Folk Alliance Day 3, Rakish, Charm of Finches, and Aoife Scott

Andy Meaney and Aoife Scott

My usual Folk Alliance running partner Mike Warren couldn’t be here this year, and he is sorely missed. He has what seems an encyclopedic memory for music he’s encountered (especially that he loves), and his presence at the conference inevitably leads me to see many remarkable acts I wouldn’t have found on my own. With my much narrower bandwidth, I occasionally find something he hasn’t heard too. We come together like Folk Alliance itself, a dizzying spiral of intersecting communities falling for one another’s passions. All of this is to say, when Mike told me he hated to miss the act Rakish, 40% of a wonderful band his nephew was in, (Pumpkin Bread), I knew I had to go. 

 Fiddler and banjo player Maura Shawn Scanlin and guitarist Connor Hearn make up the act, a duo that seems to delight in smashing boundaries between musical genres. To do so, though they may explain that one song “Bilateral Craziness” (an autocorrect mistake that Scanlin decided to keep) has no time signature, and “Courante” is a piece by Debussy, they repeatedly work their way back to swinging spirals of sound just next door,  if not in fact, their beloved Irish or Scottish reels. 

 They trade vocals and feed off each other’s banter. Last night they noted it was Bandcamp Friday, which meant it was the one-year anniversary of their first self-titled EP, while also encouraging us all to take advantage of the day’s deals and buy all our favorite Folk Alliance music before midnight (so the artists can receive 100% of their profits from each sale). They also joked about their influences—Connor Hearn, an English major, wrote the first song they played inspired by James Joyce. The classically trained Scanlin introduces a piece by Robert de Visee noting, “We like to justify our degrees.” 

 And such good-natured self-deprecation is part and parcel with their down-to-Earth charm. Scanlin soon turned and introduced “No Such Thing as Luck” as a number “for the Star Wars fans!” But the humor only helped bridge the music’s wide range of emotions. A “Scottish” instrumental Scanlin said wasn’t really Scottish (because she wrote it) offered a plaintive note to bring tears to the eyes, for a minute. Shining eyes seemed to be everywhere as heads all around the room began to nod and bob, once again, as they had done throughout the set (yes, even to the one without the time signature). 

Rakish playing “Courante/The Sunny Hills of Beara/The North Star” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uraqJj6DlV8

“Do you all know the TV show 6 Feet Under?” Ivy Windred-Womes of the Melbourne sister act Charm of Finches asked the room to scattered applause and murmurs of approval. The sisters nodded and agreed that they love the show, explaining that the song they were about to play, the title track to their most recent album, Wonderful Oblivion, is inspired by the show. 

 

Then, with a dry, sly comic timing that recurred throughout the set, Ivy added, “Also, our dad is an undertaker.” They launched into the song. Not to say that explained anything, but, boy, it solidified the poignant distinction of these two haunted young women in bright blue and pink bell dresses, singing brilliant, vertigo-inducing meditations on the fragile nature of our existence. 

 The song titles told their own story—“Concentrate on Breathing” followed by “Canyon” (a song about being thrown into that space), “Clean Cut,” “The Bridge,” “Gravity,” and, finally, “Wonderful Oblivion.” The sounds range from the sharp crunch of “Clean Cut” to a variety of ethereal textures provided by a mix of keys, violin, and tambourine coloring the air around the notes from Mabel’s acoustic guitar. 

 Mabel offered a quiet deliberative quality that played as a comedic counterpoint to sister Ivy’s quick jabs. Mabel recalled a recent four-month tour through Europe that had been…she hesitated…” great fun but a long time.” 

Immediately, Ivy’s eyes cut across her keyboards to her sister, “a long time with the one person.” 

They both laughed at that one. 

But Mabel could then turn around and add an earnest thoughtfulness to the banter. She told a story from years before, recalling a group of young people they encountered on the road to the Woodford Folk Festival. They were gathered at a bridge where a friend of theirs had recently fallen and died. “It was sad,” Mabel said, adding that they could relate to these other kids because they too had lost a friend, far too young, in a similar way. This was, of course, the set up to the song, “The Bridge,” which seemed a love letter to their long-lost friend. It was a lump-of-the-throat moment in a set filled with enough quiet beauty, pain, fear, and wonder to have listeners gripping their seats. 

Charm of Finches’ video for “Canyon” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lG-1SZE72Vw

Dublin’s Aoife Scott and her partner, guitarist Andy Meaney placed the perfect final touches on such an emotional evening. Scott began by telling the story behind her 2020 song “Sweet October.” In that terrible pandemic spring, they’d written the song dreaming of a time when they could go to the coast again. The unassuming gentle melody and Scott’s wistful vocal provided a kind of climax to the evening, everyone well aware of how lucky we were to be together again. 

But Scott was just getting started. She talked frankly of trying to break with her family’s musical heritage, which she grew up perceiving as a hard life for very little pay. (Her mother, Francis Black, is a member of the Black family, a renowned Celtic group who inherited their trade from their own parents.) However, Scott found herself miserable in the corporate job she’d landed, losing her voice, and struggling with depression. 

One day, Meany wanted to play her a Bruce Cockburn song he’d just heard, “Wondering Where the Lions Are.” At first, she resisted, but the song almost magically began to lift her from her depression and restore her voice. Scott sang the Cockburn song, leading the room in call and response around the refrain. 

At the end of her set, Scott sang a song “The Growing Years” (written by Don Mescall) off her 2016 debut Carry the Day. The song told the story of a father’s death, and a child plagued by the unfairness of it all, fearful for what might happen next. Meaney’s propulsive guitar pushed Scott’s vocal to face down the pain and fear, asking “please, please, please,  please, please, tell me now, where’s the justice in this, there’s no justice in this world.”

The conviction in Scott’s vocals comes to a particularly fine point in that lyric, which makes sense. It was the fight for justice in the Cockburn song that restored Scott's voice. It's also her work with the singers she presents at Folk Alliance (and at Tradfest Temple Bar back home) as “Women of Note” that stands as one of the finest statements in pursuit of justice the conference makes each year. 

 Aoife Scott’s “The Growing Years” from her first album, Carry the Day https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2llNDsNPZE

Websites:

Rakish— https://rakishmusic.bandcamp.com/album/rakish

Charm of Finches— https://charmoffinchesband.com/

Aoife Scott— https://www.aoifescott.com/