Happy Hour Harmonica Podcast

Mick Kinsella interview

• Neil Warren • Season 1 • Episode 18

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Mick Kinsella started out as a drummer before moving across to the harmonica to pursue his love of traditional music. Skilled in the use of both the diatonic and chromatic, Mick played on numerous sessions before releasing his own 2002 album ‘Harmonica’ with an assortment of genres and some tremendous harmonica work. He went out to tour with Rick Epping and Brendan Power under the name Triple Harp Bypass. Mick likes to tinker with his harmonicas, has a tuition book to his name and teaches each year at the William Clancy festival in Ireland.

Select the Chapter Markers tab above to select different sections of the podcast (website version only).

YouTube:
Played on Michael Flatleys 'Celtic Tiger' CD:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7PD2v3YMo
Talking Harmonica act:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N96S7Q1nh9E
Rick Epping:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51YjOrp3RMc

Links:
Triple Harp Bypass album:
https://www.brendan-power.com/IronLung.php

Irish Traditional Music Archive:
https://www.itma.ie/digital-library

Teaching
Blues Harp From Scratch:
https://www.armaosmusic.gr/en/music-books/blues-harp-from-scratch-by-mick-kinsella-book-cd-detail

Michael McInerney teaching website:
https://www.bluethirdmusic.com


Podcast website:
https://www.harmonicahappyhour.com

Donations:
If you want to make a voluntary donation to help support the running costs of the podcast then please use this link (or visit the podcast website link above):
https://paypal.me/harmonicahappyhour?locale.x=en_GB

Spotify Playlist:
Also check out the Spotify Playlist, which contains most of the songs discussed in the podcast:
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5QC6RF2VTfs4iPuasJBqwT?si=M-j3IkiISeefhR7ybm9qIQ

Podcast sponsors:
This podcast is sponsored by SEYDEL harmonicas - visit the oldest harmonica factory in the world at www.seydel1847.com  or on Facebook or Instagram at SEYDEL HARMONICAS
and Blows Me Away Productions: http://www.blowsmeaway.com/

Support the show

SPEAKER_01:

Hey everybody and welcome to episode 18 of the Happy Hour Harmonica podcast. Thanks for tuning in and once again thanks to my sponsor the Lone Wolf Blues Company, makers of effects pedals, microphones and more designed for harmonica. Remember, when you want control of your tone, you want Lone Wolf. Mick Concella joins me today. Mick started out as a drummer before moving across to the harmonica to pursue his love of traditional music. Skilled in the use of both the diatonic and chromatic, Mick has played on numerous sessions before releasing his 2002 album Harmonica with an assortment of genres and some tremendous harmonica work. He went on to tour with Rick Epping and Brendan Power under the name Triple Harp Bypass. Mick likes to tink with his harmonicas, has a tuition book to his name and teaches every year at the William Clancy Festival in Ireland. So hello Mick Kinsella and welcome to the podcast. Thank you very much Neil. So starting off with your Irish roots, what was it like growing up in Ireland? I think there's a reputation of having a very good music scene in Ireland. Is that something you fed off?

SPEAKER_00:

Well, it's a really good music scene over here, almost. You know, every family has a couple of players. The traditional music itself is really popular here. Most kids play it in school, even go to lessons. My partner, Josephine, plays and teaches music. Thousands of kids play over here and the tradition will never be lost this way because it's been passed down through teachers to the new generations. But for myself, I didn't really start with traditional music. I started with rock and roll, listening to Led Zeppelin and Beatles and whatever came my way. I played drums originally. I started in a marching band in Tullow, County Carlow. That's where I come from. Nobody to teach me really, but I kind of learned the snare drum myself and played it in the marching band. And I really liked the drums. Eventually, I got a kit, pestered my mother until she bought me a small kit. And I started practicing on that. And when I went to work in Dublin, I ended up going for drum lessons in a drum school in Dublin, the John Murray School. And I ended up playing drums for years and years in bands that nobody really knows that I played. Well, people from Kilkenny and Dublin and stuff might know me from years ago as a drummer, but most people know me as a harmonica player now. I remember hearing Rick Epping In the 70s, when I worked in Dublin and I used to go along to hear, he was in a really good band called Pumpkinhead. I was just amazed at the sound he could get from it. And he impressed me so much that I went up and asked him what kind of harmonica he was using. And he said a diatonic or a blues harp. And I went out and bought one and I couldn't make head nor tails of it. And I always had it. I had it for years. And, um, go back to it every now and then. You know, we didn't have the internet or we didn't have people around to teach that. There were harmonica players here, but they all played tremolos and they played traditional music on it. Eventually, around the late 80s or the 90s, I moved to Dublin and that's where I really took an interest in it. I'd given up the drums at that stage. I got into an old-timey band called the Slightly Bewildered String Band. We had a kind of a rock and roll old-timey band.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I really love the song of those, that Mexican hat trick. That's a really interesting one.

SPEAKER_00:

It was actually... Damien wrote that, the guitar player. Great little track to jam on, a lovely rhythm to it, you know, and it's kind of a bright, sparkly little tune and it's kind of a happy tune as well. Everybody liked that live.

SPEAKER_01:

So yeah, so you picked up the harmonica in the sort of late 80s then after hearing Rick Epping, is that right? So is that when you moved across from playing drums to playing harmonica, were you still doing both at the time?

