Lillebjørn Nilsen (1950-2024)

For the last week or so I've been revisiting Lillebjørn Nilsen and Andy Irvine's Live in Telemark CD, which I bought soon after it first came out in 2021 (original post here). I was enjoying it enough (again) to look up Lillebjørn Nilsen and see what he was up to these days, and now I find that not only is he dead, but that he died more than a year ago and that the news somehow escaped my notice. (So much for instant news and social media!)

Nilsen was a beloved and important figure in his native Norway, but he wasn't widely known outside of Scandinavia, so I can't really be surprised that virtually no English-language sources seem to have carried the news of his death. One exception is the NewsinEnglish.no website, which has a full obituary. Nilsen did have American connections, though; he apparently spent some time in Chicago, and memorialized it in this song, which (according to the Live in Telemark liner notes) is about a chance meeting in a pub with a fellow expatriate, a Norwegian au pair.

Nilsen was a fine singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist. The Telemark concert with Andy Irvine was recorded in August 1994, and although Andy mentions having been very nervous, the performance captures their joy and comradeship as musicians whose backgrounds were different but whose temperaments and talents were congenial and complementary. Nilsen apparently stopped recording new material around that time, though he remained somewhat active. His health had reportedly declined in the years before his death.

Live in Telemark can be ordered, in digital and CD versions, from Bandcamp. There is a brief documentary tribute to Nilsen (in Norwegian) here.

Live in Telemark

I'm not sure why this genial live recording stayed on ice for twenty-seven years — maybe the timing just wasn't right until now — but here it is. Live in Telemark preserves a joint performance by two respected folk veterans in Norway in 1994. Andy Irvine is presumably the better-known of the pair internationally, having been a founding member of Sweeney's Men, Planxty, and several other notable Irish and world music ensembles in addition to his long solo career. Lillebjørn Nilsen is a comparable figure but one who performs mostly in the smaller market of his native Norway. Both are superb singers and accomplished multi-instrumentalists, and both have strong roots in folk traditions, Irvine as (among other things) a professed disciple of Woody Guthrie and Nilsen as a friend and admirer of Pete Seeger.

According to the liner notes, Irvine and Nilsen had known each other for about seventeen years before they finally had a chance to share a stage at the Telemark Festival. The set list here is roughly evenly divided between their respective repertoires, with Andy taking the spotlight for original songs like "My Heart's Tonight in Ireland" and "A Prince Among Men" and Lillebjørn contributing his own "Jenta i Chicago" and "Alexander Kiellands Plass." There are also several traditional songs as well as curiosities like a Norwegian version of Grit Larsen's "The Photographers," which Nilsen learned, in its original language from Seeger. A few of the cuts seem to be performed solo, but on most the pair play together, demonstrating a ready ability to learn each other's arrangements after what was presumably a relatively short period of rehearsal. Irvine mostly plays mandola and bouzouki while Nilsen plays guitar, willow flute, and hardanger fiddle. The sound is terrific.

Live in Telemark can be ordered, in digital and CD versions, from Bandcamp.

Planxty in their prime

Universal Music Ireland has released a modestly-priced CD & DVD package devoted to my favorite Irish trad band, Planxty. Entitled Between the Jigs and the Reels: A Retrospective, it doesn't appear to be officially available in the US thus far, but it can be obtained from Ireland or the UK without much difficulty if you look around. As far as I can tell, all of the tracks on the CD have been released previously (though a couple were new to me), but it's nice to have them together. The DVD is a different story: it's more than two hours and forty minutes of wonderful archival footage of the band during its heyday (the footage spans the years 1972 to 1982), and although some of it has been out there in one form or another much of it I had never seen. (A disclaimer warns that some of the archival material may have imperfections because of the quality of the source material, but I didn't find that to be an issue at all.)

Planxty last reunited for a series of concerts in 2005, and word is that it's unlikely that they will do so again, although all of the original members — Christy Moore, Andy Irvine, Dónal Lunny, and Liam O'Flynn — are still around and performing, sometimes in various combinations with each other. If their work together has run its course then this retrospective is a nice summing-up.

