn't even look that inviting <laughs> if you walk into a pub, let's say, and there is a session that night, and it can be a lot of people playing instruments, but basically they turn to each other in a circle, and if you're not playing, you're not really in that circle, you're kind of outside of it, so you might be sitting at another table and not in the thick of that meeting. Yet, for people that really love the music, they say this is the bee's knees. This is the best thing. Jo Reed:  But Seamus Connolly remembers that in the Ireland of his youth — musicians didn’t meet to play sessions at the pubs. Seamus: Sessions weren't the thing. The only sessions that would be would be at the féile ceoil. “Féile” being festival, “ceoil” being music. So that was the only time that we would kind of get to play. Music was mostly in the homes at the time. It wasn't until the last 30 or 35 years that you had sessions in pubs and everything. I didn't go to a pub to play growing up. I went to people's homes and the sessions were different then. Sometimes musicians would come to your house. They wouldn't even take out the instruments. We'd sit and talk maybe all night and talk about ways of doing things or someone would say "What's that tune?" And they might take out his accordion or fiddle and then somebody would say "I have a different version of that. I heard that." So that's how we played our music. It wasn't going out to the pubs. It was people coming to their homes. <music plays> Jo Reed: Seamus Connolly immigrated to the United States in the 1970s — but he returns to Ireland and Billy, Kevin, and Liz make regular trips there.  Liz Carroll:  I love going to Ireland. It's still the place to be inspired. You go there, and it's in everybody's blood, really, and you sit in there among them, playing, and it's a workout. <laughs> It keeps you honest. You learn a lot. It's a really high level, and I think that all of us American-born would really give kudos to Ireland to be the place that we just absolutely love to go, and it refreshes us, and it tells us why we're doing it. Jo Reed: And all four are committed to is keeping the tradition of Irish music alive and vibrant. Accordionist and 2016 National Heritage Fellow Billy McComiskey: Billy McComiskey: Irish music, it’s been around a really long time and people, and it’s a labor of love that people have been trying to keep – they’ve been trying to keep this art intact for many centuries, and it’s an awful lot of fun doing that. It’s just a tremendous amount of fun. Down in Washington, there are all these young players. The funny thing about down here, and I guess it’s because of all this interest in folklore and this whole scholarly way of approaching Irish music. It’s the more progressive music scene in this area. What goes on in the mid-Atlantic area here is kind of Irish music at a very high standard. A lovely social thing.      Jo Reed: Irish Step Dancer and 2014 National Heritage Fellow Kevin Doyle: Kevin Doyle: It’s been incredible, everybody wants to see the step dance, as far as how it’s crossed over into so many different backgrounds. I’ve worked with some great dancers and some of the best have been Asian dancers. And last year in County Clare in Ireland, there was eight Japanese dancers in my class and one was a lawyer and one was a doctor and they’re just infatuated with the form of dance. And that goes right across the board with all of these sorts of nationalities how it’s rejuvenated so much interest in the dance. Jo Reed: Fiddler and 2013 National Heritage Fellow Seamus Connolly: Seamus Connolly   I am very pleased with listening to some of the young musicians now playing and recording. We had a concert here a few weeks ago. Two young Irish musicians and it was some of the nicest music I've ever heard. They were technically great, played in a great style, just a joy to hear them. So I'm very hopeful that the tradition carries on in such a way. Jo Reed: Fiddler and 1994 National Heritage Fellow Liz Carroll: Liz Carroll You can like the Irish music on many different levels. You can really like the ballads of people like the Clancy Brothers. You can shun the Clancy Brothers and really only want to hear old-style sean-nos, which is the Irish word for "old-time" or "old-sound" singers that are unaccompanied, kind of with their eyes closed, sitting in a corner. You can have people that really want to have The Irish Washerwoman, belted out <laughs> on a fiddle, kind of like single bows for the whole thing, and there'll be a whole other gang of people who love Irish music, that would say they love Irish music, and yet that wouldn't be the Irish music that they love. It's a small world, but this is a big world, this Irish music." Jo Reed: You’ve been listening to Art Works produced at the National Endowment for the Arts. This has been a special St. Patrick’s Day show: talking about traditional Irish music in America with four remarkable Musicians who are also National Heritage Fellows; Liz Carroll, Seamus Connolly, Kevin Doyle, and Billy McComiskey. If you want to hear the full interviews, go to arts.gov and click on podcasts. We’d love it if you subscribed to Art Works at iTunes U; just click on the iTunes link on our podcast page. For the National Endowment for the Arts, I'm Josephine Reed. Thanks for listening.