Brad Spurgeon's Blog

PARIS – Truth be told, it has been 50 years since I sat around a table and played along with Irish songs in a pub over a couple of pints. But 50 years ago, I was incapable of carrying a tune, and only really dreaming I was doing it. That was with my friend Charles de Lint and his band, Wickentree, in Ottawa at The Celts Room bar in Ottawa. Last night, I joined Paddy Sherlock and fiddle-player Paul Susen at La Cave Café for the first round-the-table weekly Irish jam. And sitting before me or beside me throughout the jam was the songbook of Celtic trad songs handwritten and given to me by Charles de Lint half a century ago as well. To my slight surprise – but not too much – Paddy Sherlock knew and played almost all of those songs…and more.

While Charles de Lint went on to become a successful fantasy novelist, he has always continued to play music, as well, writing and recording his own songs, but also continuing to play traditional music. It was through Charles while he worked at a record store in Ottawa that I also discovered and developed my taste for traditional Irish, Scottish and English music. And while I went on to do my own stuff, and in the open mics I play mine and all the usual pop and folk rock stuff, I regularly persist at home to be a closet Celtic crooner.
Paddy Sherlock and Paul Susen

When I learned last week that Paddy – whose Paris Songwriter’s Club open mic has been going for years – would begin this weekly session around the table, I jumped at it. In fact, I pulled out Charles’s songbook from my shelves and brushed up also on a few songs I love but rarely play at home, to be ready.

One of these was “Peter’s Song,” by the Sands Family. Memory tells me that during at least one of Charles’s sessions at the Celts Room, he invited at least a couple of the visiting members of that Irish band – on a tour in Canada – onto the stage and they performed together. Maybe it was an amalgamation of my slightly off-kilter teenage mind. In any case, last night, for the first time in my life in front of an audience, I sang their song about a fiddler and a weekly jam he played at until his death in ’74. A beautiful, touching song that paints a picture of the kind of atmosphere I found last night at Paddy Sherlock’s new evening. A line from the song sums it up: “There were flying bows and bodhran sticks and you hadn’t room to turn / But there was always a chair and a couple of drinks for the lad who came to learn.”

Unfortunately, Charles and MaryAnn have not been able to continue their own frequent music nights in Ottawa over the last more than two years, as MaryAnn has been in a difficult condition in hospital after being bitten by a tick and infected with Powassan virus. This is a horrible, debilitating condition and situation that you can read more about at the Gofundme page dedicated to MaryAnn and Charles’s plight. And this is why the two of them were so much on my mind at the Cave Café last night. The other reason, was the book that Charles gave me, and that I have treasured for this half century. And I highly recommend any of Charles de Lint’s own novels or short stories and other writings, if you have never read this master of the urban fantasy genre.

Charles de Lint singing and MaryAnn on the mandolin a few years ago

By the way, in addition to “Peter’s Song,” I sang “Only Our Rivers Run Free,” and “The Star of the County Down.” Paddy and Paul did some reels and jigs, and songs like “Whiskey in the Jar” – Paddy’s version was quite different in style than what I know, and strangely sounded something like American country music to my ear!!! (Don’t kill me, Paddy! But I loved it!) And he did “As I Roved Out,” and many other classics. It was so fabulous to hear his Irish accent with these songs – I probably sounded like American country music on ALL of mine to him, with my accent – and he taught me a thing or two about playing the guitar the Irish way! It was a completely different Paddy of the Paris Songwriter’s Club open night.

Paddy Sherlock Irish Night 3

Paddy plans to do this weekly at the Cave Café: So if you are an audience member or a musician, get your instruments or vocal cords warmed up and join the jam!

PS Also, take a listen to this old Wickentree song from the 1970s. I remember listening to this one a lot at that time, before I even knew what the words meant – as it is in French.

PPS For years I attended the Oxford Folk Club open night once a year while attending the British Grand Prix. But that was a classic kind of audience/stage open mic, not an around the table jam. A fabulous place, by the way, where some of my folk heroes have occasionally played through the years, like Dave Swarbrick, etc.

Paddy Sherlock Irish night 1

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