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"Dig With It" - Randal Bays, fiddle, guitar, harp; Dave Marshall, guitar and tenor banjo; Willie Bays, guitar
"Dig With It" - Randal Bays delivers a strong new collection of straightforward Irish traditional fiddle music, with subtle guitar backing from Dave Marshall. The title comes from the last three words of Seamus Heaney's great poem, "Digging". Dig With It is a mix of choice reels and jigs, slow airs and marches, plus some new tunes composed by Randal himself , James Kelly, Brad Hurley and Randal's son Willie Bays, who makes his recording debut on this CD at the age of seven. Dave plays DADGAD guitar and tenor banjo, and Randal plays fiddle, guitar and harp.
"The material on this album means a lot to me. It comes from my thirty some years of playing Irish fiddle, collecting tunes and settings from the many great musicians I've been lucky to know, and also from some of the rare tapes that have come my way." - Randal Bays
Track listing:
1 The Master's Degree March - [My own composition, I woke up with it in my head, along with the title. ]
2 Handsome Sally/The Broken Pledge
3 The Jolly Tinker - [James Morrison's G minor setting, from Veronica McNamara's book "The Professor, James Morrison"]
4 Humours of Ennistymon/Old Tipperary
5 The Bold Trainer, O - [a rare "kitchen" tape of Willie Clancy was the source for this setting]
6 Lucy Farr's Reel/Crotty's Glory - ["Crotty's Glory" was given to me by James Kelly, who composed this great reel in honor of the late P.J. Crotty]
7 My Love in the Morning/Who'll Be King but Charlie - [from one of my most treasured rare tapes, of Patrick Kelly the fiddler]
8 Strange Mary/The Traveller's Return - [a new twist on an old tune, and then one of my own, from twenty years ago]
9 Finbar Curtin's Reel/The Wheels of the World - [Brad Hurley of Montreal composed "Finbar Curtin's Reel"]
10 Tá Na Paipéir Dhá Saighneáil - [from the incredible sean-nos singing of Connemara native Aine Meenaghan]
11 Eleanor Kane /The Maids of Mitchellstown
12 Maggie Pickens/Banish Cnoc Na Gclarach/the Blue Whale - [the second tune a rare'un from James Kelly's family, the "Blue Whale" composed by my son Willie]
13 The Blackbird Hornpipe/The Rights of Man
14 The Friday Harbor Reel/The Milliner's Daughter - [my own composition followed by Patrick Kelly's setting of the "Milliner's Daughter"]
15 Banish Misfortune/The Monaghan Jig - [unusual settings of these tunes from Edward Cronin and Patsy Tuohey, from the newly discovered Francis O'Neill wax cylinders]
16 Dowd's Favorite/Coen's Memories/The Mullingar Lea
VISIT RANDAL'S WEBSITE AT WWW.RANDALBAYS.COM