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They may hesitate to answer, either because they have no other saleable skills or because they find the very thought of another career appalling.
Cathal McConnell, of the Boys of the Lough, can identify with that. "I suppose I am doing the thing I've always been best at doing. That is, playing music and communicating to people, and singing. It gives you a lifestyle you couldn't normally hope to attain."
There may be some questions about that lifestyle and the sacrifices it entails, but there can be no question that the Boys of the Lough have left a significant mark on a generation of Celtic and folk music worldwide.
For more than 25 years they have toured throughout Britain, Europe, Australia, Asia and North America. They are one of the most commercially viable entities in folk music, and that commercial success can only be attributed to many years of struggle and labor. They are the ultimate in professionalism.
One of the dangers in evaluating the Boys of the Lough is that very entrenchment. They are so much of an institution that life seems simple. They don't have fights. They are predictable and recognized. There would be a danger in considering their music static, and it becomes a new challenge for the listener.
It's a tough line to walk and balance, because folk music is the music of the people and it is the source of the Boys' power. They have resisted a contemporary rush to add electric instruments, but they have hastened to add other elements to keep the music exciting and alive.
As Aly Bain explained, "I don't think electric is the way to go with this music. I think if you play this music and you get too electric -- perhaps you should be in a real rock band or something. I say that simply because you can only change so much of this music before you actually lose it."
This could be seen as an interesting contradiction from a man who will incorporate what appear to be bizarre ingredients, like Cajun and surrealistic harp, and infuse them with very stolid Shetland tune sets. This is also the same man who has saved and recorded many of the original source musicians of Shetland, Scotland and North America, through his work on The Shetland Sessions [Lismor, 1992] and Down Home [Lismor, 1988].
For the '88 project, Aly went to Shetland to videotape the Shetland Folk Festival, shooting it live for 6-1/2 hours. That was accompanied by hours of audio recording.
"We shot 73 numbers in 8 days.... There were all kinds of people. Graham Townsend, the Poozies, Easy Club, plus all of the Shetland artists. We do feature a lot of Shetland music, like Willie Hunter, Hom Bru and Young Heritage."
Aly Bain is best known, of course, as the fiddler and the infamous extrovert of the band. His fiddling, representative of the best in the Shetland style, can be characterized as dramatic. At times, there is almost a vocal quality to his ability to capture sound with a deceptive lack of effort.
With his divergent projects, Aly has not performed often on his own during the last few years. However, he has made brief appearances at the Valley of the Moon Fiddling Camp in California, with Alastair and Ian Fraser. In addition, he has begun touring more in Scotland in solo fiddle projects. Recently he has released a long-awaited solo album [Whirlie, Scotland, 1992]. Included on the album is a tune entitled "Waltz for Aly," composed by Colorado fiddler Teri Rasmussen.
Most of the original Boys of the Lough material was drawn from deep Celtic history. Aly's role in the band has always been to seek Scottish and Shetland material. In the end, he is the only remaining Scotsman in the band. The original members from 1967 included Cathal McConnell, Tommy Gunn and Robin Morton. At that time the band was intended to be a balanced blend of Celts, representing both Scotland and Ireland.
Of that blend, only McConnell remains. He is the Groucho Marx look-alike with the omnipotent flute. Sometimes gregarious and sometimes silly, McConnell is the intelligent source for much of the band's heart. His song-rendering has long remained an underestimated, and perhaps under-utilized, element in their performance. There are an astonishing number of talented musicians who cite McConnell vocals as an influence in their own work. A native of County Fermanagh, he has been actively collecting the original songs of Ireland and is involved in seeing them preserved.
He has personally known some of the families from whom he collected songs and tunes the band has done over the years and still tries to keep in touch.
"Unfortunately, some of these people are getting placed into the ground now. I am getting to be one of the older ones. People will be collecting from me in 10 to 15 years, I suppose. I do keep in touch with folks as much as possible.... There was this flute player I learned from and I got a lot of tunes from, called Eddie Duffey, and his tunes are very strange. He played in very strange patterns and I play a lot of his music. He was 94 or so when he passed on."
McConnell's attraction to "strange patterns" is not surprising. He has also recently composed a soundtrack for a children's story about Finn MacCumhail -- an animation with drawings. Along with Dave Richardson, he devised marches and jigs with a twist and drew in some harmonies.
Harmonies, another of McConnell's characteristics have been significantly enhanced since the addition of fellow vocalist Christy O'Leary. One of the newer members of the Boys, O'Leary spent his childhood in Kenmare, Co. Kerry and is known principally as an uileann piper. In a band best known for its instrumentals, his addition in 1985 was expected to bring a new youthful element but his vocal ability appears to have been an unforeseen plus.
Formerly with Irish group DeDanann, a band with perhaps too many vocalists, O'Leary had an opportunity to learn some licks and gain touring experience, and vocal expertise. He, in retrospect, sees things otherwise.
"I think that DeDanann had so many different singers besides me.... People don't remember who they all are. I'm sure that the band members don't remember everyone who has been in that band. I think I enjoyed what I did in the band for the year and a half, but I think that probably I've had much more opportunity to do the things that I am interested in musically with this band -- the Boys of the Lough. But I liked my time overall with DeDannan."
