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His
voice calls and his guitar lures. John Doyle has a voice that sends chills down
your spine, commanding your attention with the very demeanor of its sound. Yet
it is not his voice that has paved the way of his career as a leading traditional
Irish musician. Doyle has gained his prominent reputation as a master of his art
with guitar.
John Doyle has worked with several prominent figures in the Irish community, including Frank McCourt (author of Angela’s Ashes). His most well-known accomplishments have been his work with Solas, having recorded on four of their albums, and now most recently with The Eileen Ivers Band. Doyle has spent most of his life enveloped by traditional Irish music, his main focus being the guitar. Now he has kicked off his solo career featuring both his vocals and his guitar works.
Evening Comes Early features several well known Irish musicians, including Karan Casey, Liz Carroll, and Liz Knowles. The album opens with “North Sea Holes,” one of several tracks featuring Doyle on both vocals and guitar. This was, in my opinion, the best choice for the opening track. The song carries such strong emotional overtones, forming the perfect union with John Doyle’s hauntingly serene voice. Other featured vocalists on Evening Comes Early are Karan Casey (formerly of Solas) and Sean Doyle, John Doyle’s father. The tunes are lively, enhanced by Doyle’s rhythmic style of playing acoustic guitar.
Overall, Evening Comes Early is a masterpiece, and a brilliant way to begin a solo career. I hope that John Doyle will continue to pursue his solo career, and I look forward to his future works. Evening Comes Early was very well done, and I highly recommend it for all. John Doyle should continue to develop his singing career, as I imagine he can be just as well known for it as he is with guitar.
Q:
Where in Ireland did you come from?
A: I was born in Dublin City in my family house. My grandmother was the midwife and we stayed there for about 14 years before we moved to a different part of Dublin.
Q: How did your location affect your music career?
A: Dublin is full of music so I was surrounded by it. My father used to bring us to sessions in the pubs and singing sessions as well. U2 were up the road from us, so there was the DBB, or Dublin Based Band syndrome, that swept Dublin at that time too.
Q: Who were most influential in your career?
A: My father was especially influential, and my family in general. My father is a great singer, so we were enveloped by song, trad of all sorts, and were encouraged to sing and play. My brother Colm was very interested in collecting LPs, the weirder the better. We all thought he was cool so we listened to all his music. The Dead, Pink Floyd, Nick Drake, Roy Harper (one of my favorites), The Incredible String Band, and much more…
Q: How did you decide to become a guitarist? Did you receive any formal training?
A: I started playing guitar as a bet with a friend of mine, that I could play better than him in a short time. After a few months I got hooked. My brother Brian taught me my first few chords upside down, since I'm left handed. I played my father’s guitar for a few years upside down until I got one of my own. I never had formal training as you can probably tell. As far as singing goes and being taught, I had a good singer to listen to and to copy, and create a kind of friendly rivalry between my father and I.
Q: Aside from guitar and singing, what other instruments do you play?
A: I play the guitar mainly, but can play the bouzouki, mandolin, banjo, bass and a little bit of scraping on the fiddle. I started playing the bouzouki a few years ago but have been able to play a few years before that. It's very similar to the mandolin and banjo really.
Q: When did you join with Susan McKeown to form The Chanting House? Who else was a part of it?
A: We first formed The Chanting House when I was about 17 or 18. I think it was around ‘88 or ‘89. Susan and I were the founding members. We played duo shows in Dublin at the time, writing our own songs and doing traditional stuff as well. We then formed a band to go on a tour of Europe. Donogh Hennessey, Ina Davis, my brother Brian Doyle, Susan, Myself, and tour philosopher Vincent Kenny. When we came to the US, we formed another band with Eileen Ivers and Seamus Egan. We toured Europe and a bit of the States before that broke up.
Q: What does the name Chanting House come from?
A: The name came from a friend of ours who is also a great songwriter. Martin Egan is his name. We were sitting around looking for a name and he came up with it.
Q: Has The Chanting House made any recordings?
A: It made 2 recordings on tape. The first one was with the first band, the second with the second. They are very hard to come by. I don' t have them. There is also a compilation CD with one track of ours but I can't even tell you the name of the CD.
Q: When did you move to the United States, and to which part?
A: I came to the US in Jan ‘91. I lived in NYC for about 8 years and then moved to Asheville, North Carolina.
Q: Where did your career take you after the disbanding of The Chanting House?
A:
I still played with Eileen Ivers and Seamus Egan, and an African
percussionist named Kimate Dinizulu. He is such a good player. I also did
some work with Joanie Madden of Cherish The Ladies, Tony DeMarco,
a lovely fiddle player, and a wonderful accordion player named James Keane,
all separately, though.
Q: When and how did Solas come together? Who were the founding members?
A: Solas came together after Lowell Festival wanted Seamus to get a group of musicians together to do a gig in ’95, I think it was… John Williams, Seamus Egan, Winnie Horan and myself were the founding members. Karan Casey was at the next gig. I think that was at the Prism Coffee House in Charlottesville.
Q: Why did you choose Solas as the name of the band?
A: It sounded good at the time. It was short, Irish, to the point, and we needed to come up with a name quickly.
Q: How many albums did you record with Solas?
A: I've recorded 4 CDs with them.
Q: What was it like to be nominated for a Grammy Award?
A: I didn't hear about it until it was nearly too late, then I think we were so busy touring. I really didn't pay much attention. It’s cool, though.
Q: For what did you receive three National Association of Independant Record Distributors awards?
A: The first three CDs. I Can't remember really, sorry.
Q: When did you leave Solas, and what made you decide to leave?
A: I left around August of 2000. There are many reasons I left. The main one is that I wanted to play with a lot of different people and have a bunch of different experiences. Also to do my own CD and work on that stuff. It gets a bit boring in a band.
