Culture That Made Me: Dónal Lunny on jazz, the Clancy Brothers and Sweeney's men
Dónal Lunny is currently part of Atlantic Arc, with a Kickstarter campaign aiming to fund the recording of their new album. Picture: Denis Minihane
Dónal Lunny, 74, grew up in Newbridge, Co Kildare. Among his school pals was Christy Moore, one of his great collaborators. Lunny has been the cornerstone of several iconic bands, including Planxty, The Bothy Band and Moving Hearts, and his fingerprints can be found in the music of artists like Mark Knopfler, Elvis Costello and Clannad. His latest enterprise is Atlantic Arc. The trad ensemble’s single My Son David is released as part of a Kickstarter campaign to fund the recording of their album later this year. See: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/donallunny/atlanticarc
As a young teen, listening to music on the radio, it was nearly always the trad jazz and modern jazz that excited me because they were more of a mystery. I was hearing strange chords and strange progressions that I didn't understand, but they were like magic. The people who arranged for Ella Fitzgerald, the big bands like Humphrey Lyttleton. I loved what the Dave Brubeck Quartet did – they struck me forcibly when I heard them first. They invaded the pop world, but to me it was a whole new territory.
In my mid-teens, I became obsessed with the guitar. I realised I needed to reverse the strings on it so I could play it properly left-handed. It felt so awkward the other way around. I got a little block of wood. It was about the same dimensions as at the neck of a Spanish guitar, but only about four or five inches long, shaped like a thick mobile phone. I marked frets and strings on it. I had this in school. I learned how to look engaged with the teacher while I was practicing these chords under the desk, working out mentally, going up the pitch of the strings to find the next chord, which was sort of a discovery thing. I was working out left-handed chords. Doing it mentally was a great exercise for the musical part of my head, but I almost failed my Leaving Cert over it.
Around that time, I got this opportunity to play with traditional musicians in Prosperous, not so far from Newbridge, Co Kildare. I used to go out there at weekends and join in sessions. There’d be six to 12 musicians. I was the only guitarist so I had free reign. I could bash away and people were tolerant of me. It was a pub, owned by a lovely man, Pat Dowling. It became very popular, a Mecca for people. Central to the session was Davoc Rynne. He lived in Prosperous. Often when we finished the session, which would be at midnight on a Saturday night, we’d head up to Davoc’s afterwards, a massive Georgian house with an extensive, flagstone basement in the Georgian style. We'd pile in there and continue the session until sunrise.
It was a time of discovery. I realised that traditional tunes had so many harmonic possibilities in them. I was very free with my experiments. Every time the phrase would change, there’d be a junction. There would be a choice of a couple of different ways to go, a few different chords you could play that would lead the tune into a different sort of colour. There was also the A to B option – the straight line, very simple. After years of experimentation, I developed a feeling for what I thought the tunes needed for their original form. What the person who played the tune in the first place, what they would have had in mind. That was the search – to give the tune its natural clothing.
In the mid-60s, the Clancy Brothers had broken big. These beautiful songs being revealed to the world and how they put a shape on them. There were hundreds of groups around the country imitating them. There were ballad sessions in every lounge in the country. They were delightful things, too, very romantic and charming. You’d have candlelight sessions. It was the discovery of the world of traditional songs. It was a brilliant thing, enlivening. Without realising it, I was learning how to arrange songs too. My own instincts about the arrangement of traditional tunes are something that I arrived at myself. Nothing is carved in stone. Nothing is definitive. People might like a particular arrangement. Other musicians might have different ideas, and so be it. Fair play.
Liam Clancy had a magical touch because he had a sense of theatre. He was an actor before he was a singer. He was torn away from a promising career as an actor at the time when the Clancy Brothers started. He would have agonised over it. What he brought to songs and singing was his gift for theatricality and drama. I produced an album for Liam and Tommy Makem – We've Come a Long Way. I don’t think it was a great success, but there were some brilliant moments on it. One of them was Liam singing, Fair and Tender Ladies. It was one of the most charming moments of my production career.
In the mid- to late-60s, I became aware of Sweeney’s Men and Andy Irvine. I remember the first time I met Andy. I realised they were doing something beautiful with their music. Sweeney's Men’s treatment of trad songs was in brilliant taste. Not a spare note to be found. It was like beautifully designed country furniture. It had the same quality – plainness but beautiful. It was an aesthetic goal that they all shared, that they had innately. Andy and Johnny Moynihan in particular.
Andy Irvine had a room in the house of Éamonn O’Doherty, the sculptor who did the 'Floozie in the Jacuzzi' on Dublin’s O’Connell Street. I’d just gotten to know Andy. One afternoon, I called around. I was sitting in his room, a single room. In the corner, there was a pile of instruments. Things like Bulgarian bagpipes, a Mandarin mandola, panpipes, a gadulka, a kaval. I pulled out a Greek bouzouki. I had to sort of extract it from the middle of this pile. I put it in tune with itself and started playing. I can still remember how enchanted I was with it. I loved it so much I played it for about three hours. Andy eventually got fed up with me, sitting there, plonking away on the bouzouki so he said, 'Listen, take it with you. Go.' So Andy made a present of it to me, which changed my life.
I have heard Christy Moore recounting the varieties of pronunciations of Planxty that existed around the time we first started gigging. There was Plantex. There was a PlanetX. There was Playtex, and more!