SPEAKER_00:

Well, I was still playing both. I had a big interest in traditional music at the time, but I started listening to Charlie McCoy and I just thought he had such... His pitch was really good. You know, when he would bend a note, his pitch was exact and... I was trying to emulate his playing and I really liked the way he approached a lot of the country songs and did them as instrumentals. And I would still recommend it to a student if they ever asked me to, I would say, listen to Charlie McCoy and get those bends as good as he can. It was great training because he was so accurate with the bends that it started me off right, that I wasn't being negligent. I really went for to try and get them as accurate as I could. Charlie was a big influence on me earlier on and then I started listening to Little Walter and all the blues people. And then I heard this guy called Eddie Clark and he played traditional music. He was a chromatic player and he just used one instrument. He used a C instrument and he held the slide in and he played lots of different keys in that position. And he would let the slide out for ornamentation or roles, but he could play lots of different keys and he could play D, which is a tough position on a C, you know, it's a tough position, especially playing traditional music. Reels and stuff like that are very fast. He would play, he even got around to playing kind of F tunes and G minor tunes. He made it sound really easy. When I started playing first, I tried to emulate him and I tried everything on a C harp, but I reversed the slide. I didn't hold it in. I took it out and put it in the opposite way because I was used to suppressing the slide for ornamentation. I really loved his playing. He sounded like a concertina. Took me a while to figure out how he was doing it and how he was doing little slides and stuff like that. But I listened and copied and copied and listened for a couple of years until I got that kind of down pat. And then I met Brendan Power. Brendan had brought out that new Irish harmonica album at the time, and it was brilliant. He seemed to be able to bend on the chromatics. I didn't understand the mechanics of the harmonicas that much. I'd never really delved into reeds. Brendan, I met him in Dublin. We had a bit of a session and then he invited me along to the gig. And he kind of set me straight. He said, look, you're playing those tunes in kind of tough positions, you know, like second and third and stuff like that. Would you consider playing G harmonica? And I hadn't up to then. So I took his advice and I'm really glad I did because it lends itself to more fluid playing, you know, first position. Now I do change. I will change. play in D on a G, or I would play in A minor on a G, or E minor on a G, and I'd play D mixolydian, that kind of thing, like if I want to vary the tunes in a set, within a set, just to change key. But he did, you know, it was an important thing to point out that it was probably less Staccato-ish play in first position.

SPEAKER_01:

So at this stage, were you mainly still playing chromatics, or were you playing diatonics at this stage? I

SPEAKER_00:

was playing both. I was listening to everything, country music, traditional music, blues, jazz, Rory MacLeod, all the kind of stuff he was using. I went to a couple of his gigs. He was a fantastic player. So I was hearing all these different players, you know, on the blues. Paul Lamb came through at one stage in Waterford when I lived in Waterford. It was so slick, his playing and his sound, everything, the way the band played. There was nothing hurried about it. It was all, you know, stomping and everybody had their part and it sounded really good. Probably the first time I saw him was the first time I saw an amp being used, a valve amp and a static mic. Initially, Brendan was... very gracious he brendan would go out of his way to help people and he's always been like that you know he he helped me an awful lot at the start and taught me a lot about you know tuning and stuff like that as did rick you know rick later on when we formed the triple heart bypass you know it was like going to heaven sitting in the in you know in the van with the two of them and they're talking about harmonicas and reeds and tolerances and it was great it was probably the best experience of my life to be in a band with the two of them

SPEAKER_01:

yeah so going back to eddie clark then this is really interesting interesting just to being clear what Eddie Clark did with the chromatic so he would turn around the slide so that effectively he would be playing in B on the C chromatic with the slide out and then he would hold it in to play in C and then he would let go of the slide to get these semitone ornamentations coming through that's right yeah The thing about Eddie was he wouldn't use a

SPEAKER_00:

B. Like I suggested that to him. Oh, he didn't use it. So you uses the B, isn't it? Yeah. Well, I use the B at the start. That brings me up to C. When I reverse the slide, B turns into C and all the ornamentation or all the slide work down. And the same with any of them. If I have a G, all the slide work goes down to the F sharp blade. D, it goes down to a C sharp blade. So that's the kind of formula I play. I don't use any other tunings. I don't change the tuning of the harmonica. Just that the ornamentation or the slide will bring you down a semitone instead he had taken it to you know he'd taken it to a different level eddie could switch keys on it he could play in d and stuff like that at the start i was really trying to do that but i found it very hard so and when i suggested to him to get a b because he he would play at sessions but he'd have to play on his own now he did a couple of recordings and the fiddle player would tune up semitone Because when Eddie was playing G on his C harmonic, it wasn't G anymore. It was up one semitone. So he was playing in A flat. So the fiddle player would tune up and they'd play tunes together and it worked fine. But when he was at a session, he couldn't play because everybody else was in concert key. I said to him one time, I said, would you consider using a B? And he said, no, I like the way that the C sings. That was his answer. I thought... It's very astute. He was right, you know, that the C when you hold a slide in, it has a really nice sound, you know, that the G can be a little cumbersome, but I like playing G. At the start, I found it very cumbersome with the bigger reeds at the end.

SPEAKER_01:

So the G is very low, isn't it? And not so responsive as the C, yeah. So you will, on the different chromatics you use, which are mainly G, D, and perhaps C, you will always switch the slide so that you have this semitone ornamentation by releasing it, yeah?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, or I will change the plates or detune. I use a 64, a Horner 64. I use one of those as a D. I have retuned it completely. So when I play it normally with the slide out, it's D. When I press the slide in, it's C sharp. But now that's a huge job and it took me a long time to kind of get it right. I think Horner make an F sharp plate so you can get a G that dips down to F sharp without doing all that tuning. I know some of the other sites do them as well, but I would use a G to F sharp, a C down to B. B is easy enough. You can buy a B and just reverse the slide. Then you have your C and it will dip down. The D is the only problem, really. I'm sure you could get a C-sharp plate and a D plate from owner or one of the other suppliers.

SPEAKER_01:

Let's move on now to talk a bit about your recordings and your music careers. So as you say, was one of your first bands... Playing harmonica was with the Slightly Bewildered String Band, was it?

SPEAKER_00:

Well,

SPEAKER_01:

I

SPEAKER_00:

had kind of played in a couple of bands. I was in a band years ago. It was called Cotton the Act. And we actually, it was after I heard Paul Lamb that I really started listening to kind of West Coast stuff and trying to emulate his playing. We actually ended up as a support band to him in Waterford. But that band was kind of short-lived. And then I moved to Dublin and I joined the Slightly Bewildered String.

SPEAKER_01:

But that band was a blues band, was it? So was your first real harmonica band a blues band?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah,

SPEAKER_01:

except for,

SPEAKER_00:

as I say, the bands I played in as a drummer. But as a harmonica player, your first thing was a blues? And then, as I say, I moved to Dublin. I met a guy called Bill Whelan. He's a banjo player, Clawhammer style, and a great musician. And he wanted a harmonica in the band, you know, for that kind of authentic sound. old timey sound. So I joined and Bill taught me a lot of old time tunes and stuff like that. We did a CD and we toured in Australia. It came to an end at some stage and I moved back down the country again and I joined a traditional band at one stage as well. They were called Tradivarius and I ended up playing with a fiddle player and a guitar and we didn't really record anything. We did some television stuff. on a program called Gantry. And then I moved back to Dublin again, later stage. Did a lot of session work in studios and stuff like that for films and people's albums.

