Turner & Kirwan of Wexford

 It’s not often you open your mailbox and find a picture of you taken 45 years ago, especially when it’s the cover of an album you’d recorded back in 1977 with your best friend.

It was like receiving a time capsule full to the brim with our attitudes, opinions, musical tastes, and so much more.

The album was Absolutely and Completely by Turner & Kirwan of Wexford.

It was the culmination of years of playing in dives, clubs, pubs, colleges, and even stadiums across the country.

To our surprise – and everyone else’s – Absolutely and Completely almost became a hit.

Back then radio wasn’t as strictly formatted as today. At many stations DJs could actually play what they liked; hence, a number of tracks from the LP became firm favorites on FM Radio.

Even in that bygone age of diversity Turner & Kirwan of Wexford was an unusual band – just two of us with our soundman, Neil Kempfer Stocker on Taurus bass pedals.

Pierce Turner doubled on clavinet and Moog synthesizer, all the while playing a high hat with his left foot. 

 

I played a heavily effected acoustic/electric guitar and hammered the hell out of a bass drum with my right foot.

We once got banned from New York City’s spacious Town Hall for being too loud, which says as much about our attitude as our volume levels.

Oddly enough, we were also banned from CBGB – an unheard of feat - though we were the first band to play the joint.

It was either feast or famine for T & K of W. Within a month of disembarking at JFK, a Radio City talent scout heard us at the nearby Pig and Whistle, and signed us for a weekly wage that made our eyes pop.

Alas, we never got to match steps with The Rockettes for we were unable to produce the requisite green cards.

Still, New York was our oyster - a paradise where you could rent an apartment in the East Village for 100 bucks a month.

Sure, it was a tad dangerous but who cared – there was so much happening musically, and we savored it all. Punk, Reggae, Folk, and Jazz blasted from club doorways, plus on summer evenings in Central Park you could thrill to Pavarotti and Bernstein.

Up in The Bronx, Durty Nelly’s, The Wagon Wheel, and The Village Pub hosted gigs 7 nights a week, while a couple of miles down the Concourse Grandmaster Flash was creating beats and anthems that would change the world.

It was a great scene and we were in the thick of it, mixing punk and classical riffs to tell stories about lonely priests, and traveling people, always with echoes of Wexford trailing behind.

In the DIY ethic of the times we made our own album. It was rockin’, psychedelic, orchestral folk, and very much us.

We thought we might pick up some random airplay, but lo and behold, WNEW, WLIR, and many other FM stations across the country added our songs.

The beat went on, the crowds got bigger, and our admirers ranged from Pete Seeger to David Bowie, Norman Mailer to Frank Herbert, Frank McCourt to Lester Bangs.

It didn’t hurt when Girl Next Door became the first rock song about lesbianism to get significant airplay – though when, Polydor, our Irish record company, listened to the lyrics, they promptly dumped our LPs into the garbage. The Island of Saints and Scholars apparently wasn’t ready for us.

In the meantime, our manager ordered us up to the Catskills to rehearse a 5-piece band that could capture the sound we’d created in the studio, but when we returned he had moved to the West Coast, and a promised US tour evaporated.

So we formed the new wave Major Thinkers, were signed to a major record deal and became the “next big thing” for a couple of months.

Eventually Pierce and I went our separate ways, and Absolutely and Completely became an LP collector’s item. But we never forgot it and its 1970’s uniqueness.

It’s just been re-released as a limited edition CD with lots of bonus tracks and can be purchased at https://shop.bandwear.com/turnerandkirwan

Though not for the faint of heart, it captures the spirit of 1970’s New York, and the dreams of two young men who did things their way - absolutely and completely.

A Not So Natural Disaster

 The ospreys were still diving in Long Island Sound in early October.  They’re usually long gone by now; it’s a hell of a journey to South America where many of them spend the winter months.

Then again, they arrived late this year, as did the piping plovers. I began to wonder if both species were victims of the extreme weather so common nowadays.

The egrets were a no show. Oh, there were sightings, but nothing like other years when the marshland would resound with their chatter around dawn.

Why does it matter? I guess I’ve come to rely on them. When all else is in turmoil, these birds provide constancy.

