Customer Reviews

Green House

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I grew up listening to Grey Larsen's traditional music albums such as Banish Misfortune and First of Autumn. What I found in The Green House is something entirely different and beautiful.

Larsen and League have done something very unique here in traditional music. Through brilliant performance and production they have incorporated the intimacy of a solo album with the energy and innovation of a "trad band" and the precise evocation of a string quartet. The tracks are mostly in the traditional format of sets of tunes in like form (e.g. jigs), but they go far beyond letting the tunes speak for themselves. They create an entire abiance of sound in which the tunes live--primarily traditional in instermentation and performance, but entirely purposeful in their intent and virtuosic implementation.

Don't expect a session tape here. There is nothing informal about The Green House. At times you will be moved to tap or feet or dance, especially as Paddy League rips loose on the goat skin. But you will also be moved into more contemplative moods by Larsen's masterful interpretation of traditional tunes such as The Wind That Shakes the Barley followed by his own Dusk Among the Willows on track 4.

At the end of the CD, after a long gap, there are some old recordings of Larsen and friends interviewing Michael Kennedy, an Irish immigrant and accordion player playing, speaking and singing. These are wonderful in the way they tie the new to the old through Kennedy's recounts of how he learned his tunes as a boy near the turn of the century in Ireland, especially as we realize that the tune Kennedy plays is also played by Larsen on track 3.

I highly recommend this album.

Glory be, Grey Larsen is recording again! One-third of the late, lamented Celtic/New Age/folk group Metamora, Larsen kept a low profile in the years after the band's breakup, building a national reputation as a teacher of the Irish flute. A few years ago, he found a simpatico partner in the young bodhran player and guitarist Paddy League, and founded his own recording label, Sleepy Creek. So far Larsen and League have recorded two CDs together; "The Green House" was the first of them, and among other things it demonstrates strongly just how much of Metamora's distinctive sound was due to Larsen. The music here is a seamless medley of ancient Irish airs and Larsen originals; it is impossible to tell which are Larsen's own without checking the credits, and that is a great tribute to the authenticity of his musicianship. Joyous, graceful and poignant, this CD is a must for any lover of Celtic music. "The Green House" is essentially a tribute to Larsen's mentor, Michael J. Kennedy, a melodeon player from County Galway who spent the last 50-odd years of his life in the Cincinnati area. The last three tracks on the CD are comprised of a radio interview Kennedy gave not long before his death in 1978, in which he plays "The Cuckoo's Nest," a song he collected, and talks about his youth playing dances in County Galway. Bluff and cheery, Kennedy sounds exactly like Victor McLaglen in "The Quiet Man," only a lot more amiable. Kennedy was an inspiration to an entire generation of Midwestern folk musicians, and the three end tracks demonstrate amply his charm and talent.