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.
First song in Charles de Lint songbook in his calligraphic handwriting
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.”
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 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!
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.
PARIS – I wanted to do two quick reports, one today, the other maybe tomorrow, just to round up the amazing week with TAC Teatro. It started last Monday with the long-awaited double header starting at 8AM at Paris’s legendary Théâtre du Soleil in the Cartoucherie with the equally legendary Odin Teatret, then Monday evening at the Espace Renaudie in Aubervilliers, where we screened my interview/documentary film with Eugenio Barba, the founder of Odin Teatret.
The morning event hinged around a couple of high moments: a conference given by Odin Teatret actor Julia Varley on the theme of the actor’s process of creation and training; which was followed by the actors of TAC Teatro performing excerpts from their latest show, Ajamola, for the spectators and for Eugenio Barba and Julia Varley.
Odin and TAC people at Theatre du Soleil
The conference was “prefaced” by introductions given by Ornella Bonventre, founding director of TAC Teatro, and by Raluca Mocan, a Romanian lecturer at a French university who is also a specialist on Odin Teatret. Varley’s conference was fabulous, starting with her echoing almost word-for-word what I’ve heard Ornella herself saying so often: As an actor she considers herself an artisan, not an artist. They build things – characters, plays, shows, etc., as an artisan might build a chair.
all Ajamola actors at Theatre du Soleil
Varley also spoke of the importance of the actual performance in unforgettable terms: Once you are on stage it is “not a democracy.” In other words, perhaps the actor can try all sorts of strange things during training and creation, but the performance is a dictator that requires the actors to follow the score laid out in advance and stay entirely inside the established character. I have certainly over-simplified that point, but that’s the rough idea.
After Varley’s grand performance as a lecturer, I felt a little worried about how the actors of TAC Teatro might be able to jump into their own characters from Ajamola and put on a convincing short excerpt from the show within confines that were far from anything even close to their usual performance space. As you can see from the video, it was a tight, obstructed space, where the actors did a fabulous job of reconstructing moments from the show – with Eugenio Barba, Julia Varley and others watching on. Ornella had planned this excerpt from the show as an homage to Odin Teatret, and there was every indication that it succeeded. Thanks to the actors, who did manage to get right into character and negotiate the space beautifully.
From the Théâtre du Soleil to the Espace Renaudie in Aubervilliers for the Screening of Eugenio Barba film
Eugenio Barba in film at Espace Renaudie
In the evening, we moved on for the second part of the Odin tribute to the municipal theatre in Aubervilliers called l’Espace Renaudie, for which TAC was supported by the municipality of Aubervilliers. Here we showed in public for the first time the TAC-produced film, an interview with Eugenio Barba, which is a film in which I have a half-hour long interview with Barba about his life and the Odin Teatret. I conducted the interview, Ornella filmed it, and I did the editing, splicing in all sort of documents, photos and films from Odin’s own archive, dating back to the 1960s.
It was a moment of great pride and wonder on my part to see the film on the big screen shown in front of a public in a 180-seat municipal theatre. Judging by the roundtable discussion that we then had following the film, it was a success. The roundtable was the chance to give all participants the floor to speak about the film, Odin and theatre in general. It went on for almost two hours.
Another Eugenio Barba in film at Espace Renaudie
I will return with the report soon of the production of Ajamola itself in this same theatre in Aubervilliers the next day – with photos and videos….
From Ornella in French: L’Odin jouera Thèbes jusqu’au 19, nous du TAC y allons le mardi 15, ceux qui veulent se joindre à nous sont les bienvenus (envoyez-moi un message). Toutes les informations ci-dessous.
An incredible bit of synchronicity or something else has come about recently between the troupe of TAC Teatro and me. We are working on our first full-blown play, and in recent weeks there has been a sudden incorporation of a couple of bits of music that I had nothing to do with but that lie at the heart of my life-long musical loves.
As it turns out, both of the pieces were introduced by the same member of the company. But the skills and talents that we have in the company mean that the music can be performed to a degree that I never imagined likely. I mean, I knew we have great musicians in the company, but here I am talking about Irish music! And the company is made mostly of Italian and French actors and musicians.
So how amazing it was when over recent rehearsal days the troupe began playing and incorporating into the play the famous Irish piece of music dating back to the 1930s – and one of the most popular pieces of the last century – called “Cooley’s Reel.”