I’ve long ago given up on horseshoe crabs - though they’ve outlasted their dinosaur peer, their numbers in the Sound have dropped precipitously in the last decade.

Some say they’ve become victims of the pharmaceutical companies who use their blood to test the efficacy of various vaccines.

Perhaps, but I think the rise in temperature in local coastal waters has interfered with their mating process. 450 million years of courting come to an end – and on our watch too.

I can attest to the rise in temperature. When I first came to the Sound in 2000, I rarely even dipped a toe in the brine until mid-June and never felt totally comfortable until July 4^th.

But for the last five or more years I’ve been taking the plunge in late May; at this rate I’ll soon be hopping in on May Day, fist in the air while humming a couple of bars of James Connolly.

I know what you’re thinking - another tree-hugger railing against rampant capitalism! And don’t you have enough to be worrying about already with the “fake news” daily harassing poor President Trump.

Sure isn’t the man frightened out of his wits with so many lefty lawyers serving suits on him down in Mar-a-Lago. He can’t even show his face in his beloved Trump Towers with bowsies the like of Malachy McCourt and John McDonagh ready to accost him, dare he step outside for a medium-rare cheeseburger.

President Trump makes no bones about it - climate change is a “hoax.” I wish to God he were right – I’d vote for him, and even wear one of his MAGA hats, if he could convince me that the polar caps are not melting to beat the band.

I know, no one you know has ever even seen a polar cap; besides The Jets are still a disaster, and hey, that last trip to the supermarket nearly bankrupted you!

But you do remember Hurricane Sandy, nearly 10 years ago? Sea levels have risen over an inch since then. Might sound like nothing  - until the next big wash comes surging into New York Harbor?

Global warming doesn’t stop just because we don’t give it the time of day. We’re burning fossil fuels like they’re going out of style. This produces large quantities of carbon dioxide that trap heat in the atmosphere leading to extreme and unstable weather.

But shouldn’t we be supporting the coal miners in West Virginia as Senator Manchin says? Of course, but there are only 11,000 left statewide in an industry that bequeathed its employees black lung among other illnesses.  

It would be far more economical in the long run to keep paying these hard working people their regular wage, while retraining them for positions in clean energy industries.

But let’s not be stingy: congratulations to all who helped pass the oddly named Inflation Reduction Bill, for it contained provisions that hopefully will reduce carbon emissions 40% by 2030. But is it too little too late?

The cost of cleaning up our current “natural” disasters is already huge. How many more will surface by 2030?

That’s why it’s important to note local changes and how they’re affecting the environment around us. Awareness may be the first step to both economic and social survival.

In the meantime, there’s much we can do: plant trees, use less heat and air conditioning, walk, bike, ride the subway and buses, reuse and recycle.

But most of all hold your politicians to account. Will they make the tough decisions needed to save the only world we know?

And hey, you Ospreys, shake a wing – it’s a long way to Venezuela and Brazil.

So You Wanna Be An Irish Dancer

 Back where I came from few boys aspired to be Irish dancers. It would have been considered suicidal to trip daintily around the back streets of Wexford in black satin jacket, matching short pants, thick white socks, and buckled shiny shoes.

However, proficiency in the Irish language was compulsory, and to fail the subject in your final exam meant another year spent in high school.

Hence, along with some of my friends, I signed up for a month of total Gaelic immersion in Ballingeary Irish College, West Cork.

A kindly Christian Brother suggested we teenage clodhoppers take céilí dancing lessons before our departure, lest we turn the college ballroom into an emergency ward.

That month was wonderful. We spoke Irish all day, and at nights wowed the young ladies of Cork with our Walls of Limerick/Siege of Ennis steps; some of us even acquired Rebel County girlfriends, and returned to West Brit Wexford changed men.

We all handily passed our Leaving Cert Irish exams, but upon graduation we promptly ditched the dance steps.

Small wonder, The Walls of Limerick were scorned in Dublin dancehalls, while the Siege of Ennis never found a foothold in the moshpits of CBGB and Max’s Kansas City.