O'Leary sees his influence as principally coming through the pipes. "Before it was just the fiddle and the flute that were mainly the lead instruments and the pipes coming in added a bit more bottom end, especially with the drones. It allowed the band to play a different range of music. The singing in the band has been an interest to me."
O'Leary says McConnell is his greatest influence in vocal development. "He has been very helpful and generous to me in helping with songs and finding material; you know, helping me to choose stuff to do. His repertoire is amazing. I have always felt very fortunate to be in the same band with somebody of his caliber and who I respect so much as a singer."
O'Leary and McConnell have tried to retain the element of traditionalism and history in their vocal selections, avoiding contemporary politics. "I've never been drawn to politically motivated songs, except for the more traditional ones. The older ones, from times gone by, Cathal's done at times you know. My main interest and perhaps that of the band as well is the very traditional songs; songs about relationships and songs about places -- immigration songs."
Joining the Boys of the Lough at about the same time as O'Leary was John Coakley, from Co. Cork in Ireland. Coakley adds a dimension which is often underappreciated and misunderstood. Extensively and classically trained, Coakley can do almost anything the band requires by way of background.
He views his influence as the region of Ireland called Sliabh Luachra, a border area between Kerry and Cork. It's a location where people live long lives of music and dancing, empowered by fiddle and accordion, as well as set dancing.
Off the road, Coakley plays fiddle and whistle, but his role in the band is mainly on piano. Indeed, it was in London, as a teacher, that members of the band originally found him. A quiet man, he recognizes the struggles of his profession and the difficulty of being on the road, but has them in perspective.
"One thing that probably saves me quite a bit now is that I don't drink much alcohol -- which is too easy to do, you know, when you're playing music. Almost everywhere you go to play there are lots of drinks going around.... I'd be just as happy if I didn't have a drop of alcohol on the road. It preserves me to an extent."
The final member of the Boys of the Lough is Dave Richardson. Originally from Northumbria, Richardson originally joined the band as a lark.
"I joined in 1973, shortly before an American tour, and it coincided with the fact that I had three weeks of vacation time from college. They said `Do you want to go to America?' and I thought that would be an interesting thing to do, so I borrowed money from my mother and off I went. That was the start of it all."
The band's tallest member (that's not saying a great deal), Richardson is self-taught and plays everything from mandolin, to banjo, to cittern, to guitar, tinwhistle for fun, and throws in a little concertina.
He's never taken any lessons and disdains these. "I think you have to teach yourself. You just fool around with it. It's just like if you are going to cook something. You don't go to cookery school.... You just learn."
While Richardson is known for his guitars and plectrum, another of his significant roles within the band is as its administrator. He is the one who always knows where he is going and keeps them on track. In a field often endowed with irresponsibility, this role assumes great significance; a challenging contradiction for the man who just wanted to do things his own way.
Richardson's brother Tich shared some of this independence and spirit. He was added to the band in 1979, instantly incorporating new elements. Known for his swing approach to backup on Celtic tunes, a jazz sort of sound, he was brought in to replace aging, and experimental members, Tom Anderson (of Shetland) and Willie Johnson. The band's darkest hour came when Tich was killed in an automobile accident a few years later. They were not sure what direction to go, whether it all mattered.
"After Tich's death, we had to stay on the road," remembers Dave. "He would have wanted us to keep playing. He had some sort of premonition that he might not be around for us in the future or something. Odd it was, but it's like that sometimes. So it was our job, you know, and we had put so much time into what we already had. Hard as it was, we decided to go forward. Some bands could not have done so. We did like what we were doing and didn't want to give it up."
With that foundation, the Boys of the Lough rebuilt and their lineup has been stable for eight years. The band now can be seen as a "mini-folk orchestra."
Richardson agrees, "Yes, that's the fun of it. It has increased the number of instruments and the range of stuff that we do. And it's not over yet. Christy is sort of working away learning the fiddle. John is playing a bit more fiddle and I've bought an accordion or two recently. They have all surfaced in work we have done on CD recently. People might not notice but there is a renewal all of the time with this band."
There is that constant change, though it may keep their music fresh. Bain explained it, "With all that is happening these days, it is quite simple. We just get together to practice and to perform. We don't see much of each other when we are not playing music, although we basically live in the same city. But by phone; we're on the phone most every day to each other. For the first several years I was married with a family. I have two lovely daughters. I slept in more hotel rooms with Cathal McConnell than I ever did with my wife. I know she did not like me being gone that much. It's hard. Being in a band like I have been for 20-odd years is like being married, so perhaps I was married twice at the same time, eh? Well, the band, we really do like each other and we get on well. We don't have any ego problems or anything like that. We all seem to enjoy what we do and we appreciate what each other does and we try to give enough room -- space, you know -- to work in. We are a working democracy with nobody having much of a say over anyone else. And we have to work hard in this band. We each have a job to do and everybody gets on with it.... This arrangement did outlast my own marriage, you know.... We are so good at traveling now that we go through an airport like castor oil running through your system."
An interesting analogy that is for an ending, but it may be that very systemic ease which has kept
the Boys of the Lough as an international institution for 25 years.
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