It's always rather difficult to talk at length about folk music. The tradition of the music itself is somewhat to blame for this. Its roots stretch to nearly every corner of the world, employing every instrument from the bodhran (goatskin drum) to the banjo, and extending back to the very dawn of music itself. To reference folk music as a whole is to reference thousands of hallowed years and hundreds of cultures.
It was perhaps over this very tradition that Jesse Smith and Ryan McGiver, two Celtic folk musicians from New York, were dwelling before their show. They were reticent, though relaxed, sitting alone with an empty wine glass and bottle of water between them. They were not loquacious, and in five minutes had hardly said a word to each other. Yet the silence that they shared was rare and comfortable, and rather than their relationship be characterized in words, theirs' was one almost wholly characterized by their music. When I approached them I felt as if I were interfering.
Born and bred in Baltimore, fiddler Jesse Smith was raised in a musical household, with his mother playing fiddle and piano, and his first released album was at the tender age of 17. Coming from the scenic Catskill Mountains just northwest of New York City, the guitarist Ryan McGiver learned his trade from his family, particularly his uncle, and recently released his first solo album, Troubled in Mind, a collection of American and European folk ballads.
However, few of these new ballads were to be played, and instead the duo exchanged a wide variety of reels and hornpipes (folk dances), opening with the lively "Bag of Spades/Limestone Rock." Smith carried the majority of these dances on his fiddle, playing with the concentration and poise of someone long versed in his craft. There were very few flourishes, the fiddle needing nothing more than the pulse of a tapping foot and the backbone beat of McGiver's guitar.
They were pleasant reels and hornpipes and ones that would be interspersed throughout the night between McGiver's lilting ballads. Yet it quickly becomes apparent when McGiver began, that these vocals were to be the true asset for this pair. Like his face, matured, somnolent and hardened as the Catskill Mountains, his voice was both rough and plaintive. It evoked a vision of soaring green landscape, which the listener needed only to shut his eyes in order to be instantly transported.
This was an invitation that became progressively easier to accept as the evening wore on. Like the dimly lit, warm atmosphere of the cafe itself, McGiver's voice offered the audience the genial atmosphere of a rural Irish homestead, where one could sip his tea or coffee by the fire and lounge in simple tranquility. Their friendly conviviality with the audience during an intermission helped as well.
Yet despite its leisure, this wasn't an evening of simple frivolity. Smith and McGiver's ballads (derived from a number of interestingly eclectic sources, such as friends, old masters, and library books) told stories of murder, regret, and redemption. "It's something like Faulkner...I think it falls under the category of alcoholism and ultimate despair," McGiver said at one point, sharing a grin with Smith before launching into a rousing guitar riff.
Their last song, a Civil War ballad that bore the lyrics "Oh surely death has lost its sting/ because I love my savior" spoke the truth of his statement. Like Faulkner, these messages were draped in beautiful prosody but they weren't for the faint of heart. They were meant to linger, to conjure an image or an ideal and then invite to it a whole new perception. For a pair of musicians engaged in an ages-old tradition, these messages never seemed quite so fresh.
Post by Brandon Cook
