Track Listing 1. Kiss the Maid Behind the Barrel / Lucky in Love /The Bloom of Youth 2. The Leitrim Thrush / Roger Sherlock's/       Father O'Grady's Visit to Bocca / Darby's Farewell 3. Willie Coleman's / The Gold Ring 4. Oliver Goldsmith's Lament / The Broadway / The Plains of Boyle 5. The Primrose Lass / Cregg's Pipes / Tom Ward's Downfall 6. Bridie Morley's / Corney is Coming (Packie Duignan's) 7. Duignan's Odd Jig / The Hag With the Money / The Castlebar Jig 8. Within A Mile O' Jamestown 9. Maguire & Patterson / The Belltable 10. The Coachman's Whip / The Tailor's Thimble / The Red Haired Lass 11. Tommy Maguire's #1 / Peter McAlinden's 12. Tie the Bonnet / The Shoemaker's Daughter 13. The Rakes of Clonmel 14. Colonel Rodger's Favourite / The Happy Days of Youth Click on underlined titles to hear MP3 sound samples.

Mick Mulvey
With
Brian Rooney & Karen Ryan (fiddles),
Simon Wroe (guitar) Pete Quinn and Reg Hall, piano.


Catch Mick Mulvey’s manner of speech: Pure London! Catch his flute playing, and it belongs where the counties of Leitrim, Roscommon and Sligo come together.
But how else could it have been, when he started off at the age of nine under Roger Sherlock's wing, and his Dad played him Seamus Tansey albums and his socks were blown off seeing and hearing Matt Molloy before his voice had broken?

Though largely self-taught, tips and advice came to him from all quarters; Brendan Mulkere had a hand in it, so did Brian Rooney. and the now-legendary elder statesman, Bobby Casey and Raymond Roland, friends of his father, with whom he played regular sessions in Camden Town and Shepherds Bush while still at school.

Meanwhile, among the youngsters of his own age in the East End - Mick and Joe Searson,
The Cartys, Kevin Shanahan.the Hayes Brothers and many more - he shared Teenage enthusiasm and energy, as they pushed the boundaries out and created for themselves a continuing and lasting niche in the music and in the Irish community in London as a whole. Two decades later, he is to be heard regularly in the White Horse in Bethnal Green and the Black Horse in  Holloway, and he was a member of the Auld Triangle Ceili Band that won the All-Britain at Ormskirk.

Mick has music on both sides of the family - melodeon-playing maternal grandparents in Co Galway, a nest of fiddle and flute players in his paternal grandfather's family and his late uncle Jimmie, in Leitrim,
and a new generation of first cousins playing traditional music in Dublin.
It was annual holidays spent at his father's home in Lisgarney outside Jamestown, however, that forged a strong affinity for him with the music and musicians of that part of Co Leitrim.
He credits an in-law of his father's, John Daly. as a major influence on his music, and he describes him as "an all-round musician, singer, poet, craftsman, wit and raconteur; a mighty man.”

He has the fondest memories of sessions with Packie Duignan and Mick Woods around Carrick and Drumshambo, and Monday nights in the Butcher's in Drumsna. But he puts the whole thing in perspective when he says, "I have been stone mad on the Leitrim style of flute playing since I first heard John McKenna recordings...McKenna's style is just superb.”

Mick Mulvey has served his time - thirty years in fact. He has played beside some of the finest musicians in Irish music, but more importantly he has brought his own considerable talent to bear on the riches they have offered him. Reg Hall 2003

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Press Reaction
 
www.folkmusic.net

The Living Tradition May/June 04

Mick Mulvey is an East End Londoner, but you'd never guess it on the evidence of recording, as it contains some of the best examples of West Coast Irish flute playing that I’ve heard in a long time.
Early exposure to the playing of Seamus Tansey and Matt Molloy intrigued the young Mick, and their influences can be heard in his warm, rolling style.
The counties of Leitrim, Sligo and Roscommon have produced many’s the grand player in their time, and several of them have also been inspirational to Mick, especially John Daly and John McKenna.
The net distillation of all these influences is immediately apparent as this CD takes us through a fine selection, which, not surprisingly, has a good proportion of reels.
Now, while Mick’s style is such that I could listen to him playing solo reels for hours on end, a word or two here about his accompanying musicians would not be amiss.
The essence of accompanists is that they accompany, and do not detract from the lead instrument This recording shows just how that should be done.
In particular, the arrangements with Simon Wroe on guitar allow the strings to give as edge, which not only offsets the fluidity of the flute, but helps drive the tunes along at a cracking pace. Top marks also to fiddlers, Brian Rooney and Karen Ryan, and pianists, Pete Quinn and Reg Hall.
A flute player to look out for. Gordon Potter

Pay The Reckoning, February 2004 Music Web Site www.paythereckoning.com
It's one of the ironies of Irish traditional music that the best Irish music is often (but by no means always!) made outside of Ireland.  London, of course, has always had a thriving Irish traditional music scene and the names of many London pubs have a particular resonance in the Irish music community - The Favourite, The Stag's Head, The Kilkenny and The White Horse, to name but a very few.

