At a service station on the M40, a young man with a Manchester accent is speaking into a mobile phone. This is no doubt an everyday occurrence at M40 service stations; and unless they're pretty clued in to what's going on at the cutting edge of the traditional music scene, few passers-by are likely to recognise the young man as one of trad's fastest-rising stars. Michael McGoldrick is on the M40 because he is nearing the end of a UK tour with another hot young musical property, the English folk singer Kate Rusby. He has a Manchester accent because, despite a strong and healthy set of roots in Galway, Manchester is where he grew up. And he's on the phone because he's talking to The Irish Times about fleadh ceols, Asian Underground and Coronation Street.
And if that strikes you as eclectic, just put his new album, Fused, into your CD player and give it a spin. Silky laments rub shoulders with spiky breakbeats and jazzy rhythms. The out-of-time vocals of Karan Casey succeed the up-to-date samples of Talvin Singh. Wickedly dextrous flashes of flute and whistle are underpinned by some glorious uilleann piping and a mean bit of bodhran - all played by McGoldrick himself - and the list of backing musicians reads like a Who's Who of folk's coolest folk. Hardly surprising, when you consider that McGoldrick has been mixed up with some of the most highly-regarded instrumental ensembles of the past few years, Capercaillie, Flook and Lunasa among them. And now he's coming to Dublin to take part in Beo 2000, a festival of traditional music at, of all places, the National Concert Hall.
"Dublin?" He sounds doubtful for a second, then "I am, yeah - via Aberdeen and Lorient in Brittany and then Switzerland." It's all a long way from a kid playing a tin whistle at the annual fleadh, but that's how he started off, taught by his dad. When he was eight he took up the bodhran in order to accompany his sisters, whistlers both. He also began to "dabble" with guitar. "The whistle is a great instrument - it's cheap for a family to afford, and there were loads of them lying around the house. For the bodhran, you get shown a basic technique - how to hold the stick, how to play a rhythm in 4/4 time to back a reel and then you develop it from there." For further information on how he has developed it, check out the second track of Fused, James Brown's March/Noon lassies. It is, without question, more funky than fado fado. Did growing up in Manchester perhaps make a difference to his definition of what did - and didn't - constitute "tradition"?
"I think living in Manchester gave me the opportunity to go and see more kinds of live music than there would have been in Galway," he says. "When I was 16 I started going over and playing in festivals and sessions there, but the other stuff - the drum and bass and the whole sort of underground scene - that wasn't happening in Galway, it was happening in Manchester." His close encounters with that scene have driven his musical tastes: "at the moment I really like the Asian Underground, Talvin Singh and Nitin Sawney, that sort of stuff. I think that's great." He also spent a number of his formative years sharing a house with nine other musicians. "From the age of 18 to 23 I just sat in the bedroom and played. And loads of other instruments were available to me because they were all in the house - guitars, percussion instruments, you name it, you just had to go down to the cellar and play it."
Chuckling at the memory, he describes the resulting music as "a tripped-out space odyssey", but admits that it could be seen as an early experiment in musical fusion. "It's all about who you're mixing it with and what other musicians you play with. I'm not the only one doing this blending of styles now - lots of people are doing it. But though I have had other influences, everything I do is traditional really. I mean, I can't say I'm a jazz musician or a classical musician. The bedrock of everything I do is traditional."
Which may explain why - as if flutes, whistles, bodhrans and guitars of various hues weren't enough - he decided to take up the uilleann pipes. When, and why, did that happen? "Er . . . um. I'm still taking them up," he says, with a rueful laugh. "But it was about five years ago, when I started. I was always listening to pipes on records - I'm a huge fan of Matt Molloy from the Chieftains and Paddy Keenan of the Bothy Band - and then I got interested in trying them out. So I had to practise. Then I met the great piper John McSherry when I was touring in Germany, and I played in a band called Lunasa with John. I think his playing has helped me to keep going, really." So is it as difficult as everybody says it is, to learn the pipes? "It's a bloody nightmare - to keep them in tune!"
His gig at the National Concert Hall on Friday night will have something of a "classical revisited" vibe, for he toured North America last year with the RTE Concert Orchestra, playing excerpts from Shaun Davey's composition The Brendan Voyage along with some of his own pieces. Playing with an orchestra was, he says, both hugely challenging and hugely satisfying. "Because I play by ear and wasn't reading the music, I had to learn where the cellos were coming in, where the violins were coming in, where to come in and come out. It was a great experience - I really enjoyed it." Did he feel the atmosphere at those "classical" concerts was different, more restrictive maybe? "Actually they weren't that different to what I'm doing now, with Kate; because when you do a theatre gig and it's very beautiful music, people sit down and listen to it. It's not a foot-tapping, dance-up-and-down kind of thing; it's a listening audience."
Which will no doubt be good news for the people at the NCH, who organised Beo as part of a policy of broadening its artistic remit by moving into territory which would previously have been ruled out as not strictly ballroom; jazz, contemporary, traditional. Ironically, though, McGoldrick says this concert will have a more strictly traditional feel than is evident on Fused: "it's a trio with the percussion player John Jo Kelly and a guitarist by the name of Tim Eadie, and I think it'll stick closer to the roots side of things," he says.
Speaking of roots, what's all this about him appearing on Corrie? Delighted laughter peals through the static and the traffic noise. "Me famous role, eh? That just happened by pure chance, that," he says. "It was about four years ago, and it was a friend of mine's gig - Dezi Donnelly - but Dezi wasn't able to make it, so I covered him. I went in to play a few tunes at the Irish night in the Rover's Return. I got to go in and sit down and meet Vera!" Do you know what, for a second there it might have been Steve McDonald on the mobile.
Beo 2000 begins at the NCH on August 17th, with performances by Cran and Donal Lunny & Coolfin. The festival continues with Michael McGoldrick/Altan (Friday); Martin Hayes & Dennis Cahill/Micheal O Suilleabhain (Saturday); and Lia Luachra/Kila (Sunday). The host for all concerts will be Iarla O'Lionaird; booking on 01-4751572.