Still Connected To His Roots

Gwen Orel Interviews Music Sensation Donie Carroll

Donie Carroll is not playing golf. The balladeer, declared Cork Man of the Year this year, launched his new CD "Down the Slippery Gap" at the Blarney Star series at Glucksman Ireland House this past Friday, spent the morning at WFUV, visiting the show "A Thousand Welcomes" with the Washington Square Harp and Shamrock Orchestra, then he did this interview, then he was due to play at a benefit in Astoria.

So no golf, though, he says, "I travel to play!"

He's only been playing about twelve years, but "I was a caddy when I was young. I would make three shillings, nine pence to caddy one round. That's equivalent to about 25 cents today. Not even 25 cents. And I would have to give it to my mother, as the youngest of 10. My mother raised two cousins as well, so I was number 14 in the pecking order! We had an outdoor toilet. But it didn't smell. We bathed every night."

Too much information? Maybe, but it's fascinating, funny, and deeply connected to his roots. Just like his music. Just like his style in performance.

Although Carroll has lived in the U.S. since the early 90s, he returns to Ireland three times a year or so. On 17th May will launch the CD in Ireland at Spailin Fanach, a well-known traditional pub in Cork.

He lives in Sunnyside these days, which he loves for "the quiet, the ethnicity, the bridges, the city," although when he first came over "I was moving around, getting free lodgings."

He'd been playing with a band called Finnegan's Wake. The band was supposed to tour America but it fell through, at the last minute.

Then he received an invitation from Paddy McCarthy (who now publishes this newspaper and Irish Connections Magazine) to come over with another Cork musician. "I was only here a very short time when I thought, this is the place for me."

He'll describe that choice and his journey to Sunnyside in a documentary made by a German television company about emigration that, he said, will show "A day in the life of Donie Carroll," which will shoot in May.

He'll take the crew to the Butcher Block, a shop which sells Irish products, buy black pudding and make breakfast; invite some members of the Fire Department and police who are Irish and take the crew to a Sunnyside session.

Apart from the honor that comes with being named Cork Man of the Year, it's also a beacon that shines a light on him and is "how I got the call from the company."

"Down the Slippery Gap" is his first solo CD - he's made one other, "Donie Carroll and Friends," which he describes as "kind of a live album."

Carroll is one of those players that musicians know - with Gus Murray, John Ford and Andy McGann, Carroll anchored a well known session at the former Kate Kearney's Bar, where Joe Banjo Burke and Johnny Cronin also often played.

With this album, those who missed those sessions get to know him too.

Although it's a solo album, friends and fixtures of the New York trad world play - including Cherish the Ladies' Joanie Madden, Cat and Fiddle Session leader Tony Horswill, Blarney Star organizer Don Meade, producer/guitarist Gabriel Donohue, Lillie's Session organizer Daniel Neeley, fiddler Heather Martin Bixler. Cork balladeer Jimmy Crowley also appears.

Carroll made the album happened relatively quickly - over the course of four months - but looked at another way, it's taken nearly a lifetime. His painting contracting business keeps him busy, but when an opportunity came up, he grabbed it.

"I got one of the songs over 20 years ago. 'Up the Coal Quay' was written by a local historian by the name of Richard T. Cooke."

Although he was still with the band when he got the song, "I wanted to keep it for myself, and decided when I would do a solo album, that I would record it."

It's the only sliver of selfishness you see in Carroll and it's a choice you'd have to support.

The waltz suits him perfectly, and at Glucksman Ireland House (as on the recording), Carroll adds the oom-pah of a tuba, played by "Tuba Joe" Exley.

Carroll plays a lot of waltzes, which he says he absolutely loves, and a number of old-fashioned songs not particularly "traditional" as the music world understands it, but "traditional" in the very real sense of what people sang: these include Stephen Foster's "Beautiful Dreamer" and the World War I charmer "Till We Meet Again" by Richard A. Whiting and Raymond B. Egan. "My father used to sing that. He was a fantastic singer. I never realized that he was so good, but when I decided to do the solo album and went to find this song I only had bits of it myself that I remembered. I chased up the digital history and found it and listened to old-timers singing it, and I thought my father would be every bit as good."