Anyway, I made a video of the musicians rehearsing the piece (and I added into the video some of the first exploratory acrobatic workout we did with the ladder that is also part of the show – check it out, above). It was only one of a handful of the first efforts to play the reel, so there are a few minor moments off the rails, but it sure sounds great to me already! Bizarrely, for me, I have found myself playing the bongo a little bit like a Bodhran, rather than me doing my usual musical instrument, the guitar. My Seagull guitar is here played by Pacôme Puech – I didn’t have the confidence to get the rhythm right on the guitar – and on flute is Marine Lefèvre, and on fiddle is Marina Meinero.
The other bit of music that I was stunned to find one of the actors – Marine – wanted to incorporate somehow in the show was “Only Our Rivers Run Free,” which I also first heard through Christy Moore’s version in Planxty. It is one of the few traditional Irish songs that I occasionally have the guts to try to do myself on stage, as to me if feels like a great Bob Dylan protest song, and I try to ignore that I’m not Irish and I can attack it like a Dylan cover.
It was written in 1965 by Mickey McConnell, who was only 18 years old at the time. He went on to have a career as a journalist at the Irish Times, before decided in his 40s to return to a career in music. Extraordinary. The poetry of the song is astounding, and even more so when you realize it was written by an 18-year-old. I love that line, “are you gone like the snows of last winter?”
So that’s the update from my adventures at TAC Teatro. In the meantime, I hope the snows of winter go fast and I’ll be able to post some great thing about the completed show in April! In the meantime, we will be inviting the public to check out our progress in our “second stage” open-door event on 29 February, as the poster at the top of this post explains….
PARIS – Ultimately, my Saturday in Paris yesterday was a very personal thing, but in another way, it belongs entirely on this blog as it started with some themes recently expressed here, and it ended with a surprise musical interlude of the kind I love.
I was thinking of driving off to Deauville for the day, as there was sun and heat and it really isn’t that far. In then end, I decided to go to the Musée d’Orsay and profit by the sun and heat of Paris. But on the way there, I decided to go to the amazing crime writing library, the Bilipo that is behind the fire station on the rue du Cardinal Lemoine in the 5th Arrondissement that I wrote about on the blog the other day. I wanted to check out the mystery magazines and maybe see if there were any of the people I knew there.
So I went to the Bilipo, thumbed the pages of the mystery magazines from England, France and the U.S. and then I spoke to Catherine Chauchard, the longtime director of the library. It turned out that we shared a passion for the band Moriarty, and ended up talking as much about music as crime literature.
From there I went off towards the Seine and ended up stopping for a salad in the park of the St. Julien le Pauvre church next to the oldest tree in Paris, planted in 1602. This, of course, was right next to Shakespeare and Company, and I decided I must buy a copy of the New York Review of Books. So I went there and started entering this great bookshop only to find a hand and a voice preventing our passage: “Sorry, there is a line up of people here and you’ll have to wait in line before entering.” I turned to see this lineup of around 10 or so people, and I looked in the store to try to see what people were lining up for, and I couldn’t figure it out, so I asked.
“There are currently too many people in the shop, so you have to wait in line until your turn,” was the response.
Huh? I looked in the shop and found that it had fewer people in it than many times I had visited, and fewer than many stores. Clearly, though, the guy at the door did not seem to be wanting to get into a discussion of what this new policy was all about, and the last thing on earth I wanted to do was to wait in line as if I was visiting one of the seven wonders of the world, when in fact I had freely entered the bookshop for 30 years…. So I told the guy I wasn’t going to wait and I went off to the Abbey Bookshop, even if they don’t carry the New York Review of Books. Despite the even more cramped quarters of the Abbey, I’d never been told to wait in line….
So I went to the Abbey, which of course, I spoke about in two recent posts here. The place was buzzing along with business, and rather than being told to wait in a lineup to get into the mausoleum, Brian Spence, the owner, greeted us by saying immediately, “Oh, just in time for a cup of coffee with maple sirup!” So I had a cup of coffee with maple sirup and I explored the bookshop, descending into the cave which Brian referred to as the scene of the crime – in reference to my short story. And while I did not buy an NYRB at Shakespeare and Company, I did decide to ask Brian for some book recommendations, and I left with three (A Steinbeck, a Patrick Leigh Fermor and Paul Auster)…. Now does this not show how effective good customer treatment is in business?!
I moved on to eat a meal at a Thailand restaurant, the Lao Lane Xang. The food was great. Oh, and on the way to the restaurant, I don’t want to forget to mention, I explored some wonderful parts of Paris, including the Chateau de la Reine Blanche, just off the Avenue des Gobelins…. What a city!!
I decided to make a very brief visit to The Quiet Man pub since it reminded me of a similar kind of jam in Montreal that I had attended, the one at Grumpy’s. Whereas Grumpy’s is all about bluegrass, the Quiet Man is all about Irish music…played by French people. They all sit around a table in the basement room every Saturday evening and play jigs and reels, with violins, concertinas, guitars, flutes, etc.