Below: Planxty from 1973 performing "Raggle Taggle Gypsy," with the famous transition into "Tabhair dom do lámh." Leagues O'Toole describes this arrangement as "possibly the first ever attempt to play a folk song straight into a traditional tune by an ensemble of Irish musicians."

Celebrating Andy Irvine

Andy Irvine has just released a live CD of his 70th-birthday bash two years ago, with a DVD promised soon, both of which are available directly from Andy's website. Participants include members of several of the various combos Andy's been associated with, including Sweeney's Men, Planxty, Mozaik, and LAPD (which stands for Liam O'Flynn, Andy Irvine, Paddy Glackin, and Dónal Lunny), as well as Paul Brady, George Galiatsos, and Manolis Galiatsos. Most of the twelve songs have been recorded previously on other records, but the versions are strong, the sound excellent, and everyone's in great spirits. I recommend it.

Thank a musician week

Update (2021): Many of the links below are now broken.

There's a lot of hand-wringing these days about how the old model of compensating musicians is breaking down under the pressure of file sharing, piracy, and 99-cent downloads, and about how nobody has figured out yet just what new model might arise to replace it. As interesting and important as all that is, it's worth remembering that there are plenty of talented working musicians out there right now trying to make a living, driving themselves from gig to gig and hoping that their next royalty check — assuming there still is one — will help cover their medical bills. If those of us who make up their audience — because we get some kind of joy or consolation or amusement out of what they do — want them to continue doing it, we're going to have to keep supporting them, and that means, one way or another, supporting them financially.

Fortunately, there's still a way of doing that that benefits everybody. You purchase a CD (or a download, if you're so inclined), maybe go to a gig if you have the opportunity, the artist gets some cash and a reason to keep going, and you get some music and the feeling of having done your part.

One thing the musicians in the list that follows have in common (other than demonstrating my shameless musical prejudices) is that most are now either producing and marketing their own music or recording for small boutique labels, which means that if you buy music direct from them there's a chance that a fair portion of your dollar might actually go into their pockets. And although I derive no financial benefit from promoting them, I can't say that I do so entirely for selfless reasons; I promote them because I enjoy what they do and want to make sure that they're able to keep on doing it.

— Mary Chapin Carpenter, Ashes and Roses, available from Bandgarden.
— Lowry Hamner, American Dreaming, available from CD Baby.

— Robyn Hitchcock, Spooked, available from Yep Roc Records.
— Andy Irvine, Abocurragh, available from the artist.

— Leo Johnson, It's About Time, available from CD Baby.
— Freedy Johnston, Rain on the City, available from the artist.

— Los Lobos, Tin Can Trust, available from the artists.
— Kelly Joe Phelps, Brother Sinner and the Whale, available from Black Hen Records.

— Amy Rigby & Wreckless Eric, A Working Museum, available from Amy Rigby.
— Zachary Richard, Le fou, available from the artist.

— Chris Smither, Hundred Dollar Valentine, available from the artist.
— Syd Straw, Pink Velour, available from CD Baby.

— Gillian Welch, The Harrow and the Harvest, available from Acony Records.
— Scott Wendholt, Beyond Thursday, available from Double Time Records.

Finally, here are two excellent music documentaries by independent filmmakers:

— Tom Weber, Troubadour Blues, available from Tom Weber.
— Fred Uhter, Wide Awake, available from New Filmmakers Online.

Abocurragh

Until about ten days ago I had no idea that Andy Irvine had a new record in the works, and now here it is, whisked over the seas from Ireland to drive away the oncoming November chill. Andy jokingly refers to Abocurragh as "the album of the century," meaning it's his first solo album since Way Out Yonder, which was recorded in 1999. Old friends are on board -- Dónal Lunny and Liam O'Flynn from Planxty, Bruce Molsky, Nikola Parov, and Rens van der Zalm from Mozaik -- but there are some new sounds in the mix this time (new to me at least), including Hardanger fiddler Annbjørg Lien and guitarist Lillebjørn Nilsen from Norway.