SPEAKER_01:

You listed some of the films you were on, which is something called The General, The Ballad of the Sad Cat, Hobo, Blinder. So yeah, lots of film work. Yeah, how was that? Was that all in Dublin?

SPEAKER_00:

I'd just get a call from the studio and he'd tell me whether he wanted a chromatic or... diatonic kind of sound. So I'd go in and once or twice I came in and I thought I wouldn't be able, you know, I thought I wouldn't be able to do the session. One was for an Icelandic crowd that arrived in the studio. The guy asked me, he said, can you play chromatic? And I said, yes. And he said, can you read music? And I said, I can, but I wouldn't be able to sight read music. I could just, you know, so he said, well, come on in. It's okay. So I went in and when they opened the door into the main studio, there was a full orchestra there. and a microphone in the middle of the orchestra with music on a stand. And I knew, here we go. This is it. This is the big one. I'm going to get caught out here. I explained that the conductor came over to me and he is a really nice guy. And I said, look, I can't read like that. I have to go over it and, you know, study it a little bit. He said, cool. So he dismissed the orchestra. They were playing all day anyway. He said, go and get something to eat. And he sat with me and they recorded the piece and then the orchestra played afterwards. I never got to hear it. A few situations like that where they would expect you to read. I never actually got to be able to sight read perfectly, but I can read a piece, you know, at my own leisure. But I think it is kind of important to be able to know the makeup of cards and stuff like that. Not necessarily to read, but to be able to know what you're playing across. There's a guy here now called Maciek. He's a Polish guy and he lives in Galway. I've been up and down to him a few times. We had a couple of jams. He's a very interesting player because he plays saxophone and clarinet. He also plays chromatic and great diatonic player, overblows and stuff like that. But he really knows his way around music. But yeah, he's a great player and a nice guy too. But there's a lot of good players around now. It's because of the internet and there are a lot of good players around within the traditional world here and within the blues and jazz. Good teacher in Dublin called Michael Ginerney. He teaches a great course. He teaches jazz and blues, diatonic, tremolo. chromatic you've got a guy called Eugene Ryan he lives in Dublin too great chromatic player he plays with I think it's the Tonka Jazz Band or something like that in Dublin but he's a great player great chromatic and diatonic player you have a lot of good blues players in Dublin as well there was a good scene years ago they used to meet in one pub but it's It's kind of gone by the wayside now.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, you mentioned the benefits of playing other instruments. So as a drummer, previously a drummer, what do you think maybe that brought to your harmonica playing?

SPEAKER_00:

It has helped me over the years. It certainly helped my placement musically when I'm improvising and stuff like that. I never really have to think about timing. you know, it's feel, it's there from the drums because being a drummer for years, you're the one that gets blamed if it goes out of time. I was very strict on myself about timing and I would at one stage, I did practice with, I had, it wasn't, it was a drum machine I had and I would put on swing beats, practice along with that, put along reggae beats, practice along with that, whatever, whatever I fancied at the time. So, I did play quite strictly with the click tracks and stuff like that. And also gives you an idea of I can listen for the bass as well because I played with the bass player a lot in bands. We would try and play in unison. So it did help me that way as well when I got into band situations. I'd play a bit of concertina as well. I've kind of messed around with a lot of the instruments. Tin whistle at one stage. I had a saxophone for about a year. It kind of gives you an insight into the... you know, the complications that come with instruments. You know, I remember one time, just get back to Eddie now, not from the point of view, but just from the point of view of playing and the difficulties with instruments. I asked him at the time, I asked Eddie, had anybody ever asked him to teach them? And he said, they did. And I said, what did you tell him? He said, I told him to take up a different instrument, like the accordion. So he, even at the... level he was at he still thought it was a difficult instrument and troublesome you know he had a lot of trouble with the harmonica because he valves would get stuck and his reeds would go out of tune and the slide would the spring would break and he he had no skills that way Now, I think Rick at one stage had a workshop or a little workshop in Galway, and he might have fixed a few over the years for Eddie. But I often thought at the time that if Horner had sponsored him, just giving him free harmonicas whenever he wanted, there'd be a lot more people playing dramatic harmonica within the tradition here because it's not allowed into the conventions here. It's deemed as having an advantage over diatonic instruments. Yeah. You can enter with any of the diatonic instruments here, but not the chromatic.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, yeah, so going back into your music. So let's talk about your 2002 album called Harmonica, which is, I think, the first album under your own name, yeah? Yes, yeah. Yeah, really great album. I've been listening to that a lot over the last few days. And lots of range of different styles of music on there, aren't there? Obviously, you're probably known foremost as playing Irish and traditional music. But there is, you know, there's lots of different styles. style so if we talk through that album a little bit so of course there are there are some Irish songs on there and you've got I think you're playing two songs on chromatic aren't you they're Rosalind's Children and the Canyon Moonrise they're both played on chromatics yeah

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I used the chromatic a bit throughout. At the time, I was living in Dublin and because I was playing a lot of, I was playing in the blues club every now and then, I would go down and it was an open mic, so you'd get up at some stage and play. I was playing with a lot of different people, but I was playing with a guitar player called Martin Dunley. He was so interesting. He was the guy that played on the triple harp bypass. And he was a big influence on me because he was listening to all sorts of music and he was so musical. He could write great tunes, stuff like that. And I was there with a bit of advice. Great blues player, jazz player, funk player, traditional player. It didn't matter. He, you know, he'd studied, he taught in the jazz school, but he was a big influence on me himself and his wife who plays the harp, the Irish harp on a couple of things on my album. I used to play in a band with them. Martin had a big influence on me. So I was playing all sorts of stuff. I loved Rory McLeod. I love Brendan's playing. I love Rick's playing and There were accordion players I really liked, like Peter Brown and a guy called Donald Siggins who played banjo and bouzouki. I was just influenced by everybody. And I was playing with a fiddle player called Steve Larkin, who I recorded with later on our traditional album. But I was listening to all sorts of stuff and I was playing all the time. When I'd come home from work, I'd take out the harmonica and I was trying to get good at overblows. And so I was coming up with little patterns. And that's where some of these pieces came from, just practicing in my part.