I stayed there for a half a pint of beer and then headed off to call it a night, oh, and perhaps catch some fireworks for a Bastille Day display, if there were to be any the night before the 14th…. On the walk away from there, however, I suddenly heard someone playing an acoustic guitar and singing, and I heard an accompanying violin, and I turned my head and looked right, into a pub called The Green Linnet. It was another Irish pub, and the man singing finished his song and saw me looking in and invited us in… I asked if it was an open mic, and he said, “No,” but the violinist indicated that maybe I wanted to play, and he asked, and as I was trying to figure out what to do, I noticed a man at the bar waving to me.
I suddenly realized that I had recognized the guy without it really clicking in my head: It was Chris Kenna, an amazing musician from Australia who lives in Paris and performs regularly in bars mostly in around the 11th Arrondissement. I had met him first when he was hosting an open mic in that area. Now he performs quite a bit with a violinist named Melissa Cox, as “Kenna and Cox,” and I suddenly realized this was the woman playing behind the mic with the other singer man (as I had in fact met her before too).
So I stopped for a beer here, and they invited me to go up and play some songs after their break. So I played three songs: “Mad World,” “Borderline” and in order to suit the place, I sang “Raggle Taggle Gypsies,” which I rarely do anywhere. I was fantastically fun to have this impromptu, unexpected moment, and I had a nice conversation with Chris and Melissa. Then Chris and Melissa took to the stage and played a few songs, Chris with his deep, raspy voice that seems tailor-made for the blues, and a few other styles too…. They sounded great together.
I left, and never did see any fireworks, but all in all, I realized, it was the ultimate day in the streets of Paris. How could it have been any better and with more unexpected moments and adventures!!! It felt like the greatest decision to wander about Paris rather than drive three hours to Deauville and three hours back, but I’d still have loved to stick my feet in the sea….
Oh, yes, and if you read this far, you might have also realized that I never did make it to the Musée d’Orsay, and in the end, that matters little. Perhaps all of life’s journey is kind of like this???
Having ended up falling into this Irish night on Friday by accident in a bar near the Gare du Nord, it was only natural that I seek out an Irish place the following night. Only natural, really, mainly, because a), the band at the first place told me about the second place and that there was a jam on Saturday nights, and b), that I had actually already heard of this other mainstay bar of Irish traditional music, called Quiet Man.
I had first heard about the Quiet Man some time over the last two years from an adept of Medieval costume party dance nights, and I must say that I had a slight feeling of reticence regarding the Quiet Man, coming from a costume party man. I feared this may well be some kind of “Danny Boy” Irish charade. But having then on Friday heard these great French Irish trad musicians at the Bouquet du Nord and learning from them that the Quiet Man held an open jam for Irish music on Wednesdays and Saturdays, I said to myself that I could not decently call this blog a comprehensive overview of the Paris open mic scene without checking out all of the Irish jams and open mics.
So it was that I went with great excitement and pleasure to the Quiet Man, located near the Rambuteau metro. I walked in to find a nearly empty ground floor and I had a sudden recollection of having perhaps already showed up at this place to find the evening cancelled – and given all the cancelled open mics of late, I feared I had met with another. Then I heard the faint sound of Irish music that seemed to come not from a speaker, but from behind closed doors.
“The music is downstairs,” said the barman after I inquired.
I ordered a pint, went down the steep stairs, and found myself in another world. This felt completely like some Irish pub, in the small confines of the basement room with the rafters ringing with the reels and jigs – to quote a line from “Peter’s Song” by the Sands Family – and it also reminded me a little of a jam session I love in Sao Paulo, where all the musicians sit around a central table and join in and out of the jam all night long.
There were bodhrans, fiddles, guitars, whistles and flutes. There was a long necked mandolin or bouzouki and other mandolins as well. There was a concertina. There was just about everything you can imagine – except vocals. On this, my second foray into Irish music nights in Paris, I have found on each occasion that singing is not a part of the recipe. In a way I respect this, since while so many French people sing English pop and rock music and say to hell with their sharp accents, such a thing with traditional Irish music just won’t sit right.
But that left me in a quandary. I was importuned, invited, greeted by gesture and request, to join in the circle of musicians right from the start. They were all open arms, having seen my guitar case. But I knew immediately what my limitations are: I can play songs and sing them. But I cannot join in an Irish music jam of jigs and reels without someone showing me every chord, and more reasonably, giving me sheet music with the chords on them.