But I never lost my fondness for our native music. So when Chris Byrne and I formed Black 47 we set Irish Trad to Hip-Hop, Reggae, and Funk beats. This unholy concoction rang a bell with young Irish-Americans, many of whom had been enrolled in Step Dancing schools by their native-born Irish parents.

We encouraged these dancers to join us onstage and link their steps with our beats. Dressed in the urban styles of the day, they were a sight to behold as they kicked high into the overhead lights.

The pace and general delirium onstage seemed to liberate the dancers, and I began to wonder if something similar had happened to the young Famine Irish in the dancehalls of The Five Points when they cut loose to the music of Irish fiddlers and African-American percussionists.

Fast forward to the musical Hard Times which dealt with the amalgamation of Irish and African-Americans in those downtown dancehalls amid the general social upheaval of New York in the Civil War era. Zestfully choreographed by Joe Barros and Niall O’Leary, this re-imagined 19^thCentury dancing brought audiences to their feet.

Soon after the final Hard Times production in 2013, Bill T. Jones, the renowned American choreographer, joined the creative team of what eventually became Paradise Square.

Bill set out to get to the core of what was going on in both African and Irish dance in that turbulent time, and then interpret it through the prism of American social and political history.

And when we needed Irish choreography that would match Bill’s intensity and innovation, enter Hammerstep, Jason Oremus and Garrett Coleman. Riverdance veterans both, they were also conversant with Break Dancing and Hip-Hop movement.

Being in the room while these three gentlemen birthed the Tony nominated choreography of Paradise Square was a creative experience I will always treasure.

Irish dancing across the US continues to amalgamate with other art forms, and I’m sure there will be many surprises in store. Speaking of which, it’s only fitting to give a word of appreciation to Trinity Irish Dance and Mark Howard who have pushed the Irish Dance envelope for decades.

And if you live within striking distance of New York’s Irish Arts Center, make sure you check out the upcoming collaboration between Seán Curran Company and Darrah Carr Dance.

Sean performed with Bill T. Jones for years and began his career as an Irish step-dancer in Boston, while Darrah, always on dance’s cutting edge, has never lost her affection for Irish dancing.

Céilí is the title of their Masters in Collaboration that will premiere at the beautiful and spacious new Irish Arts Center on 11^thAvenue and 51^stStreet.  Don’t miss this performance and the sparks these two companies will strike off each other.

With an original score by Dana Lyn and Kyle Sanna, one can be sure that it will be a scintillating evening of tradition, spurred by an innovation scarcely imaginable by the tough skeptics on the back streets of Wexford all those years ago.

 

(For tickets and information, irishartscenter.org  Sep 29 – Oct 2, 2022)

Rockin' The Catskills

 One of the interesting things about playing with Black 47 was that I became familiar with so many areas of the USA.  By extension, I got a unique insight into Irish-America.

The biggest reveal was that this vast country has had a very varied impact on Irish immigrants. 

Of course the Irish have exerted a major social and political influence on the USA, yet I never cease to marvel at the difference between, say, the Irish of South Boston and those of South Chicago, or the Irish of Tipperary Hill in Syracuse and their compatriots on Geary Street, San Francisco.

I often thought about such matters around Labor Day Weekend, no doubt because of the intense summer schedule of the band.

Black 47 usually played parts of Memorial Day and Labor Day weekends at The Blackthorne Resort in East Durham, NY.  If you’ve never been up to the Irish Alps (Catskills), you owe yourself a visit.

I actually began playing that area in Gerry O’Shea’s Irish Center in Leeds, NY before I even set foot in the dead center of Irish America, hallowed Bainbridge Avenue in The Bronx.

Talk about two contrasting areas of Irish settlement – one calm and rural, the other urban and turbulent.

No matter the person, the Catskill Mountains seem to have a soothing effect on the most riotous of Irish souls. The Irish who live up there are quite content with their surroundings, and for the most part have no particular desire to return home.

The weekends of Memorial Day and Labor Day in East Durham, however, are as different as chalk and cheese, hence Black 47’s obligations were different too.

