A Very Special Week In The Catskills

Gwen Orel Reports Back From The Catskills Irish Arts Week And Speaks To Grammy Winner Joanie Madden

By Gwen Orel

If only every week could be Catskills Irish Arts Week. Lots of Facebook posts Monday morning say just that, as hundreds of players, teachers, and visitors recover from the final few days of nonstop craic in East Durham.

I crashed at 3am Friday night, but the tunes were still going when I got up the next day - my housemate harper Eileen Gannon told me of people playing at Furlong's Pub until 9:30. In the morning.

For Joanie Madden, the Grammy award-winning whistle/flute virtuoso who fronts Cherish the Ladies (www.cherishtheladies.com), East Durham was the only place to launch the CD she recorded with her father, the late Joe Madden.

'A Galway Afternoon' was just one of the many CD launches during the week this year; others included terrific new ones from Matt Cranitch and Jackie Daly; Laura Byrne; the Kane sisters; Edel Fox; Jerry O'Sullivan; Blackie O'Connell and Hugh Healy; and the hot new group NicGaviskey. Joanie pushed herself to have hers done on time for the Catskills - it was that important to her.

She also organized a killer 25-year celebration of Cherish the Ladies on Friday night: the current line-up were all teaching, and many, many guests who had played with them over the years joined them on stage, including the Kane sisters, Liz Carroll, Aoife Clancy, harper Laoise Kelly and many more.

"Some of the greatest memories of my life are from the Catskills," Joanie told me. "I spent my teens up there, since I was about fifteen, I went up every weekend in the summer. I played Stacks, Gavins, Furlongs... I played them all. It was packed. People would dance all night, and play music."

We spoke by phone on Sunday. So booked up was she during her week in East Durham that the only time we could find to chat was when she would be driving to a Cherish gig.

This coming weekend she goes down to West Virginia, where she runs the Irish Heritage Week at Elkins College.

There, although the sessions are also intense, the emphasis is very much on teaching and playing-classes are twice as long and people focus on one instrument alone.

While classes in the Catskills week, which just completed its sixteenth year, are often extraordinary, what truly is the draw is the quantity of amazing players who come as much to share tunes with each other as for the students and launches.

What Paul Keating has done is nothing short of monumental," said Joanie. Particularly in a tough economic time, she said, what he has done for the community, is remarkable.

The week brings back the vitality Joanie remembers in the Catskills from when she was a girl. She's also impressed by the sheer quantity of fiddle teachers, flute and whistle teachers.

There were ten fiddle teachers teaching at all levels this summer, six flute teachers, five button accordion teachers, four tin whistle teachers.

Joanie is part of the scene there. This year she stayed at Blackthorne's Resort, where the launch was held on Thursday night. The sign in the driveway had her name up, welcoming her back.

Joanie's irrepressible energy is like a part of nature - with her laugh and her kind but hilarious comments she can instantly change the climate in the room.

She pours life into any tune and brings everyone into the music with her - players and listeners.

The launch for the new CD by fiddlers Liz and Yvonne Kane really only began when Joanie came in and began em-ceeing. She got a basket for money and took the CDs from table to table. "Just pretend it's Sunday!" she told the crowd.

This was also the week in which Chicago virtuoso fiddler Liz Carroll taught her advanced class her original slip jig, "Are You Joanie Madden?" Joanie hadn't even heard the tune existed until students began telling her they were learning it.

Liz launched her book of tunes Friday afternoon with a demonstration and interview conducted by Dr. Larry McCullough; the new book is a must whatever your instrument - although at one point when Liz was playing Joanie shouted out, "do you have any flute-friendly tunes?"

Because Joanie loves the late-night sessions, famously showing up at 3 or 4am, she now only teaches "the late shift" - just one afternoon class, plus, she says, a few private lessons during the week. "It all comes together at night time, with the sessions."

The launch for 'A Galway Afternoon' had the feel of a cross between an amazing session and a dance.

Joe Madden was honored last summer in the Catskills, and the launch was also "very emotional," Joanie said. "It was a place my father adored coming, every year. We were surrounded by all his true friends, not only on stage but also in the audience. So many people came up to me and said, your father played at our wedding anniversary... the room was just saturated with love, good feelings, good vibes. I shed a good few tears."

The room was packed, literally standing room only, and the stage was so crowded with players at one point Cherish guitar player Mary Coogan wasn't sure she would be on it.

But she was: and so was Martin Mulhaire, the Galway Accordionist and Composer honored on Wednesday afternoon; fiddlers Liz Carroll and Willie Kelly, flutist Mike Rafferty; keyboard player Felix Dolan, and Father Charlie Coen on concertina, Martin Connolly on pipes. And I'm sure I'm forgetting someone... Billy McComiskey played too.

I couldn't find a seat and ended up standing next to Joanie's brother Joe, who took loads of pictures and treated me like family too.

All the Madden children were there - Joanie's one of seven. One sibling came all the way California, one from Georgia - and Joe's widow Helen, too.

The CD includes liner notes by Joanie about her father, and an essay by accordionist Billy McComiskey.

Joe had resisted recording most of his life but somehow Joanie talked him into it in June 2008 - or rather tricked him, taking him to Charlie Lennon's studio just a few weeks before his 70th birthday without telling him in advance.

It was less than five months later that he fell down the stairs. "He went peacefully because he knew he'd finally made a recording," she said. "I'm very proud of how it turned out. My dad would be proud. So many musicians have come up to me and told me they're happy to have a piece of my father."

It was particularly touching when the musicians played a waltz and couples danced, looking as though they never wanted to stop.

If you missed Catskills Irish Arts Week (for shame!) don't worry: Joanie never stops. She's a fixture in New York, and was just included in the Bronx Walk of Fame in May. You can often catch the Yonkers resident late on a Sunday night at the 11th Street Bar session - when she's in town.

As for Joe and Joanie Madden's 'A Galway Afternoon' - the CD is full of the joy and light Joanie describes. Go and get it, and get her to sign it - after you hear her play.