SPEAKER_01:

So on the Harmonica album, the song Lit My Reeds, that's something you use a lot of overblows on, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00:

That literally came out of just practicing, trying to get overblows and to hit them clearly and cleanly. And then I started to expand on it a little bit, change a couple of chords in the middle. I could actually try it out at sessions because all these guys that played on that track were traditional players, but they all had an interest in blues and jazz and stuff like that. So they'd say, do you want to try out something? And I could try out caravan or autumn leaves or, you know, anything to practice my overblows. So I started playing Lip My Reeds and it worked really nice live. So I decided I would. Canyon Moonrise, yeah, that was just on a straight 280. I had a guy that was living, sharing the house with me called Niall O'Brien, did all the violins on that. He did all the parts. He's a classical player. Tango a la Torque was another thing I wrote myself. I'd been kind of experimenting around with tango beats and stuff like that. And I played percussion as well, congas.

SPEAKER_01:

The Tango Alla Turk, you mentioned Michael McKernie earlier, Ronnie. He's done a transcription of

SPEAKER_00:

that, hasn't he? Yeah, he sent me down a transcription, and he's doing this all the time. Blue Third is the name of the site that he has. And it's really good because he does transcriptions from all blues, blues, recordings. He's a great player and he will actually play them slow and play them fast. There's a lot of really good stuff on his site. He's working on something else now. I think he said he might do Lip My Reads. Yeah, he did a great job on Tango a la Torre.

SPEAKER_01:

So yeah, a few more of the songs I pick out from the album, if that's okay. So they're probably not saying this right, but the Tiana Mugio, is that how you say it? Yeah, it's called Tiana

SPEAKER_00:

Mugio. It's Gaelic, like a Tiana is the Lord Mayo. Yeah, I listened to a fella called Dermot Byrne. He plays on this album. He's a button accordion player as well. And I heard him playing it. I heard a few different people playing it, but I'd gotten the idea, Of the concertina and English concertina and harmonica from Rick, I'd heard Rick playing and I was just blown away by it. So I said I'd try and get it. Rick can play the melody at the same time. He can play harmonies at the same time as the harmonica. He's really, really good at it. He's the best I've heard at it. So, yeah, I decided I would do that. And it's a slow air, they call it here, or, you know, Fáin Máil in Irish.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, so you're playing it together. It's quite long notes from the concertina, isn't it? But yeah, it's effective together and it's a nice sound. So you're playing the homilica on a rack?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, on a rack, and it's an English concertina, so you've got the same note in and out, and you can play chords. It works out much nicer for accompanying yourself. If you use the Irish, or what they call the Anglo concertina, it wouldn't work out because it's a different note in and out. So yeah, it works for playing as accompaniment.

SPEAKER_01:

And you mentioned Japanesey, which is a Brendan Powers song, which you do on there as well, which you used to play with him. So again, you get that Japanese flavour as well, bringing these different styles in.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, and what a tune to practice bending. It's perfect. If anyone wants to get good at bending, play that tune. It's great. Because he uses the in-betweens, he uses the semitones as well. But it's a great practice for bending on the lower octave. Is that just the standard tuned diatonic? Standard tuned diatonic, yep.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, and earlier on you mentioned Rory McLeod, and so you do the version of Take Me Home, which is from the Footsteps and Heartbeats album, which is a fantastic album. It's a really amazing album. He's got some really good harmonica on there. So yeah, what made you choose that song to do as a harmonica instrumental?

SPEAKER_00:

Because I heard him doing it live. You know, he uses a board for foot tapping. He has mics underneath it. He kind of just tapped them out with his feet and played the harp. and got off stage, walked down to the audience. He was so good. It blew me away. And I just loved the rhythm of it. And I was at home trying to get the melody back into my head later on. And then I got his album and kind of came up with slightly my own version. But it's quite near what he plays. But then I just went off on a bit of a tangent with it. But I think the Irish harp works well on that. I play an F harmonica reversed. So it's an E harmonica with the slide reversed. on Rosalind's Children and the Spamcom Gig. They're my own ones as well. Yeah, I think it was in F.

SPEAKER_01:

Great. I know you've also got a couple of blues songs on there as well, haven't you? So a real mixture of styles. Yeah. Ben Prevost, See the Blues Tonight.

SPEAKER_00:

Brendan had made me a high D at the time. That's what I'm saying. Brendan was always sending me things. If he had some ideas, he'd send them for me to try them out and stuff. And Rick, Rick was giving me, you know, he was advice most of the time. I actually went up to Rick at one stage up to his house in Sligo for a couple of days. And he taught me an awful lot about tuning and fixing reeds and embossing reeds. and arcing and all the kind of stuff that, you know, all the stuff he does there. It was really useful. I was able to tighten and compress my harps a lot better and they were playing better. Now, setting for overblows, it's different for different players, but might work for one player, might be too soft for another or too hard for another. A high D chromatic, yeah. A high D chromatic. And the way Brendan had set it up, it was half valved. So I was able to bend some of the notes on it. It was great. It was... Confusing a time, right? Because I get a bend out of where I couldn't before, you know, the chromatic. But yeah, I liked it on that track. I thought it really worked.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, so a great album, that Harmonica album. Definitely worth people checking it out. Where can people get a hold of that album and contact you directly? I

SPEAKER_00:

actually let it run out. I should get some done or maybe somebody advised me lately to put it up on Spotify or something like that. I just didn't get around to it yet.