On Memorial Day we were hired to get the season swinging with a bang. Our brief was to attract crowds from New York City, Albany, Syracuse, Springfield, and every burg in the Hudson Valley on Friday night, and keep them reeling and rocking through the weekend.

We would play the East Durham Irish Festival on Saturday evening and hurry back to The Blackthorne for a post-midnight 2-hour set.

We would then hop in the van – to hell with sleep – and head for NYC, catch an early flight for Chicago to headline the Gaelic Park Southside Festival on Sunday and Monday.

Though the audiences were equally vociferous and welcoming, yet there was no mistaking that the mosh pits of the Mid-West were more hospitable than those of the East.

That makes sense, for the Irish from Springfield, IL have been shaped by different circumstances than their brethren from Springfield, MA; likewise, the Irish from Ames, Iowa have little in common with those raised in Woodlawn.

By the time we arrived back in NYC on Tuesday morning my foggy brain would be awash in such sociological musings. But with a busy summer playing festivals and beach towns I often wouldn’t have time to make sense of what I’d experienced until we hit East Durham again on Labor Day Weekend.

This was a much more leisurely affair. Occasionally we might speed off for an afternoon gig in Cape Cod or Rhode Island, regardless we’d be back in time to play The Blackthorne at midnight.

Though people still came to East Durham from all over for Labor Day Weekend, less traveled up from the city. Take New York out of any equation and things move at a more leisurely pace.

You had time to talk, and observe the differences between people from Buffalo and Scranton, Albany and Yonkers, Pittsfield and Kingston, Cairo and Catskill.

And you had time to glory in the majesty of the mountains that were but a background blur on Memorial Day.

Most afternoons I’d head off down a different country road, and over the years I found quiet spots where, if you remained still, you could become one with the birds, rabbits, racoons, and the occasional fox who studied you from a distance.

In one abandoned field I used sit on a wall constructed of mossy flat stones built by someone from Mayo or Connemara in a previous century; and as the sun declined in the September sky, I could comprehend what attracted the Irish to these mountains in the first place, and just how much more the place we choose to live in shapes us than we will ever shape it.

I Miss David Bowie

 I miss David Bowie.

 “Sure, what would the likes of you be doin’ hobnobbin’ with a superstar?” You might counter.

Well, back in the late 1970’s he bought Pierce Turner and myself a large brandy each.

Turner & Kirwan of Wexford were debuting some tracks from a Science Fiction album, no less, in an uptown club called Hurrah when some yahoo roared out, “Play Suffragette City” – a Bowie song we were known to perform.

To which Turner snarkily replied, “We’ll play it when David buys us a double brandy.”

Lo and behold, at the end of the set we were presented with two large Rémy Martins in fancy tumblers, with a message from “Mr. Bowie” that while he loved our extra-terrestrial explorations, he would have been honored to hear our version of his ditty.

New York was a very different place back then. David probably hopped into a checker cab and dropped by Hurrah on a whim. He had no security detail with him and left as discreetly as he arrived.

Nowadays, Kim Kardashian wouldn’t check into the Ladies without a couple of beefy bodyguards in tow.

Celebrities were as common as cockroaches in the New York City of old. My brother, Jemmy, while plying his trade as a waterproofer on the face of the Carlyle Hotel once had Mick Jagger roar down, “Jesus on high, can’t a man get a decent night’s sleep in this kip?”

That was nothing compared to the profanity-laced tongue-lashing he received from Lauren Bacall when shoring up the Dakota.

One of his crew was so taken aback he was moved to whisper, “I wonder what Bogie ever saw in her?”

Lest you think this column is devoted to name dropping, I will refrain from mentioning my favorite Hendix story that concerned a window frame slicing a centimeter from one of Jimi’s divine fingers.

Andy Warhol called it correctly - everyone is a celebrity these days, however, instead of his projected 15 minutes of fame, better use your 15 seconds wisely.

I can barely walk down my block anymore for fear of losing an eye - there are so many wannabe Kardashians brandishing selfie-sticks while inanely mugging for their iPhones.

Will someone tell me what the Kardashians are famous for anyway? I’ve been out of the celebrity loop since the Murdochs quit flogging The Post in the subways. And don’t tell me to read it online – I’m already wasting so much time in the digital netherworld I can barely spare an hour for the pub.