Andy's in fine mettle and voice and the selection of songs is a strong one, maybe his best solo set except the wonderful Rain on the Roof. There are no strictly instrumental tracks this time (three of the ballads segue into instrumentals), but as you would expect there's some great mandola and bouzouki playing by Andy and plenty of support from his mates on accordion, uilleann pipes, fiddle, and guitar, not to mention Nikola Parov on more exotic instruments like the nyckelharpa and kaval. No record from Andy would be complete without a couple of rousing songs about the Wobblies of the IWW, and this one has two, of which "The Spirit of Mother Jones" is more successful than the Balkan-flavored "Victory at Lawrence" (though the latter piqued my curiosity enough to induce me to dig out my copy of Bruce Watson's Bread and Roses). The heart of the album, though, is in the ballads, both original and traditional. Andy's got a wry sense of humor, so it's no surprise if the lyrics here stray a bit into unexpected territory, whether the eventual outcome is tragic or comic. (In both cases, there seems to be a common cautionary theme about the dangers of picking up strange women!)

The final cut, "Oslo / Norwegian Mazurka," is one of Abocurragh's best, with some delicious Hardanger fiddle by Annbjørg Lien and some earthy, off-kilter humor. The song narrates the events of an excursion through Norway some years back, after which, Andy says:

I was completely knackered when I got home to Ireland and decided to write a song about it. Unfortunately I could remember nothing, so this may or may not be true! No one will ever know.

True or not, the story is hilarious and provides Andy with a chance to spin some of his best lyrics:

In the Dubliner we played a gig, though we were all a bit hungover
A man got up and tried to dance a jig it looked more like a Bossa Nova
I had some beers and I began to flirt
And very soon I was on blonde alert
You're too late you know, thirty years or so,
she laughed and went home to her mammy

The song's best lines come later on, and concern the origin of clouds, but for that you'll have to buy the record.

Abocurragh, which is expertly produced by Dónal Lunny, is probably not available in stores in the US but can be ordered directly from Andy through his website or through various online sources.

A Planxty Page

One

The Humours of Planxty, Leagues O'Toole's collective biography of the Irish trad quartet has finally been released, a year after it was originally promised. Not that you can buy a copy of the book in the US, mind you. For reasons that escape me the US seems to be behind a wall for the group these days; the excellent live CD and DVD of their reunion two years ago have never officially distributed here at all, which really is mystifying given the reverence in which Planxty is held throughout Europe and elsewhere. All this while every kind of insipid pseudo-Celtic treacle is in every gift shop and New Age store — but don't get me started ...

In any case, I ordered my copy from Eason's in Ireland and it arrived with exemplary swiftness. I did so with a bit of trepidation, given that the last book to be published in which Planxty played a major part, Colin Harper's Irish Folk, Trad & Blues: A Secret History, was pretty much of a shapeless mess. I needn't have worried; The Humours of Planxty is a solid job. O'Toole lets the band members and their associates do most of the talking, but he weaves their recollections nicely together into a coherent narrative and makes judicious and largely on-the-mark observations throughout.

The book is admirably thorough, particularly for the early years; it takes more than 125 pages to reach the release of the the “black album,” the group's 1972 debut LP. It's an “official” biography, to be sure. Leagues O'Toole is not just the narrator but a minor character as well, since he was in part responsible for getting the band back together in 2004. He's not afraid, though, to let on when he thinks the lads were having a bit of an off day — usually as a result of too much bending the elbow. My only major quibble (other than the lack of color illustrations) is that the book has relatively little to say about the personal lives and later careers of the four founding members.

There are rumors that the book was delayed because of a legal squabble. Founding member Christy Moore seems to be alluding to this on his website when he says:

Leagues went to great lengths to get it right. Sadly, one key component is missing. One vital cog in the Planxty wheel denied Leagues the use of some brilliant insights and stories. For whatever reason the wonderful interview was quashed. (We still love you).

Not sure what that's all about, but I hope it's nothing that will keep the band from working together again in the future, if the spirit moves them.