So I said I would not join in immediately, and I sat off to the side and watched and videoed. But where, I thought, where and how could I have anything to do with this? No one sang. No songs were done – just jigs and reels and all the other fast moving lilting Irish music stuff that I feel is the equivalent to the blues jam, which lends itself to multiple musicians joining in and dropping out as they please. But a song?
Finally, after a couple of hours – the jam goes on until closing time at 2 AM – I interrupted and asked if it was acceptable to sing a song and play and have people join in if they could? Irish songs, of course.
“Yes, of course!”
So I sat down and sang “Only Our Rivers,” then “Raggle Taggle Gypsies,” and then I took my leave, sensing, nevertheless that I was taking away from the real purpose of the evening – a jam. But they played along with me and many seemed to enjoy, and one or two sang a little along with me for a few verses. Then at the end of the evening when there were only three musicians of the original dozen or so left, I was invited back to join them to play more.
I tried some other traditional songs – High Germany, and then Cunla, and then The Star of the County Down – and then I opted for a modern Irish song, and belted out Crazy Love by Van Morrison, to which they played fiddle, guitar and something else …. At the very end of the night when only the violin player and a couple of women spectators remained, I decided to shake up the status quo and sang, “What’s Up!” and promptly broke a guitar string for the first time in months…. there must have been a signal there somewhere. But this Quiet Man is definitely worth checking out. A wonderful atmosphere, a truly music loving pub.
I was hunting around for open mics on Friday night after finding that the one I really wanted to go to was cruelly cancelled by its slacker organizers – just kidding, I always like to hate them when they cancel an open mic – and I found a new list of open mics on a Facebook page devoted to jam sessions and open mics in Paris. So I showed up at the Bouquet du Nord, a café near the Gare du Nord, only to find that I had been massively led astray. There was no open mic.
Moreover, in approaching the café I had seen this brightly-lit, typical French café, and I thought, “Looks like there is no open mic, and even if there was one, what kind of trash would it be?” So I enter the place more than sceptically and start thinking about the next place on that list. And I find people at the bar who ignore me, and I see, nevertheless, a little stage-like area set up, a guitar, mic, amps, etc.
“No,” said a guy at the bar I queried. “There is no open mic here. It is just Irish music tonight.”
“Huh?”
“We have gypsy jazz on one night, and we have Irish music on the second Friday of the month, and tonight it is Irish music,” he explained. “And it is not really an open mic.”
I said what a shame it was I came all the way over there on the information there was an open mic, and found nothing at all – except Irish music.
“Well, what kind of music do you play?”
“Pop rock folk blues.”
“Well, at the limit, if you know any Irish music….”
“Actually, I do know some,” I said.
“Well, you can ask the band members, maybe they will let you sing a song.”
I began warming to the place. And then, I saw that the musicians had flutes and, surprise, surprise, Uilleann Pipes. Hmm, I thought, this could be interesting. Well, came all this way, take a beer, sit and listen.
I first spoke to the band, and they reluctantly said that well, maybe I could play a song – on condition it be Irish. They, I must say here now, are French. Entirely French. Playing Irish music.
But there is Irish music, and there is Irish music. My kind of Irish music is not “Danny Boy.” My kind of Irish music is Planxty, the Sands Family, the Bothy Band, The Chieftains, even the Celtic traditional sounds further afield of Alain Stivell, the Boys of the Lough, Steeleye Span, Dick Gaughan, Pentangle, Fairport Convention, Paul Brady and Andy Irvine, etc.
So I sat down with my beer – from a small French brewery – and I listened as the three musicians fired up and played. Holy fucking shit! First song they did came from a Planxty album!!! And man, these were mean Uilleann pipe players. Two together. Then the flute, guitar and more pipes. Jigs and reels and all the stuff I love, and beautifully performed.
Irish night at Bouquet du Nord
Then one of them said I could sing a song. So I whipped out my guitar and did the “Raggle Taggle Gypsies.” Complete silence as they listened. Then they did more of their stuff, then they asked me to do another. So I did, “Only Our Rivers Run Free.” Here, they played along. This was it, the high moment. For me, anyway. I was delighted that here I was at this completely freaky situation, having been led astray into thinking there was an open mic, but finding myself right at home in a kind of music that I love and that influenced my teenage years, and the rest of my life – as a pocket of musical education and a kind of private garden of musical culture. They knew my songs, one had a story to recount about Only Our Rivers, and I felt like I had discovered a world within Paris that I had never suspected. And I had.
Again, however, I had walked out of my home without my Zoom recorder. So we have good images, less good sound. Check it out, this unique music.