Speaking of which – what’s the greatest cultural loss in New York City since the pandemic was visited upon us?

Dive bars! Remember that hole in the wall you used to frequent whenever your spouse or significant other questioned your authority or sanity? Yep, the venerable dive bar is gone with the wind - and the astronomical rents.

Next thing you know that bastion of nightlife Paddy Reilly’s will be shuttered, and Steve Duggan will be heading home to manage the Cavan Senior Football Team.

But then New York was always a changeable place. People laughed at Archbishop Dagger Hughes for building St. Patrick’s Cathedral up in the rural glades of Fifth and Fifty-First.

Who’d travel all the way up there to do the Stations of the Cross? For that matter, does anybody even remember, let alone attend, the Nine First Fridays anymore - although it wouldn’t surprise me if you could observe them through the Internet.

The city changes and we change with it. Am I mistaken or was New York at its peak in the years before 9/11? In some ways the city never seemed to recover, but I suppose that depends on your perspective.

I knock on wood as I say it, but just suppose we have weathered the curse of Covid. What kind of city will we be inheriting this time? One utterly divided by wealth – no doubt, but when was it ever any different?

And then you look at the bright side of things – most of us are still standing; although in one arena all is changed, utterly changed – the Mets now rule New York as we hurtle towards October.

And yet, I still miss the good old days when celebrities ranged freely around Manhattan and David Bowie bought me a double brandy.

Is America Broken?

 Is America broken? It’s a question that is posed with increasing frequency.

I used to dismiss it out of hand. This country has come through so much – escape from British colonialism, a civil war to prevent the Southern slave-owning states from seceding, a Civil Rights campaign allied with national protests against a disastrous war of choice in Vietnam.

Yet so much divides us nowadays, you might say. Indeed it does, but that’s the nature of a democracy. Unlike Putin’s Russia, we debate our differences publicly, that’s a strength but also a burden.

In a healthy democracy there’s usually a center, often a majority to whom differing factions turn for validation of their arguments.

When that doesn’t work, elections are called, or regularly scheduled, where the people decide.

In a country of laws like the United States of America, a vast majority of people accepts that elections are sacred and that the winners will form the next government.

But what happens when the leader of the losing group refuses to accept the verdict and contests the result?

The courts decide, as ultimately happened in the Bush v. Gore election of 2000.

We currently find ourselves in a situation where the defeated president in 2020 not only refuses to accept the result, but he even attempted to influence election officials in his favor.

You would imagine that his wiser colleagues would intervene for fear their party would suffer even a greater rejection in the coming elections.

Yet, it would appear, that Mr. Trump has convinced the party of Lincoln, Eisenhower, and Reagan that he won the election of 2020 despite all evidence to the contrary.

Does the Republican Party actually believe this “great lie?” On the face of it, this hardly seems likely, yet there are people who are utterly convinced that voting machines were tampered with and other forms of election chicanery perpetrated, without even a whit of evidence.

What happens now? Well, voters have a chance to send a strong message to both the Republican Party and its leader in the November midterms, and again in the 2024 presidential election.

Democracy, however, is nothing if not gloriously messy, for we are currently afflicted by a rate of inflation unequaled since 1981, and, of late, it’s “the economy, stupid,” that has driven most people to the polls.

It will take time and much massaging for our US market economy to correct the surge in prices caused by a pandemic, rusty supply chains, and a war of aggression by Russia against Ukraine.

We should always bear in mind that part of the reason for the current soaring inflation rate is because workers are finally demanding and receiving higher wages.

However, as long as the Federal Reserve doesn’t cause a recession by randomly raising interest rates inflation will eventually return to a manageable level.

But if we succumb to economic alarmism we could throw the baby out with the bathwater, and that precious baby’s name is democracy.

We have a stark existential choice in the coming elections. Do we choose democracy or one man’s refusal to admit that he was beaten fairly and squarely in the 2020 presidential election?

Despite party labels, this is not a partisan issue; democracy, despite its flaws, is something to cherish, while Mr. Trump’s self-delusional dream of autocracy is not.

