Review: Tommy Peoples, Waiting for a Call (Shanachie 78052, 2003)

Anyone familiar with both Tommy's work from the 70s and 80s and the subtly different style heard in The Quiet Glen should have no trouble distinguishing the earlier tracks from the later ones. If there is any question, in fact, one has only to listen for Alec Finn's understated bouzouki or John Doyle's driving guitar.

Finn's bouzouki accompaniment, great as usual, will be familiar to anyone who has heard much of De Danann. I have always thought Finn's accompaniment was unobtrusive and tasteful, and added something complementary to rather than competitive with the melody. By contrast, Doyle's guitar is higher in the mix. The pairing of Peoples with Doyle was surprising to me, and I don't think it works all that well. It isn't that Doyle's playing is anything less than highly skilled and professional, and in fact Doyle seems to be playing with some restraint. Even so, it is simply hard to reconcile such a driving, "in your face" guitar style with fiddling of Tommy's subtlety and individual power. Also, Tommy in recent years has added more pauses, smears, and wild variations, the effect of which is to a certain extent lost when there is a constant overlay of thick driving chordage with a mind of its own.

None of this is any reason not to obtain the CD, though. Especially if you like Tommy's playing, you will probably like this one regardless of what you think of the accompaniment.

As to the playing itself--the playing is as good or nearly as good as anything you have heard on the others of Tommy's recordings, which means this CD is nearly as good as anything in your collection of Irish traditional music. Moreover, at 62 minutes and 16 tracks, the CD is practically filled up with great music. An excellent value.

This is despite the fact that Tommy has already put a half-dozen or more of these tunes on other recordings; for example, one of the "King of the Pipers" appeared on his "Traditional Irish Music Played on the Fiddle" (HCD 008, which by the way is one of my favorites), as did "King George IV" and "Kit O'Mahoney's" and "John Blessing's Delight." That's all right; the vast majority of the tunes are newly recorded and those that are old are still welcome. Among the new offerings are around five new Peoples compositions--some great ones. There are also a large assortment of more common tunes such as "The Mooncoin Jig," "The Lark in the Morning," and "The Drunken Landlady." There's something for everyone, as they say.

Trying to describing Tommy's playing for those who haven't heard it would be difficult and arguably pointless; suffice it to say that unless you have heard his daughter, Siobhan (who has her own CD out), or even more his nephew, Seamus Gibson (another great underrecorded Donegal fiddler), you probably haven't heard anything like it. It is usually and aptly described as soulful and emotional, but certainly it is not "soulful" in the way of, for example, Clare fiddling (though Tommy has lived for many years in Ennis, as it happens). Perhaps Tommy has a different kind of soul. There are different ways of being soulful.

Perhaps one of the most distinctive aspects of his style is that it is, shall we say, "punctuated," divided by pauses one does not find in many other Irish fiddlers. It is punctuated as well as by nimble ornamentation (both right- and left-hand), peppering the melody with popping and cracking sounds that, it is said, astonished listeners in Dublin when he first came to national reknown in the late 60s and early 70s. He hails from east Donegal, not far from the homes of many other wonderful fiddlers like Hughie Gillespie, Frank Kelly, and Brid Harper, and like all three of those, his style incorporates influences not only from Donegal but from elsewhere as well. But it is either Tommy Peoples or John Doherty who is most often pointed to as the leading example of Donegal fiddling.

(This is what is commonly said, but it is actually somewhat misleading. I think, and many would agree with me, that Tommy and John have particularly individual, unique styles--Tommy for reasons above stated, John because virtually no one else played with such a lonesome single-stroke style. Mickey Doherty, Francie Dearg Byrne, and James Byrne have been praised on various occasions by those "in the know" as having very old-sounding local Donegal styles.)

In any case, Tommy was born and bred musically in Donegal. On his previous CDs, the repertoire most noticeably sourced from Donegal was in the form of strathspeys. Here, we are treated to the Teelin jig "Australian Waters," two Donegal versions of the multi-part jig "The King of the Pipers," the great Donegal reels "Miss Ramsay" and Francie Byrne's "Launching the Boat" (an increasingly popular tune), and several others. Two of the most striking tunes are reel versions of strathspeys that Tommy previously recorded: "Drumnagarry Reel" and "Miss Crawford" (played down a string); these are fantastic reminders that tune types can be switched with very nice results.

I obtained this CD along with about seven others CDs. It was easily my favorite among them. Every Peoples fan and Donegal fiddle enthusiast should have it, and anyone else interested in good fiddling will not regret buying it.