SPEAKER_01:

so yeah so moving on from that album now so you mentioned earlier on in playing in triple harp bypass with Brendan Power and Rick Epping so can you tell us a story about that I met

SPEAKER_00:

Rick he was doing a workshop in Wexford now You've probably heard of the Murphy brothers. There was a family called Murphy's from Wexford. The father and the two sons played tremolo harmonicas. Really good. And they're really well known here as traditional players. They've got some lovely albums out. The father is deceased, but John and Pip are two brothers and they play in unison. Really beautiful music. Rick was doing a workshop there on the diatonic and I was doing a workshop on the chromatic and we met and I hadn't seen him for since 1975. I never really knew him, but oh, he was so good. And he was playing the combination with the concertina and harmonica. And it was just fabulous. And at that time he had the prototype of the, what was it? XB40. And he was playing that. Yeah. He was playing that in the rack. And I was, how is he bending these notes? It sounded like, you know, he was bending every note. But it worked beautifully with the concertina. Anyway, we talked afterwards and then Brendan was over and back and we were, we did a couple of projects together. And then he said, look, would you like to, join up with Rick and myself and we'll form a group and do a little tour and see what comes out of it. Maybe we'll do an album. So we did and we got that guitar player, Martin Dunley, that I was talking about. Martin could cross over into the different musical genres. We started out, we met at my place in Dublin, did a lot of practice. I think we did the tour first, went in, did a live take of all the tracks. The lads weren't happy with it. So then Rick was in the States at this stage and And Rick said, come over to Virginia and you can record. He had a little bit of a studio there. So that's where we went. We went over to Virginia where he lived and we recorded the album there. And then we came back. We went and did the Harmonica Festival in Bristol. Yeah, I saw you guys there, yeah. We had about 100 CDs copied at the time. And I think we sold a whole lot of them on that weekend. And we went to the... World Harmonica Championships in Trossingen as well. Yeah, that was great. The Horner Harmonica Festival. Wow. That was a joy. I'll never forget that.

SPEAKER_01:

And so what harmonicas were you guys playing? Were you playing a mixture of harmonicas or did you just keep swapping it around? We played

SPEAKER_00:

everything. Well, Brendan, as you know, he's always changing. He'd have different tunings and stuff. He was using chromatic mainly, but sometimes it's hard to tell the difference with Brendan because his bending is so good. Sometimes I think he's playing one of his bendable chromatics and he's playing a diatonic or vice versa. Rick uses easy third, you know, where you tune up the first three drawn notes. And he uses octave harmonicas. So he will have high and low G on one hole and he gets this really powerful, loud sound. Of course, it's the work he does on his harmonicas as well. There's a new player now called Joel Anderson, young Swedish guy, great player. He's a customizer as well. He's a great traditional, Irish traditional player. Get back to the band, we got Martin on board. Poor old Martin, he had to listen to harmonicas all day long. We did a little tour of Ireland, as I say, recorded the album and really enjoyed it, I have to admit. Then everybody had to go their own way. People were busy and Rick was working for Horner at the time and he was trying to move back to Ireland. Brendan, of course, was doing movies and whatever was coming up. And I had a job I had to go back to and that was it. So the band kind of dissipated. Is the album available? I think when we finished, we said, look, just take a couple of copies each and sell them ourselves. But I think Brendan has them for sale on his site.

SPEAKER_01:

So moving on, as you say, you've done lots of session work, playing with lots of different people. So I'll just run over a few of those. You mentioned playing with Steve Larkin, who's mainly a fiddle player. So that's an album of traditional music. Coleman's March is one that I know. So I guess that's a kind of old time song, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00:

Coleman's March and I forgot to put it on my album but the credit has to go to Mark Graham I was listening to Jay Unger Jay and Molly Unger an album from years ago and they did Coleman's March and Mark Graham is playing diatonic in the background it's just beautiful it really moved me at the time and I kept trying to get a nice version he plays it I think on a B flat harp really nice key so I always played it after that and I used to play it in bands but then when I got the idea from Rick about the concertina really lent itself to that combination. I

SPEAKER_01:

know Mark Graham. He did that great album. He did quite a few songs of his. He is a really great player over in America, isn't he, Mark Graham?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. I mean, there's lots of brilliant players over there, but Joel Bernstein is another great player.

SPEAKER_01:

You play with Josephine March, who's an accordion player.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. Josephine is my partner. I started off playing drums in her band, and I recorded a couple of tracks on her album as well. I Can Hear You Smiling, it's called.

SPEAKER_01:

So you've also recorded with Michael Flatley, the famous traditional dancer, on one of his albums as well.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, I didn't actually meet him. You know, lots of that, all that stuff is done by his... musical director. Ronan Hardyman is his name. He's an Irish guy and he lives in Dublin. So Ronan will come up with the tunes and then he'll get an orchestra together or get a bunch of musicians together. And there was a really great guitar player called Dave Keery. He's with Van Morrison now. He's an Irish guy. He's from Limerick. And I had been doing some stuff for Dave in the studio. One day I got a call. I was working on the building sites and I got a call and I thought it was somebody winding me up that they wanted me to play on a an album called Celtic Tiger with Michael Flatley and I thought it was somebody winding me up but I said yes anyway so he sent me down the tracks and I went up to Dublin to do it and I didn't get to meet Michael I just went in and recorded over the tracks with the other musicians and it's out on CD and a lot of the tracks are up you know they're played at the show there's nobody playing the harmonica in the show but you can hear the harmonica in the background

SPEAKER_01:

Showing your more pop and sort of jazzy you did a song with Melissa Elliot's called I'll Have No One as well it's quite a poppy sort of jazzy song music

SPEAKER_00:

As I said, that guy, Dave Keery, Van Morrison's guitar player, he has a studio in Limerick. And before he joined with Van, he was doing a lot of work in the studio and he would get me in for a lot of sessions. And she was one of them. I did a couple of tracks on hers, one with Diatonic and that one with Chromatic. But yeah, I've done a lot of stuff for Dave, TV stuff and And he's a good writer as well. He will write a theme and then he'll choose a particular instrument. And he seems to like the harmonica. So he's got me on quite a few different projects. Yeah, I like jazz. And I find as I'm getting older, I'm 64 now, I'm really getting to like swing music. No, the kind of Django Reinhardt swing stuff.

SPEAKER_01:

So have you any more plans to release an album? Because I think the Harmonica is the only album under your own name, is it? Or is there any more?

