Johnny Moynihan's contribution to Irish music, particularly with Sweeney's Men, is incalculable, but his new passion is for old-timey, he tells Leagues O'Toole
Meeting Johnny Moynihan provokes a certain trepidation, which may well be due to the reputation that precedes him; eccentric, elusive, mysterious are the sort of words commentators have employed to describe him. Maybe there's some truth to these adjectives - when I first encountered him he had a black Spanish sausage tied to a loop on his belt, from which he carefully peeled off slices with a penknife. He offered me a piece, which I perceived as some sort of test or gauntlet. But as I chewed the salty, tar-like substance and listened to Moynihan shake stories and characters from his memory, most of those preconceived notions dissolved.
"I don't consider myself elusive. That's a good way not to get any gigs: 'Oh don't call him - he's elusive!' I'd play anywhere and with anyone, more or less. I'd certainly consider it. Because I've retained my sense of musical indigestion and there are certain chords that give me a bad feeling in my stomach, a physiological effect, in that sense maybe I'm exclusive, but I'm certainly not elusive." Although often referred to as "the bard of Dalymount", his true home is the road, and more often than not you'll find him travelling the west coast, where he describes life as "idyllic".
Moynihan was a Dublin architecture student when he became hypnotised by the ballad boom of the 1960s, in particular the plethora of outstanding folk singers and traditional musicians who descended on O'Donoghue's pub of Merrion Row. He never looked back, embarking on a life of music and travel, performing in all sorts of situations, from the back rooms of pubs to international music festivals.
His contribution is scattered across numerous genres and many key groups; the trad-folk sensations of Planxty and De Dannan, and Ireland's very own good-time outlaw group, The Fleadh Cowboys, who mixed up hillbilly blues and traditional roots music. He even contributed briefly to psychedelic blues-rock band Skid Row with Phil Lynott and Gary Moore.
More importantly, his 1960s group with Andy Irvine and Joe Dolan, and later Terry Woods, Sweeney's Men, are considered to be the forerunners of the eclectic ensemble groups of the 1970s. Sweeney's Men was a musical sponge, soaking the momentum of the Irish folk movement while simultaneously exploring its connections with traditional American music and east European dances. Moynihan brought the Greek bouzouki to Ireland and, with Irvine, stumbled upon the much-celebrated bouzouki-mandolin interplay, setting in motion a trend that would eventually become a staple of Irish music.
Despite his brief dalliances with fame, Moynihan always somehow found his way back to the dirt tracks and back roads of music. His relationship with the recording studios and the professional music industry has been painful and reluctant. His career is littered with tales of abandoned recording sessions, tape machines mysteriously breaking down, and marathon tuning sessions, not to mention a trend for joining groups that disband after one album. He reminds me of his often quoted aphorism: "Recording studios are places I'm dragged screaming into and led weeping out of."
Nowadays, if you look hard enough, you might find Moynihan playing to a small gathering of folk aficionados or a pass-the-hat house party. More often than not he'll be performing with his latest group, a trio called Moonshine, who specialise predominantly in old-timey music. The other two-thirds are American fiddler Frank Hall (The Monks, The Easy Street Stringband) and Swedish five-string banjo expert Lena Ullman (Higglers Jug Band). Over a repertoire of shivering ballads and dirt-raising dance numbers, the trio swap lead vocals, and Moynihan works with an array of instruments, including accordion, bouzouki and mandolin.
"I met Lena briefly in the late 1960s. She was only a young wan. She was pretty into the five-string banjo by then. She hit the road and ended up in Galway, married to the late, great fiddler, Mickey Finn. In the early 1980s I was living in Galway myself. Lena hadn't been playing the banjo for a while because she'd been rearing a child, or two."
A trio featuring Moynihan, his late friend, the fiddler Clive Collins, and Ullman fell into place, playing old-timey music at regular sessions in various places.
"I'd always liked Lena's playing, her abiding lust for good tunes. Her voice is coincidentally suitable for so many songs in the old-timey tradition. She can actually sing in a lower register. Her abiding passion is playing banjo and she developed that to a very high degree, but she's not naturally a singer, so when she sings you'll hear a waver in the note, but that doesn't matter because she has lovely phrasing. Traditional music and song is a little bit like a stump that's been in a river for a long time - all the awkward corners have been knocked off it and you end up with a beautiful shape. Lena is a good carrier of that."
On a visit to Ireland in the early 1990s, Frank Hall befriended Moynihan. Hall mastered the fiddle playing square dances in southern Indiana in the early 1970s. He has dabbled in various other styles too, including Mexican and Irish, at which Moynihan says he has become quite adept. "He was a university chap. His work brought him to Ireland. He began playing around Galway, for its great dancers and feel for rhythm. We did a few gigs. He came back to spend a year in Ireland a couple of years ago and Lena was asked to provide old-timey music for a session in Kinvara so she asked Frank and myself to join her. It was a good sort of fast and loose session."
TO SOME DEGREE, Moynihan's name is still most associated with Irish music through his work in the 1970s. He joined De Danann on their second album, Selected Jigs, Reels & Songs. Unfortunately, the album was never released on CD, reportedly due to the mysterious disappearance of the master tapes. He played on Planxty's third album, Cold Blow and the Rainy Night, and for many people's money, he stole the show with his brilliant drawl-like reading of the ballad P Stands for Paddy and his infamous polka, The £42 Cheque. However, the group disbanded before the official release of the record. In his Planxty days, Moynihan tested the patience of colleagues and his audience with long tuning breaks between songs. But he kept spirits high with his witty illustrations and accompanying doggerel and his love of sports, which took in everything from soccer and tennis to Subbuteo and, his own invention, handball-football.
Irish music still creeps into his performances, but his inclination is very much towards old-timey music, a form of North American folk music with roots in many countries, including England, Ireland, Scotland and Africa. It is spread across several regions, each with its own associated dances.
"I didn't have the industry to learn Irish music properly on a lead instrument and I usually don't like accompanied Irish music," confesses Moynihan. "Accompaniment always gets in the way of the subtlety of rhythm and the subtlety of the harmony, which are traditionally not actually played, just employed. Old-timey music is more accessible to me. Because the five-string banjo would normally play with a fiddle it already has a slightly orchestrated feel to it - I can fit in bits here and there to it and I feel I'm not doing too much damage. And I really like the rhythms of it. I think one of the virtues of old-timey music, as opposed to bluegrass, is that the musicians don't really seek to shine, they don't claim a place where they're gonna take a solo and exhibit their virtuosity. They all play the same tune over and over again and it becomes almost trance-like. It really is the tune that moves, as opposed to the players. The other thing is, bluegrass is God-fearing, and old-timey music tends to have a healthy interest in sinful pursuits."
First Run, the debut album by Moonshine, is a fine collection. From the opening song, Ullman reveals a thin, haunting voice on the old slacker ballad Ain't Gonna Work Tomorrow as she sails through a forest of detailed banjo and fiddle harmonics. The music is pure and joyous. The songs and tunes are plucked from a vast canon of musical history, but the sense of wryness, divilment and, at times, lonesomeness, are never diluted.
First Run is out now on Secret Records/RMG. Moonshine play the Ballina Arts Centre on July 26, Róisín Dubh, Galway on July 27 at 1pm (as part of the Galway Arts Festival), The Gallery Café, Gort on July 29, and Electric Picnic, Stradbally, Co Laois on Sep 1 or 2