Their first album in seven years, Cas, an abbreviation for the Gaelic word for "turn," features notable vocalists
For 20 years, the Irish instrumental band Lunasa has connected with audiences around the world through the universal language of music, but with its new album, the lads are trying something new: words.
Their first album in seven years, “Cas”, an abbreviation for the Gaelic word for “turn,” features notable vocalists, including Mary Chapin Carpenter and blues singer Eric Bibb, on five of the 12 tracks. The others are instrumental tunes, such as jigs and reels, played with Lunasa’s nimbly executed Celtic swing.
“We have been toying with the project for a while and just waiting for the right occasion,” said flute player Kevin Crawford. “It’s an anniversary year for us,” he said, so they thought it was “perfectly appropriate to have a change in the shape of our album.”
The members, Crawford said, did not want to just “just cherry-pick a couple of names and forge a relationship,” but to work with vocalists “we had established ties or links…so it’s a sincere collaboration.”
“Everybody came aboard with the right mindset,” Crawford said, “and were all generous and positive and encouraging toward the notion that we were finally going to embrace the world of song.”
As part of a month-long U.S. tour, Lunasa is performing at the South Orange Performing Arts Center with the West Virginia-born bluegrass singer and multi-instrumentalist Tim O’Brien.
O’Brien is a Grammy-winning songwriter whose songs have been recorded by Kathy Mattea, Garth Brooks and Nickel Creek. In addition to founding the bluegrass band Hot Rize, he has played with Steve Martin, Steve Earle and The Chieftains.
Crawford said that O’Brien will play a few songs solo and then collaborate with Lunasa at SOPAC. “Tim sort of becomes part of the band….It’s a full-on collaboration,” Crawford said. “He’s so versatile in what he can do.”
Lunasa performed several songs on Natalie Merchant’s 2010 album Leave Your Sleep and now she returns the favor on Cas. She has a “huge love for traditional Irish songs,” Crawford said, adding she can “really define a song and put her own stamp on it.” He said her interpretation of the sadly beautiful “Bonnie Light Horseman” about a war widow “is incredible….Regardless of our contribution, she’s pretty spectacular.”
The instrumental tracks on the new album are a mix of traditional and newly composed songs by band members or others. “We’ve probably entered into a sphere where the balance of tunes…are new or contemporary rather than traditional tunes,” Crawford said, adding “Even when we are [playing] contemporary tunes it’s in the traditional vein.”
While some of the members of Lunasa have changed since they started in 1997, the band has kept its signature breezy sound of fiddle, flute and bagpipe playing beautiful intertwined melodies over a standup bass and acoustic guitar rhythm section. Crawford noted that, in fact, the genre has changed more than the band over the years.
“Over the 20 years we have been together the music has evolved,” he said. “There’s a lot of strictly traditional bands emerging as well, but many of the alternative bands coming out of Ireland are going into more diverse places than we do.”
The Irish band Lunasa will perform March 22nd at the South Orange Performing Arts CenterBuilding on the genre-stretching neo-traditional bands of the 1970s like The Bothy Band and Planxty, Lunasa rose along with performers such as Sharon Shannon and Solas, who brought immaculate playing and looser geographic boundaries to the traditional canon. These reverent rebels added new instruments and repertoire, expanding the genre from “Irish” to “Celtic” by including Irish diaspora songs – from Galicia in Spain to Cape Breton in Canada to American bluegrass.
Crawford said that when Lunasa formed – named after the ancient god Lugh, who was associated with skill and the arts – the band was considered “a bit radical” for using a non-traditional rhythm section and creating richly textured harmonic arrangements of old tunes. “We were younger, wilder and a bit kickass,” he said. “By no means did we invent that, but we were one of the group to embrace that.”
“If you strip away the veneer,” Crawford said of Lunasa’s music, “at the core there’s a good solid traditional tune.”
The members, Crawford observed, have seen the music industry move from record-company campaigns centered around new albums to a “more organic little world” where bands are in more direct contact with fans through live shows and social media.
“We’re just so lucky, to be honest,” Crawford said, “to be able to go out and still do what we do 20 years later and people enjoy it. We are so lucky.”
Lunasa with Tim O’Brien
When: March 22nd at 7:30 p.m. and March 24th at 8 p.m.
Where: South Orange Performing Arts Center, One SOPAC Way, South Orange on the 22nd and Sitnik Theater, 715 Grand Avenue, Centenary College, Hackettstown on the 24th
How much: $ 32-$ 48. For SOPAC info call (973) 313-2787 or go to www.sopacnow.org; $ 30 for Centenary, for info call (908) 979-0900