SPEAKER_00:

No, that's the only one under my own name. I'm not sure. Myself and Josephine play a lot together now as a duo. Or else we'll bring in one of my sons to play with our guitar players or whatever. And we do a lot of stuff together now. She brought on an album last year that I played on as well. No, I've no kind of plans at the moment. You know yourself, you have to be inspired. And it's not that I'm not inspired, but sometimes I just don't have the time and the inclination. But I still love practicing. I will practice every day. I will play the harmonica every day if I can. But I would rarely leave it a week or two weeks, and then I'd be getting worried I'd have to take out the harmonica and play again, you know. I love the instrument.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I'm the same. I play every day, yeah, pretty much without fail, yeah. So it's great, isn't it? I mean, one thing just to talk about, you know, we talked a bit about Irish music. I mean, what is it, do you think, about the harmonica working so well with traditional music, Irish music? For a start,

SPEAKER_00:

I think it really lends itself to playing with the fiddle and not just in traditional music. But if you listen to old time music like like Mark Graham or Joel Bernstein playing with a fiddle player, it's just there's something magic about it. I think it's kind of a real wholesome sound. Or listen to Rick on the Unwanted album playing with Jamie O'Dowd on the fiddle. It's just I think it really suits. There's something down home about it. So I always like that combination and particularly the diatonic harmonica with the chords and that kind of second position. If you can... find a tune that has that mixolydian has the flattened seventh in it play it because it's a nicer sound you've got the chords and you've got the rhythm there you know but i i know a lot of the old-time tunes are in in first position which work great as well but i just think it's it's the sound is that combination is beautiful

SPEAKER_01:

i think uh which is available on youtube i'll put a link to is you do this talking harmonica right which is this sort of sunny terry tribute thing where you know um sunny terry does i i want my mama so you've extended did that so uh the harmonica is kind of doing that talking thing and you do mary had a little lamb which is really effective and the crowd really love it

SPEAKER_00:

mary had a little lamb its fleece was white as snow and everywhere that mary went the lamb was sure

SPEAKER_01:

to go

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, being honest, the first time I heard that was a recording of Salty Holmes. And I think I got it from Rick, the recording, because when we stayed with Rick, Rick wouldn't have run-of-the-mill albums. He always had really interesting old stuff like Peg Leg Sam and all those really old recordings of great diatonic players. But I think I might have got that where Salty Holmes did it, but he had a woman singer with him and she would... you know, ask the question and he would answer it on the harmonica. But I mean, I couldn't do that. So I had to do it myself. But I started thinking about different phonetics that I could use on the harmonica. So I tried different letters and words and stuff like that to see if they were possible within a bend. And that's what came up. It was a combination of probably Lost John and Salty Homes as Mary had a little lamb. I added a few, as you say, a few things in the phone call and the little guy calling in. I was down at Streetwood and kids love it. Because they're looking around, they don't know where the voice is coming from.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, very effective. I mean, I've done the Sonny Terry, you know, I want my mama thing a little bit. But what you've done with it is kind of extending it more. It's such a crowd pleaser, isn't it? It's something that I think I'll start to put in more myself. And, you know, we should see it more. I think it works really well in harmonica, yeah? It does. You've got a tuition book out, yeah? Blue's Heart from Scratch by Mick Concella, yeah? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, it's not actually mine. I did it for a company called Music Sales years and years ago. When I moved to Dublin first, I met a guy. Now, he was doing a lot of different books, banjos and things like that. He had done a lot of the books, Don Baker's books. Do you know Don? Have you heard of Don Baker? He's a great player here in Dublin, a guitar player as well, a great singer. He's an actor as well. He's acted in a lot of films, but... Don, he approached me and he said he wanted a tutor on what I write out some pieces. I wrote out a few tunes and exercises. And then he would send them off to... He had someone to transcribe them. They would come back and I'd have to watch them because if I played something high... on the C. Sometimes their ears weren't attuned to the harmonica and I would have a flat note instead of a normal note. It took a little bit of back and forth until we got it right and then I went in and I recorded it with Don Baker's band in the studio and then I just got a fee for it at the time and it went off and then I could see it popping up on Amazon and we were in France last year playing, myself and Joseph, and we had the kids with us and one of them wanted to go into this piano store and when I went in I looked over in the corner and there was the lose heart from scratch in French. Yeah, unfortunately, I didn't get the proceeds from that. But I started a traditional one at one stage, too. I still have the plans for it for chromatic. I found them again the other day. I had a lot of work done on it and tunes written out. So maybe I might get around to releasing that. We're working on a book at the moment of Josephine's tunes. So we're quite busy at the moment trying to get that together and

SPEAKER_01:

Your Blues Heart From Scratch is still available on the internet. I'll put a link to it up. So yeah, you've got a, always good to have a book out in your name, Mick. So well done for getting that out there. So we've talked a little bit about playing, obviously you play diatonic and chromatic probably more or less equally. So, you know, what do you see about the advantages of the chromatic and the diatonic? And when do you choose, you know, the diatonic or the chromatic particular song? Normally, when you go into

SPEAKER_00:

a studio, if I'm doing something in a studio, they will probably ask for whatever instrument they want. You know, if they want kind of a chord or more chordal stuff, I'll use the diatonic. Because I overblow, I can attempt some tunes. All right. You know, and if it's a diatonic and they want an improvisation, I will. I'll use overblows and do it that way. But as I say, now I'm starting to play the chromatic a lot more. I really like the accuracy of the, you know, the semitones. as opposed to having to think about the overblow when it comes along. Now, when you hear players, you know, really good players like Howard, Levy playing, you don't hear that. Is it Sebastian, Charlier? When you hear players like that, you don't hear the overblows that they're so good at. If it's a difficult piece and I'm in the studio, I don't want to waste anybody's time. I will learn it on the chromatic. If I can't do it well enough on the blues harp, but I love both and I switch back and forth. Sometimes I'll try and play it on both. If I'm tackling a tune like Coquette, it's a swing tune and I'm trying it on both, but it works really nice on the chromatic and you can swing a little better on it, but it works good on the diatonic as well. They're great exercises because you have to learn to play through the chords, you know, and to change, you know, the beat part is different. But I also play for traditional music. Rick showed me how to set up octave harps for myself and how to cut the plates up. What I do is I use a ten hole in chromatic tuning. So I'll start on the low G, and it's in octaves all the way up. And because there's no slide in it, you get a lot more volume. They're really loud, and they're great at a session. I've got one in C, one in D, and one in G. Now, you don't have the slide on them. I have worked out a couple of different ways of doing the ornamentation with breath

SPEAKER_01:

control. So are these octave harps, are they chromatics or are they diatonics?