Q:
You are currently the guitarist for the Eileen Ivers Band. When you left
Solas, the previous Eileen Ivers Band guitarist joined Solas.
Was this merely a coincidence?
A: It kind of was a coincidence really. I wanted to leave the band. Solas wanted Donal Clancy to join them, Donal wanted to join them… I said I would fill in for him in Eileen’s band. I was originally the guitar player with her band until she got called to do Riverdance, so Eileen agreed to the swap and there you are.
Q: What made you decide to make an instructional video on guitar? How long did it take for you to put it together?
A: There were a lot of people asking me to do lessons and I unfortunately didn't have the time, so I asked Homespun Records if they would be interested in an instructional video of tune back up. They obliged and I made it. It did not take long really, about 8 hours. I just sat with the guitar and talked until I could not talk any longer, they did everything else. You can order it by visiting their website at http://www.homespuntapes.com. I have also done another Instructional CD ROM and downloadable recording. That one is very in-depth and you can order that one from http://www.madfortrad.com.
Q: Were you happy with the finished product?
A: Yes I was, but I've only ever seen it once. It’s hard to look at yourself talking for 2 hours. Everyone I've talked to seemed to get stuff out of it and help them in some way, did it with you? I used my Lowden guitar, it has no dots or markers to show where you are on the guitar so I think that might have confused people. Also I'm left handed and that was always confusing to people as well.
Q: The instructional video was useful in incorporating it into playing guitar in my own band. I tend to play more rhythmically with Uisce because up until recently, myself and the pianist were the rhythm section. I would definitely recommend this video to anyone interested in learning to play guitar for Irish music. Let’s move on to discussing your latest accomplishment, Evening Comes Early. Is this the beginning of a long lasting solo career for you?
A: I really just wanted to get an album done to say I did it and could do it for myself. I had been working on other people's CDs for so long that I forgot about myself for a while. The solo career thing is a lot more frightening than doing the "gun for hire" stuff. I think in the end though it's more rewarding musically. You are painting the picture, so to speak. I'm going to stay playing music as long as I'm breathing.
Q:
When I met up with you last year and Jim McKague mentioned that you can
sing, I had no idea how well you could sing! I think your voice is amazing. Why
haven’t you started your solo career sooner?
A: I was so involved with doing other projects, really. Solas took up a lot of time. Eileen Ivers also did before that. I think I wasn't ready for it either. It takes time to get involved that way. I was always more of the consummate guitar player. Thats what I got hired to do.
Q: My favorite track on Evening Comes Early is the opening track, "North Sea Holes." Why did you choose this as the first track? Is this your favorite track on the album?
A: I love that song. It was written by one of my heroes, Ewan McColl. I heard the song first through a friend of mine, Rory Makem. He gave me a video of The Corries, a singing group from Scotland. They sang it on one of the clips and I knew right then and there that I would have to sing it. It came out very well when we recorded it, and it seemed like it would be the best track for the beginning of the CD.
Q: You mentioned your father, Sean Doyle, as one of your greater musical influences growing up. What was it like recording with him, now that you are an established and accomplished musician? Can we look forward to further father/son collaborations?
A: It was one of the most delightful things to record my father singing. I have listened to him all my life, and he is one of the biggest inspirations to me. When we were recording the song, he was quite nervous. It was the first time he had ever been recorded, so he didn't really know what to do. So, we brought him to a pub and gave him several pints of Guinness, then brought him back to the studio and he performed mightily. The head of my record company, Rich Nevins is a music lover, which is a good thing to have on your side. They are not always that way you know. I gave him a rough mix of my CD before it was finished and he really liked it. But he especially remarked on how much he loved my father singing. He told me then and there that he wanted my father to do his own CD sometime this year. So hopefully we are recording his CD in June. I don't know when it's going to be released though.
Q: Not only did fiddle great Liz Carroll appear on Evening Comes Early, but she also wrote a song for you called “Johnny D’s.” What brought about this union?
A: Liz Carroll is a really good friend of mine and one of my favorite fiddle players in the world. She is also my favorite composer of tunes. I wanted to do a track with her on the CD. Thankfully she said yes and we got a few tunes together. In that process I asked her if she would write a tune for the CD. She said yes and I was delighted. We hadn't got a name for the tune though. We were doing a gig in Clare a few months later and all my family were there including my brother Brian's children. After we had finished a set of something or other, Emer who was aged 2 at the time, shouted up to me JOHNNY D in a really loud voice (it's my nick name at home), and the whole audience were laughing their heads off. Emer is very cute so she started to do it through the whole concert. Liz then decided to call the tune "Johnny D's" after that little episode.
Q: Many other musicians appear on Evening Comes Early, including Liz Knowles and Karan Casey. How did they get involved in this project, and what creative elements have these musicians brought to the final product?
A: They are all great musicians and friends that I am in awe of, really. When certain tunes or songs would come up I would think of the musicians that would be best suited for the task. I would ask them and luckily everyone I asked wanted to do it. That was a bit of luck. Richie Sterns is one of the best claw hammer banjo players in the country and I wanted to get an olde timey Irish feel to "Crooked Jack." Beverly Smith is just a beautiful harmony singer and I love her voice. Mick Moloney is one of my heros. He's done so much work for Irish culture over the last 25 or 30 years, and is also great fun to hang out with. He's a lovely singer as well as a great banjo and mandolin player. His specialty is collecting songs and tunes and has the biggest collection of Irish stuff in the states. I was delighted to have him sing harmonies on this CD. Michael Aarhon helped me produce this CD and is just a brilliant musician, piano, cello, guitars, bass...you name it, he can probably play it beautifully!