He’s already done grave damage to American democracy by causing many of his followers to doubt our election process.

We may differ on many issues, but in the end we can settle matters at the polls. Let’s vote rather than harangue each other on the platforms of an increasingly vicious and vacuous social media.

Had Mike Pence not done his job as Vice-President on January 6^thand certified the election of Joe Biden who knows what the end result would have been. But, at the least, it seems likely more lives would have been lost while President Trump sat on his hands and allowed a mob of his followers to run amok in the Capitol Building.

We do have a very safe election system and should treasure it rather than allow one man to disparage it, and then hide behind inane conspiracy theories.

Is America broken – far from it! But democracy is under attack and it’s our turn to defend it.

THE FORGOTTEN EMIGRANTS

 I was recently giving a talk to the Irish Business Organization and was asked by host Shelley Ann Quilty-Lake to describe my own emigration from Ireland to New York.

I began by describing life in the city in the 1970’s.

Though the era is usually painted as being dangerous and crime-ridden, it was also exciting and gloriously inexpensive.

Reggae pulsed through the city accompanied by the sweet pungency of marijuana, while Punk was reinvigorating staid rock music. A couple of gigs a week in The Bronx or Greenwich Village easily paid for my rent-stabilized apartment.

Then in the midst of my feel-good story a series of anguished faces flashed through my mind. All Irishmen, they ranged in age from early 20’s to late 70’s, faces I’d forgotten or stored in some cobwebbed mental attic.

They sat or stood at bars I’d played across the country from Bainbridge Avenue to Geary Street in San Francisco. 

 

Some wore leather jackets and torn blue jeans, but most were dressed in the Irish evening attire of sports coat and cavalry twill trousers; each had told me some variant of our common emigrant story.

Many had arrived in the late 1950’s fleeing lack of work and opportunity. More came in the 1980’s when people were exiting Ireland at such a clip the joke was “last one out, turn out the lights!”

They had ended up in some American city or other because there was no life for them at home.

They had never married, and had settled for some form of employment that guaranteed them a room, and enough money to spend most nights at a local Irish watering hole.

When they’d finally scraped up the fare to go home to a funeral or wedding, they found that their notion of Ireland had changed, they didn’t even fit in socially anymore, dashing all hope of a permanent return.

I ran into many of their ilk while traveling around America in the back of a van. They liked Black 47 – not the harder edged rock or funk music, but the unvarnished anthems about emigration and politics.

Songs like Livin’ in America and James Connolly would lead to post-gig conversations at the bar, and eventually to heartfelt revelations about the country of their birth. Shots of Jamesons, and the knowledge that I’d be leaving town in the morning with their secrets, often led to late night eloquence.

These people weren’t whiners or looking for sympathy, it’s just that they’d come to the hard won realization that their die had been cast at an early age.

The Irish system of education that they’d experienced was brutal. Class sizes were often above 40 and corporal punishment was the rule.

I knew what they were talking about, for in my own Christian Brothers Primary School boys were beaten unmercifully, not so much by the brothers themselves but by the young state-employed, lay teachers.

Words like dyslexia or autism were barely known, let alone that students might suffer from such conditions.

It was one size fits all – if you didn’t know an answer you were first humiliated and then beaten with a stick or a stiff leather strap until your hands were numb or raw. No wonder so many children abandoned school at the legal age of 14.

The unholy alliance between church and state didn’t help. Emigration kept the country subservient and manageable. Let them go – less to feed and educate on the island of saints and scholars!

There was never a suggestion that remedial classes be given to young emigrants to help them fit into a foreign industrial society. Why bother – didn’t they have their rosary beads to guide them?

Ireland is a much different country now. Young people receive a humane education and many never think of emigrating; while Irish consulates are aware of their responsibility to senior emigrants and regularly provide grants to organizations like the Aisling Irish Community Center, The New York Irish Center, the Emerald Isle Immigration Center, and other caring groups across the country.

But still I can’t forget the faces of those late night confidants who should never have had to leave their homes and native country.  

Their humble stories are as important as the successful ones we celebrate. Their courage and their lonely fortitude still inspire me.