The last-named, a pub in Bethnal Green in the East End, has particular significance for it's here that Mulvey and the crew make camp once a week for a night-long (with the emphasis on the word "long") session.  Mulvey's music was forged in this and similar pub sessions throughout London, and through regular summer holidays in Lisgarney, not far from Jamestown, County Leitrim where he was entranced by the particular cadences and accents of the North Connaught musical style.

Nowhere are these worn more visibly on Mulvey's sleeve than on the album's second track, "The Leitrim Thrush/Roger Sherlock's/Father O'Grady's Visit To Bocca/Darby's Farewell To London", a blast of reels which careers forth from his flute, issuing an invitation to every man-jack en route to throw caution to the wind and/or their legs in the air.
Elsewhere sets of session classics such as "The Primrose Lass/Craig's Pipes/Tom Ward's Downfall" and "Tie The Bonnet/The Shoemaker's Daughter" rub shoulders with less well-known tunes from Mulvey's highly personal store of favourites, sets such as "Within A Mile O'Jamestown" (The Elder Tree/The House On The Hill) and "Duignan's Odd Jig/The Hag With The Money/The Castlebar Jig".

Mulvey is joined by some of the cream of London's Irish music talent.  Simon Wroe (guitar - and the album's producer), Pete Quinn (piano), Brian Rooney (fiddle), Reg Hall (piano) and Karen Ryan (fiddle) engage with Mulvey at various points, not so much in a supporting role as in a partnership of equals, co-conspirators in the making of music that brims with charm and honesty.

(And when you're listening, watch out for the wee hidden extra about ten minutes after the end of the supposed last track!)

The Irish Post 15th Nov 2003
This album is sub-tided Music From North Connacht and London. And what you see is what you get. A rake of Leitrim reels to kick off proceedings, and then it’s on to track 2 for a few more reels from Leitrim. Then it's a couple of jigs — including; the towering masterpiece The Gold Ring. How Mick M actually manages to get so many crans into the time signature seems to defy musicology.

A cran, by the way, is that stuttering sound a piper or flute player makes to decorate the tune, and Mick is master of the craft — still, if you've got it flaunt it, is what I always say!

Mick is ably supported in this very worthwhile musical enterprise by the redoubtable Reg Hall on piano, the equally redoubtable Pete Quinn on another piano, plus Simon Wroe on guitar and Karen Ryan on fiddle.

The ensemble make their way through a distinctive style of Irish music — where the flute is king — which is roughly where the counties of Leitrim, Roscommon and Sligo come together Oh, and of course not forgetting the influence of London's sessions.

You won't get too many surprises on this album — its traditional music at its purest. Beautifully executed, yes; conservative, most definitely.

But then Irish traditional music moves within a very rigid number of parameters, with the same patterns or motifs being employed over and over again.

In actual fact Irish music really was the original sampling. Mind you, it would be fair to say that if the sheer charm of this has so far eluded you, then this album is unlikely to change your mind — which is why I've only marked it a three star product.

But if you're already an aficionado, and a connoisseur of the different styles of the many splendoured thing which is Irish music, then I'd heartily recommend this CD for the very top of your Christmas stocking. MALCOLM ROGERS

TAPLAS APRIL/ MAY The Welsh Folk Magazine

Adolygiadau--- Reviews

Here lies a wealth of traditional Irish dance tunes, rendered by the beautiful and breathy playing of the London-based flautist, with fleeting appearances of fiddlers Brian Rooney and Karen Ryan. It is evident, from the fluid and skilfully ornamented playing, that this is a genuine product of a long immersion in the trad Irish music scene.
Reel sets feature most prominently, amid jigs, hornpipes, a waltz and a slow air; all played back to back, neatly and precisely, very much in the old style. There's nothing particularly new or innovative about this album. The standard piano and guitar accompaniment, while perfectly polished, provides little harmonic or rhythmic digression from the norm. At times it retains a refreshing sparseness - allowing the melody to come through into the fore, and creating a double time feel, when it later adds the other half of the notes.
There's a hidden track to listen out for – a familiar soundscape to those who lurk in session pubs late at night! A live version of one track, complete with unruly vocalisations and cackling. It's good old down-to-earth trad. Imogen O'Rourke