Art of Mozaik
The Art of Mozaik
For Irish Music Magazine (October 2004)
By Sean Walsh
If being part of inspired collaborative projects was an Olympic sport then surely Irish music legend Andy Irvine would be sporting gold medals a-plenty at Athens this year. From the epoch-defining Sweeney’s Men in the sixties to the height-scaling Planxty in the seventies, from the supergrouping of Patrick Street in eighties and nineties to his latest ensemble Mozaik in these, the noughties. Mozaik have been described as a ‘global stringband’, and that is, surely enough, what they are. Comprising Irvine, fellow Planxtian Donal Lunny, Bulgarian multi-instrumentalist and Riverdance hero Nikola Parov, Dutch journeyman Rens van der Zalm and American old-timey fiddler/guitarist/singer/banjo player Bruce Molsky, Mozaik was formed in 2002 and is the ultimate representation of all of Irvine’s strongest musical influences – Irish, Balkan and American folk. An album Live from the Powerhouse – recorded in Brisbane, Australia in March 2002 - was released earlier this year to ecstatic reviews and an Irish tour followed.
Talking to Andy, one cannot help feel the electric enthusiasm he feels for
his latest creation. “The three strands of music that have driven me
on, since the beginning of my career,” he says, “are represented
in this band, which is tremendously exciting for me. It’s the fulfilment
of a dream.” That dream began long before the Australian tour of 2002
however. It dates right back to 1968, when the 26-year-old Irvine was drawn
by some magical calling to Eastern Europe. Leaving behind him the successful
Sweeney’s Men –
at the peak of the Dublin folk explosion of the time – he headed for
Bulgaria, and from there to Romania and Yugoslavia. Immersing himself in the
music of the region, he travelled around sleeping rough and camping. On his
return, of course, a new adventure awaited him with the dawning of the Planxty
era.
Planxty was the first opportunity for him to try out his new
found repertoire, and of course the Balkan influence helped define that legendary
Planxty sound. In 1992 the album East Wind – credited to Irvine and
Davy Spillane, and released on Tara records – contained nothing but
Balkan music and tunes he
had found and discovered on his odyssey. That record featuring the playing
of, among many others, Parov and van der Zalm, was produced by Bill Whelan,
and was undoubtedly a major influence on Whelan’s Riverdance extravaganza.
Irvine’s interest in American old-time music stretches
back even further when the young actor as he was then first discovered the
music of Cisco Houston and the poet laureate of the Great Depression, Woody
Guthrie. And so when, driving along in Australia10 years after East Wind,
Irvine got the idea of forming a band to tour that continent, the influences
of America and the Balkans was an obvious choice. He takes up the story: “It
was one of those weird experiences. I go to Australia at least once a year.
I know it
sounds a bit corny but my muse lives in Australia. Most of the things I’ve
done in the last ten years, have had their genesis in Australia. I think it’s
the driving, because there’s so much road in Australia, you can
drive forever and ever and ever. My creative brain seems to work best when
I’m driving. This thought came from nowhere about forming a band to
play there.
I’ve been playing ‘solo’ there for so long, I just thought
it’s be nice to put a band together. In the month of March there’s
a lot of festivals down there and then the thought led on to ‘what kind
of a band would it be?’ So I thought ‘It’d be nice to play
some Balkan music’. And then I thought ‘Well, it’d be nice
to play some old-time American music as well’. Whether it was in that
order or not, I can’t remember, but when I thought of old-time American
music I thought of Bruce [Molsky], and when I thought of Balkan music I thought
of Nikola [Parov]. And I determined to ask these people if they would be interested
in doing this and they all were interested. And we were all available for
the following March. And so in March 2002 we had six days rehearsal and we
haven’t really had a chance to anything else since.”
During the tour, at a gig in the Powerhouse Centre for the Live Arts, the
album was recorded. And he was extremely happy with the results. “The
tour went really well, and whoever had the great idea to rent the equipment
and record it, I congratulate and thank them from the bottom of my heart.
I
think it might have been the soundman.” Consisting of a mix of songs
and tunes from his solo career (My Heart’s Tonight in Ireland and his
very own Song to Woody Never Tire of the Road), a couple of Planxty standards
(including an awesome rendition of The Blacksmith), and material from the
rich catalogues of Balkan and old-timey music, the band worked from a broad
palette but the unifying glue of virtuoso musicianship and camaraderie held
it all together. The future of the group is unknown however, as “it’s
difficult because we do live a long way apart. Although you can never tell
what’ll happen. You never know. I would hope we’ve made a big
enough impression this year in Ireland, that will interest a few more festivals
in Ireland and Europe as well. I don’t think it’ll ever become
a long-term touring band. It would be nice if we just played festivals –
2 or 3 festivals a summer or something. We’ll have to wait and see.
We’re committed to doing this tour in America next April. But, I don’t
think we’d do that again, a big 5-weekend tour”.
Then of course, there’s the small matter of his other
groups – namely, Patrick Street and Planxty – as well as his ongoing
solo career. “Patrick Street has a new fiddle player now, John Carty.
And then there’s a tour in America in October/November. Preceded by
a tour of Britain in September, and there’ll be a few Irish dates with
that as well. As for making an album with Patrick Street, nobody’s mentioned
it. But I’m sure on the next tour, someone’s gonna say ‘What
about another album, lads?’”And what of Planxty? Can we expect
a new studio album from the newly reformed high kings of Irish folk? “It
hasn’t been mooted. The thing is that we are seriously one step at a
time, and the next step is the 12 gigs in December/January. So I imagine on
the first of February next, we will have a meeting and that will be one of
the things that comes up, and whether it’s accepted or not, I don’t
know. I think it would be a very nice idea. But it does mean finding the right
material. All of us, well Christy and myself anyway, we’ve kinda moved
on a little bit since the days in the seventies. On separate paths, but along
our own paths. And not all the material that we do – that he does, and
that I do – would be compatible with Planxty music.
So we’ll have to wait until February 1st to find that out.”
He has been delighted by the success of the Planxty reunion,
proof that they made the right decision to give it another lash. “We
had talked about it for some years, and it was Leagues O’Toole’s
No Disco TV programme that brought us into actually doing it, when we realised
that it wouldn’t just be people our
own age. The success of it and the excitement of it was transferred from the
audience to us. It was a wonderful experience and it was great to have done
it. Because if we had gone to our graves without having done it, we’d
have turned! And it was nice that it was successful enough for us to take
it to
another stage.”
And then of course there’s Andy Irvine, solo troubadour. “I’ve had a plan for another album, for a couple of years now. I was going to do it this summer, but it seemed inappropriate when there was the Planxty album and the Mozaik album. It seemed very inappropriate to bring out a third album. My next idea actually is to bring out a retrospective. I don’t churn out songs as a songwriter. They come in their own time and they develop in their own time. And sometimes they take an awful long time to develop. They sit in a dark corner and wait until they’re picked up again. It’s a strange process. You do nothing with them, you think ‘Okay, I’ve written three-quarters of that and I’ll leave it now’. Then about nine moths later you pick it up and think ‘I like this’, and you maybe write some more. And maybe you work out a few chords for it and it gradually sees the light of day. I haven’t written anything in a little while and I better get down to that.”
I’m sure many will be waiting anxiously for him to do just that. But
in the meantime, his many fans and admirers will be well served by tours from
his various groups.
Special Thanks to Sean Walsh for sending
me this article.