SPEAKER_00:

Initially, they would be chromatics. What Brendan and Joel Anderson use, I think, were the auto valves and a lot of detuning. And with their tuning, they don't have much to do because they're using the easy third. So it means they can buy one of those. You know the way the auto valve is tuned like a diatonic? Down at the bottom octave, you don't have a full, you have an incomplete scale. Mine is exactly like a chromatic. Mine will start, say, it will just take C for reference. The first hole will be C, draw is D. Next hole is E, draw is F. Next hole is G, draw is A. Then I've got a B to C. And then it starts again, C, D, E, F, G, just like a chromatic, except I don't have the slide. And each hole has four reads per hole, two for draw and two for blow. So you get that big octave sound. I've never tried one of those, yeah. Interesting, yeah. They're really good, and the volume from them is incredible. If you get them nice and tight, emboss them, they work out great. Can you buy them, or do you have to make them yourself? No, you'll have to either make them yourself or get a customizer. Now, I think Joel Anderson makes them. He'd probably make anything. He's a brilliant technician when it comes to harmonicas and stuff, and he really understands the harp and reeds. Besides being a great player, He can just make anything I'd say. That's what I would use at sessions. I use the chromatic as well, especially if I'm playing at a, like if I'm playing with Joss and we have a lot of stuff worked out for chromatic, so I'll play it on with her. Then I use diatonic with her as well for some tunes because she plays the fiddle and I'd switch to diatonic or the octave to play with her on those.

SPEAKER_01:

A question I ask each time, Mick, is if you had 10 minutes to practice, what would you spend those 10 minutes doing?

SPEAKER_00:

Probably... practice bending notes on the diatonic because i don't think there's a better exercise for either instrument chromatic or whatever is just stepping down through the bends and back up it's different pressures and find if i do that before a gig if i just take out an a or a g and just play the bottom half of it bending up and down bending of it it really gets my embouchure straight And I find that if I don't do that for a while, if I don't do any bends on the, it kind of affects both. It affects my chromatic playing as well. So yeah, I would practice bending on the diatonic.

SPEAKER_01:

A bit like yourself, I'm interested in playing lots of different styles in the harmonica, but I love playing traditional music on there as well, playing quite a lot of old time and some Irish as well. But when I'm playing these songs, because they're often quite fast and there's not much room to breathe or swallow in between, I often find that's quite challenging on the traditional. So any particular tips about how you can play these fast tunes which don't have many breaks in them or no breaks in a lot of cases? How do you... your breathing, in particular swallowing is a problem that I have

SPEAKER_00:

with them. First thing I would say, and this is probably the most obvious thing, right? And it's a bone of contention here. Slow down. There's no need to play traditional music really fast. Sometimes it's out of hand over here. You go into young people's sessions and they're just technical wizards. So they play at whatever tempo it starts and then There's no going back after that, then you can't slow it down. So I prefer going to a sedate session where it's played a lot slower and you get the chance to breathe, or as you say, a chance to swallow. If you're playing it at speed, I don't think it's going to be really good music. But for me, it isn't anyway. I'm not going to be able to play at that speed. Now, I can play at a modicum of speed, but I don't like fast sessions. I really don't like them. And I was guilty of it myself when I started out years ago. I was a speed merchant. But now I hate listening to myself playing like that. So yeah, I prefer to find someone that will play nice and slow. Not painfully slow, but slower. Get the right instrument too. Playing traditional music, there are a couple of different approaches. You can play diatonic, but if you're playing a normal diatonic, you're going to run into problems because a lot of the tunes dip down to the bottom octave. It's very hard to roll on a bent note. If you have to do ornamentation on a bent note, you're not going to do it fast enough. So people modify their harps. I know that Rick and Joel use a combination of different tunings, but one of them is that easy third. And then they'll use ornamentation, fast diaphragm movement, very kind of flutter of the diaphragm will give them rolls. Rick is really an expert at it. Like he's got some really unique ones. Or you can approach it from the chromatic. You could use the Eddie Clark style. Brendan uses Paddy Richter tuning. Now, over here, the preferred instrument at a lot of sessions and a lot of players in the competitions is the tremolo. You're a good tremolo player. It's unbelievable. There's some great players here, like Noel Battle. He's an older man. Fantastic player. If you heard him playing on the... He played at some of those concerts. Have you seen any of those concerts from the Willie Clancy Week? Yeah, there's a lot of those up. You should... Have a look at them. There's the Irish Traditional Music Association, the ITMA. They put up podcasts of a couple of the concerts over the last few years. And if you look at that ITMA Mouth Organ, they usually call it here, or Harmonica concert. Myself and Rick teach at this festival called the Willie Clancy Week every year. We've been doing it for 13 years and we have 17 or 18 students every year. And we teach diatonic, tremolo and chromatic. And we teach a little bit about maintenance as well and how to tune. And so it's really interesting. I love that week. It culminates in a concert on the Friday night and we'll usually get a couple of guests. Brendan did it once. There's a woman called Katie Hewson. She's a harmonica player she's English and her musical partner and they guested with us as well and it's quite interesting you'll see the Murphys on that and you'll see a couple of local guys here you'll see Noel Battle the guy I'm talking about there's a lot of great players around that are playing trad now and playing it really well but a lot of them use the tremolo harmonica It's usually the first weekend in July. It starts on that weekend and it goes for a week. And we teach from 10 o'clock in the morning to one o'clock. And then we have a concert on the Friday. Everything slows down for this. So it's great. I slow down my playing. Rick slows down his playing. And I always feel a sense of accomplishment after it because, you know, I find I earn things at it as well because I've slowed everything down and played it at a pace that people can play. So again, back to the slowing things down.

SPEAKER_01:

But yeah, so we've been talking about gear now.