Two

Reading O'Toole's book seemed to provide an opportune moment to catch up with one of the later Planxty records I'd never heard in full, so I've lately been enjoying making the acquaintance of After the Break, the record the group released in 1979 during their first reunion. The first cut, “The Good Ship Kangaroo,” I already knew from Planxty Live 2004. Though the studio recording isn't as confident and rousing as the later live version — Christy Moore's signing isn't quite as inspired — it's still a treasure.

According to the liner notes, the song was collected “from the singing of the late Mrs. Elizabeth Cronin of Macroom, Co. Cork.” Whether that implies that she had anything to do with its composition I don't know. One thing's for sure, though, the song is way too clever to be casually filed away as yet another chance relic of “oral tradition.” Somebody wrote these lyrics, from beginning to end, and had a good larf doing it:

(...)

Our ship was homeward bound from many a foreign shore,
Manys the foreign present unto my love I bore.
I brought tortoises from Tenerife and ties from Timbuctoo,
A China rat, a Bengal cat, and a Bombay cockatoo.

Paid off I sought her dwelling in a street above the town,
Where an ancient dame upon a line was hanging out her gown.
“Where is my love?” “She's married, sir, about six months ago,
To a smart young man that drives the van for Chapplin, Son and Co.”

Oh, I never thought she would prove false,
Or either prove untrue,
As we sailed away from Milford Bay,
On board the Kangaroo.

Here's a health to dreams of married life, to soap, to suds, and blue,
Hearts, true lovers, patent starch and washing soda too.
I will go unto some for shore, no longer can I stay,
With some China Hottentot I'll throw myself away.

(...)

Oh, I never thought she would prove false,
Or either prove untrue,
As we sailed away from Milford Bay,
On board the Kangaroo.

There's some disagreement about exactly what “China Hottentot” means. The liner notes say that Hottentot (a name once applied to the Khoikhoi people of South Africa) was a slang term for opium. Leagues O'Toole doesn't buy this explanation and rather pointlessly adds that “the word 'hottentot' is nowadays considered offensive by the Oxford Dictionary of South African English.”

The song's verses and chorus are melodically identical, but Lunny's arrangement disguises that fact so cleverly that, according to Leagues, Christy Moore himself was never aware of it until recently.

Off the top of my head I'd guess the song dates from 1900-1940. Here's a health to its forgotten creator.

Three

Another highlight of After the Break is a song called “The Rambling Siúler.” Sung by Andy Irvine, the song has a good deal in common with “The Jolly Beggar” from the black album. Both are about a man of high station who dresses up as a beggar and gains a night's shelter in a farmhouse, where like every good traveller he naturally takes advantage of the hospitality to win the charms of the farmer's daughter. In this case the beggar is really a colonel, who has donned rags as part of a bet with his commanding officer. The beggar first makes a show of flirting with a servant girl, but everyone just laughs that off. Then the daughter comes downstairs and ends up alone in the room with the beggar. She repulses his first advance, but later that night shows that she's not a bit shy:

When supper it was over
They made his bed in the barn
Between two sacks and a winnow cloth
for fear that he take harm
At twelve o'clock that very night
She came to the barn,
She was dressed in white
The beggar rose in great delight,
"She's mine," says the rambling siúler.

In the Anglo-Irish tradition this kind of thing generally ends with the girl ruined and the “beggar” riding away in triumph, but in this happier instance, after the colonel reveals all (in more ways than one), he and the girl both head for the general's house to collect on the wager and ride off together.

But what is a siúler? Though the word (which is pronounced shooler) wasn't in any of my dictionaries, an appeal to the forums at wordreference.com quickly brought some answers. It apparently derives from the Irish verbs siúil or siubhail with the meaning to go or to travel, the agentive form siúlóir meaning a rambler.

The interplay of Andy Irvine's mandolin and Dónal Lunny's bouzouki is particularly fine on this recording. Lunny's bouzouki (if that's in fact what it is) has a beautifully rich tone; after you've heard the song a few times try ignoring the words and listen for it.

Four

Not a Planxty song, strictly speaking, but one of Andy Irvine's best, “Forgotten Hero” relates the story of Michael Davitt, the 19th-century Irish nationalist and founder of the Irish Land League. It's a highly polemical song, and one that provides an enormous amount of information about Davitt's life and political activities — more than you would think could be accomodated into a six-minute song. Here are the last few verses and the chorus:

(...)

