For the perfect pairing of Grateful Dead and traditional Celtic sound, look to Wake the Dead, a California group of experts musicians. For almost 17 years, Wake the Dead has dug deep into the canon of Jerry Garcia and Robert Hunter, releasing their fourth album, Deal, this past fall. Founding member Danny Carnahan, vocalist, fiddler, and Grammy-nominated songwriter, explains. … [Read more...] about Playing in the Band
Music
What Are You Like?
Keith & Kristyn Getty
The Northern Irish duo reinventing the hymn.
Keith and Kristyn Getty have written music together since 2001 (and have been married since 2004). Both born near Belfast, they now live between Nashville and Portstewart, Co. Derry. The transatlantic life is an apt parallel to their musical style, which combines classical, folk, traditional Irish, and contemporary genres to form a … [Read more...] about What Are You Like?
Keith & Kristyn Getty
Music Reviews
New music of Irish and Irish American interest. ℘℘℘ Legacy, Volume 2 Celtic Thunder This familiar, favored collection of incredible talent begins with an extraordinary rendition of the other-worldly “Now We Are Free” featuring Keith Harkin, who later in the album sings his original “Lauren & I,” a beautiful song made more interesting when learned it was written at the … [Read more...] about Music Reviews
Accordion Man
Billy McComiskey, who recently received a National Heritage Fellowship – the nation’s highest honor in the folk and traditional arts, talks to Kristin Cotter McGowan. ℘℘℘ I'm up in the Catskills. It’s Irish Arts Week in East Durham, New York, and master box player, All-Ireland Accordion Champion Billy McComiskey is taking a break between his scheduled workshops to talk about … [Read more...] about Accordion Man
The King’s Irish and American Roots
Through an 18th-century document up for auction in Whyte’s Auctioneers Eclectic Collector sale, new light has been shone on the Irish ancestry of Elvis Presley and his family’s origins in Ireland and America. The document is of a legal nature and concerns claims of abuse by a group of men in Hacketstown, Co. Carlow, which were made by William Presley, Elvis’s … [Read more...] about The King’s Irish and American Roots