Carroll's family wasn't a traditional musical family, but music was always around. "We used to have parties at the house, for wedding receptions, where I heard a lot of this singing. Also at funerals."

At Mick Moloney's "Irish Christmas" concerts at the Irish Arts Center last year Carroll performed "the very first song I ever sang." What was it? Not some old Irish air, nor a plaintive World War I melody, but "Mary's Boychild," recorded by Harry Belafonte in the late 50s. That's "tradition," in a very real, unpretentious sense.

The thriving pub scene also inspired him. "As soon as I could I grew a beard, I wanted to be like these guys, the Dubliners. I'd be the same age as the Dubliners."

He began playing pubs in Cork. "I think I really would have had a good career, only drink took over." He hasn't had a drink now in over 24 years. "Today's the day. It can come back and defeat you at any time." It's been a long way to Cork Man of the Year.

Adding that tuba relates back to his roots also, and "the showband scene in Ireland. These 7-8 piece bands, they all had a bit of brass, trumpet, saxophone - they'd cover all the versions of the hit parade at the time."

He heard "Beautiful Dreamer" that way, and when he came across it a few years ago, "I got this kind of feeling a loneliness, it was doing something for me. So I started singing it. It was just something I wanted to do, a nostalgic thing for me to do, to record these songs."

Like Maura O'Connell, these early Twentieth Century songs were part of his heritage as much as the traditional songs. "This is a song that she should record, 'Till We Meet Again.'"

The arrangement of these songs in an Irish style is all Donie though. The simplicity and lack of overt sentimentality actually makes the songs that much more poignant. Adding Don Meade's harmonica to "Beautiful Dreamer," Donie's idea, adds to the yearning wistfulness of the melody.

Of course, the album includes many traditional songs old and new as well, many clearly beloved by the audience at Glucksman Ireland House at NYU. "Oh, good man!" someone shouted when Donie began singing "Cottage by the Lee." Most of the very full house sang along.

Other stand-outs included Ewan MacColl's song "Manchester Rambler," (which is not on the album, so wait for the next), "If I Were a Blackbird," and the sad-comic "Dan O'Hara," about a man who loses much of his family in a "coffin ship."

A song called "John Peel" was introduced with an explanation of the Cork sport called "drag-hunting." "If you ever get there, forget the Blarney castle, go to see a drag hunt. That's real culture," Carroll said. And nobody gets hurt.

With his funny introductions, either reminding people where they might know the song, telling stories about what the songs mean to him, and encouraging people to sing, you can see how easily Carroll slipped into acting - he got his Equity card a few years back playing and singing at Irish Repertory Theatre in a production of John B. Keane's Sive. Since then he's done a couple of voiceovers and auditions.

He describes getting the call from Irish Rep's Ciaran O'Reilly, asking if he'd ever done any acting. "I have, I've acted a fool," he said.

He went in to audition, and O'Reilly and partner Charlotte Moore decided they liked what they saw. Music led him to acting, and acting led to more music: O'Reilly had seen him playing with Andy McGann.

Then Mick Moloney brought some of his students to the show, and asked him to join the Washington Square Harp and Shamrock Orchestra.

He and Mick, he says, are the only two Irish people in the Orchestra. They just finished recording an album, which should be out later this summer.

In the second half of the show, Carroll's friends playing along had a chance to shine: Donohue sang his own "Supermarket Wine," singer Marian Makins (who also appears on the CD) sang "Nick Ryan's Lament" and Dan Milner led on "The Ballad of Ó Bruadair."

Then there was the rousing medley of American folk songs, including "Will the Circle Be Unbroken" (recorded by many, including the Carter family) and "Gotta Travel On" (by Billy Grammer, also sung by Bill Monroe, the Weavers, and others) - which again, hark back to Carroll's roots, since American folk was a big part of the Irish folk scene too.

People were still singing along with the final waltz, led by Carroll's warm baritone, when I ran out in the rain to catch my train home, after midnight.

"I'm basically a ballad singer, far from a classical singer," Carroll says about the mix of his work. "I think I can entertain people." And that's worth missing a round or two of golf.