With Parnell as its leader the land war held his course
Hold the rent and hold the harvest they can't evict us all
And Davitt crossed the ocean saying give what you can spare
And the Irish in Amerikay they paid up their full share

But not for the first time and neither for the last
The Dublin Castle bishops nailed their colours to the mast
And the altars rang with warnings, respect the law we say
For these Fenians and these Socialists are leading you astray

With the laws of private property and the army at his back
Buckshot Forster then arrested all the leaders of the pack
In the hallowed House of Commons the Gents did cheer and howl
When they heard that Michael Davitt was safely back in jail

And the treaty of Kilmainham Parnell threw it all away
It was the turning point in his career and he turned the wrong way
And the revolution missed its chance with victory in its sight
And fell down like a house of cards collapsing overnight

Davitt saw the Land War as the first step down the track
And he hoped to see the end of the Queen and the end of Union Jack
And I hope some tremor reached him where he lies in bleak Mayo
When they raised the Harp without the Crown above the GPO

O Forgotten Hero in peace may you rest
Your heart was always with the poor and the oppressed
A prison cell could never quell the courage you possessed
Forgotten hero never vanquished in the struggle

The song piqued my interest in Davitt, so I got a hold of a copy of T. W. Moody's Davitt and Irish Revolution, 1846-82, considered the definitive biography of the man. Andy departs from Moody in his assessment of Parnell, and never mentions the pivotal fact that Davitt as a youth lost an arm in an industrial accident. But he otherwise follows Moody's narrative in its general outline, and here and there even in language. (“His heart was always with [the cause of] the poor and the oppressed” was apparently picked up from Moody (p. 556), and “the turning point of his career” is a phrase Moody uses (p. xvii), though he applies it to Davitt rather than Parnell.)

“Forgotten Hero” can be found both on Andy's excellent solo CD Rain on the Roof and on Irish Times, the 1990 record by one of his other musical projects, Patrick Street. I recommend the former as the better version.

The Bear's Rock

Thanks to a correspondent from Italy who contacted Andy Irvine, I now have the Macedonian lyrics and an English paraphrase for "Mechkin Kamen" ("The Bear's Rock"), which can be found on Andy Irvine & Davy Spillane's CD East Wind (where it is sung by Márta Sébestyen) as well as on Mozaik's Live from the Powerhouse (sung by Andy). Each line is sung twice; for the most part the second part of each line then becomes the first part of the following.

Vo Krushevo ogan gori, vo Krushevo gusta magla
Vo Krushevo, gusta magla, Mechkin Kamen krv se lele
Mechkin Kamen krv se lele, tam se bia tri voivodi
Tam se bia tri voivodi, Turska voiska tri illyardi
Prv voivoda Damé Gruev, vtor voivoda Pitu Guli
Vtor voivode Pitu Guli, a triti ot Ali Bakhov

Andy writes: “I cannot translate it but it means more or less — In Krushevo terrible fires and destruction. At the Bear's Rock there came three chieftains/leaders. Three leaders against 3,000 Turkish soldiers. The first chieftain was Dame Gruev, the second was Pitu Guli, and the third chieftain was Ali Bakhov. That's about it!”

There's a little more background in the liner notes to East Wind: “The Bear's Rock (Mechkin Kamen) is the site outside the town of Krushevo [or Kruševo — CK] where Pitu Guli and his men made one brave last stand against the Turkish forces during the Illinden rising in Macedonia in 1903. The people of Krushevo, who, along with the rest of Macedonia, had laboured under the brutal Ottoman Empire for over 500 years drove out the Turkish garrison at the start of the rising and proclaimed 'The Krushevo Republic.' It lasted for just ten days before the Turks sent in an army of 20,000 to exact retribution and the Krushevo Republic was drowned in blood."

The illustration at top is of the “Ilinden Spomenik,” a memorial to the heroes of the uprising (and to the antifascist partisans of World War II). From the looks of it the image may have been reproduced from a refrigerator magnet.