SPEAKER_00:

What harmonicas do you play? I usually play Special 20s. I love the Special 20. Handmade, you know, not the MS versions of harmonicas. So I love Special 20, and I find it's got a lovely mellow tone, and that's the way I like playing. And I can set them up usually to play overblows. I also love the crossover. I got a B-flat there a while ago in a crossover. And when I started playing everything that 4, 5, and 6... Over blue, straight away. The minute I picked it up, they were just playing perfectly. I think that's down to Joe Felisco, as far as I remember. He upped the ante a little bit. Lovely sound. I love the shape of it. I love the volume from it, everything. I find either those, or I'll go back to the Special 20. For traditional music, my C that I use at sessions, C down to B, is actually one I detuned. It's a 280, or 64 as I call them. So I've got the four octave range, and my D is the same. I detuned it myself. So I've got a D and a C in four octave range. And I'm playing the CX-12 quite a lot now. I really like them. They're slightly different when you go from playing the 64 to the CX-12. The embouchure is a little different for each one. So, yeah, you have to be careful. You play a couple of sets with one and then a couple of sets with the other one. Yeah, I use the octave harps. They're ones I've made myself under Rick's instruction. But I got some of the plates from Rick. cut them up myself and embossed them all the usual. And I got... Brendan made me some of the combs for the ten holes, octave ones. Yeah, he's great. So anything you want, you can either ask either one of those guys and they'll have it or they'll have an idea. Do you have a favourite key of harmonica? I mean... I do. It's a B-flat. I just love the B-flat. I love crossharp in F. There's something about it. And I like an A-flat as well. I've got one kind of set up here now for overblows. I like that, yeah. We touched on tunings a little bit. So do you use different tunings? I don't actually use any different tunings. I have used them on the Harmonica album. I did use the fifth tuned up. I think it was on the slow air because I couldn't overblow it while I had it in the rack. And there was one really... stood out and I needed it so I brought up the five and I bent it down to the note below it at a certain stage because in traditional music you can have in a lot of tunes just say it was the key of G you will have a C sometimes and sometimes in a melody you'll have a C sharp So if it's one where the melody really sticks out and you have to play it, I find you either need the chromatic or you need the ability to bend it. But no, normally I don't use any other tunes. I just use the diatonic set up for overblowing or my chromatics reversed. You're a lip purser, yeah? Yeah, lip purser, yeah. Obviously, when I'm playing octaves, I tongue block. Yeah, but it's all lip pursing and on the chromatic as well, yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

And what about amplifiers? Do you use amplifiers or are you mainly going for clean sound and going for the PA?

SPEAKER_00:

Being honest with you, the kind of gigs I do don't really lend themselves now because I'm living in the country. I'm not in the city. If I lived in the city, I'd probably maybe playing with more kind of bluesy bands and stuff like that. But because I'm playing traditional stuff at the moment, it's all just I have an SM58 and that's it. I just go into a desk and play that way. But I do love that sound. I've looked at some of Jason Ritchie's setups with the Lone Wolf pedals and it's fantastic the sound you get. Maciek Zawaronek is very good at that as well. He's got a lot of different amps and pedal setups and stuff. He gets some great sounds especially when he's playing live you know you can switch to something out of the blue and he's playing away with this unusual sound, you know. So do you use any effects pedals at all or a bit of reverb? Just into the PA with a bit of reverb, yeah. And I like the 58. It's kind of an all-round, you know, because it's omnidirectional and it's got an all-round sound in it, you know, that seems to work wherever you are. Like, I really like it.

SPEAKER_01:

Are you usually cupping the

SPEAKER_00:

SM58 or do you put it on a stand? No, I've never done that. The only time I've cupped the SM58 was on Japanese and because Brendan told me that he had recorded a couple of times and I remember seeing him in the studio, he always liked to cup the harmonica. And as a result, I think I got a really unusual sound on Japanese. It's quite full. But now when I'm playing live, I will just play back from the mic so I can control the sound I'm getting. And if I want to mute it a little with my hand, I can do that.

SPEAKER_01:

What about when you're recording harmonica? Are there any particular preferences for which microphones you use?

SPEAKER_00:

No, I don't really like directional mics. Like, is it a 57? Although I bought a 56 years ago when I was at that Hohner thing. I bought a 56. It looks like a 57, but it's an older mic. And it had a switch, an on and off switch. Now, I bought it because it was so bassy. I tried it out in Horner on an amp that a guy was selling. And I really liked the bottom end sound of it. And I used that a little bit live as well. That's the only kind of directional mic I would use. And you don't get that kind of air popping from it, whatever setup they have on it. But normally, I don't like the 57 because it pops when you get near it with air. No, just a 58 normally. No effects, no pickups. I went up with Matjek one day and he set up all the pedals and you know it was fantastic playing to it you know when you can sound like a trumpet synthesizer quite unusual and it's fun

SPEAKER_01:

Final question then obviously we're in pandemic time at the moment and things are a bit quiet but have you any particular plans coming up or after the pandemic that you're working towards?

SPEAKER_00:

Well I would love to get back playing obviously I love the swing now That's what I'm doing every day. I'm practicing stuff like minor swing and coquette and swing 39, trying to get the melody and to swing with them. It's tough enough, but I find that's the most interesting thing I'm doing at the moment. I'm not great at it, but I'm getting there. You know what I mean? I'm gradually getting there. So I would like to maybe end up to be able to play a full set of swing stuff and just go out because there's a couple of good swing bands in Ireland and swing players. So, you know, maybe something like that.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I used to play with a couple of guitar players and they love the gypsy jazz. So I used to play quite a lot of gypsy jazz music with them. So yeah, it does lend itself quite well to the Daytona. I've heard,

SPEAKER_00:

is it Philip Jars? He's a brilliant player. I think he's, is he Swedish? Sure. But he plays chromatic and blues as well. He has a recording up of just a backing track with minor swing and he's a brilliant player. Really, really good player. Constantine Reinfeld, he's great too. Like all these guys are giving out information on the internet and stuff like that. It's a much better time for harmonica players, I think. You can listen, go on and listen to interviews from, I'm not putting myself on a pedestal here, but the likes of Charlie Mackay or Howard Levy or Brendan and stuff like that. You can get an insight into how they started. So thanks very much for joining me on the podcast today. No problem at all, Neil. I really enjoyed it.

SPEAKER_01:

That's it for another episode, folks. Thanks so much for listening, and thanks to my sponsor, the Lone Wolf Blues Company, with purpose-built effects and amplifiers for harmonica. Mick, take me home.

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