Category: Band

My band Barrowburn played at the Crossroads Starbucks in Cary on Wednesday and Alana captured a moment of our performance below. Enjoy.

My band, Barrowburn, played for the WUNC Irish Breakfast with Fiona Ritchie this morning at Tir na nOg Irish Pub. It was an honor to be able to play for Fiona Ritchie after all the great music she has brought to me with her show The Thistle and Shamrock. We also had a great audience of Celtic music loving fans of WUNC. What a way to end our St. Patrick’s Day week!

Hunter Murray, Jeff Cates, Fiona Ritchie, Virgil Sealy and Richard Nardin

I’ve got a question for all you music composers out there – how do you do it? As is self-evident by this post, I know how to write text (maybe not very good text) but can’t figure out how to write music. What makes a melody a melody? Is all music “fiction” or is there “non-fiction” music? For example, this essay is a reflective non-fiction paragraph asking how music is written. Is there an equivalent form of music that is not “art” but more “utility” like this post? Note: I’m only talking about the tune – not the words that turn a tune into a song.

The reason for this questioning is that my band is working (still working!) on a CD and I’d like to have at least one original number on the CD. I could sit down at the piano and play random notes, write them down, and teach the band my new tune – but that would not make it music. I could borrow (i.e. steal) bits of melodies from other tunes, scramble them up, and put them together and make a tune – but that would not make it music either. Is there some logic or system to what make a sequence of notes a melody? Is it all art? Can it be learned or is it all a gift?

On this last Saturday (9/11/04), my Irish band, Baile Daire, played at the 3rd annual Celtic Fest at Regency Park Ampatheater in Cary. NC. It was by far out largest audience on the bigest stage. I have not way to knowing the exact figure but I’d guess that there were several hundred folks in the audience

I took this shot from beside the stage just before we came on

We had a great time and I think the gig went off very well. I’ll post more pictures in the next day or so. Jeff’s daughter had a camera and got several shots while we were playing.

On Saturday (6/1), our band played at a party to celebrate the ordination of a new priest at one of the local Catholic churches. The party organizer was interest in Irish music so he went to the web and did a search for Irish music in the Raleigh area and our band web page was the first search hit! He contacted me to discuss the gig and ended up dropping by one of our gigs at Tir na nOg to give us a listen. During the break we talked some more and he offered us the job.

Since it was our job to be “background music” for this party, we decided to keep the PA volume at a medium level so folks could talk, play mostly our slower and less energetic tunes and songs, and worked hard to keep the craic from getting out of hand. We started off with some waltzes and a few slow airs while the people mingled and talked before dinner. We moved in some slip jigs, slow hornpipes and a few songs while people got their food and ate. After dinner, we added a few more jigs and reels but kept the tempo moderate and energy level under control. As things were breaking up and people were leaving, we indulged ourselves and played a few high energy dance tunes before packing up the sound gear and loading it into the van.

We got a lot of positive feedback from both party goers and the host. While the band was standing outside by the van chatting, one of the priests walked by and recognized us. He said, “You guys were great. I thought you were a CD. When the music stopped, I thought to my self that somebody should have put the CD on repeat. Then I looked over and noticed that it was a live band.” I’m not sure you can get a much better complement than that!