"Going Home" To Rockaway

By Gwen Orel

If you go to see fiddler Randall Bays and box player James Keane at the Irish American Association of Northwest Jersey in Rockaway on Sunday, May 16th you can do more than listen - you can learn from them beforehand in a workshop, and play with them afterwards in a session.

All the concerts Iris Nevins programs there are like that. Nevins has been programming music for IAANJ (www.iaanj.com) since 2005.

While Rockaway Township is a trek for many, Nevins says their programming attracts visitors from New York, Connecticut and Pennsylvania. People come from miles around to hang out at the white-frame building that was once the Mt. Hope School.

"It's more than just a session; it's a traditional Irish music and dance party, we play sets too. There is free food out, and we're not averse to food contributions to table; there's always plenty of parking. People who come are babies to great grandparents. We can't serve liquor, but you can bring your own. It's more than just a concert where you pay your ticket and leave; there is extreme interaction with performers. It's really wholesome compared to bar gigs."

Nevins should know - she's played her share of bar gigs. Back when she lived in New York, she used to play with Andy McGann. She was part of "The Crooked Road," a popular bar band. After she got married in 1982, she says, she "did the family thing for 20 years." Still she would have house sessions, and booked such notables as Paddy Keenan and Johnny Moynihan. "I got my fix," she laughs."

Still when she resurfaced in 2003 to the scene she thought she was "Rip Van Irish! People I had known were dead; others their hair had turned white and I didn't recognize them, new people had come in."

These days, it seems that everyone in the tristate are knows the curly-haired guitar player-harper, who also teaches at IAANJ and at Catskills Irish Arts Week. She threw herself back into the scene quickly, and began hosting a session in Stillwater New Jersey with Linda Hickman.

Richard Sutton, a bodhran player and Board Member of IAANJ, suggested Nevins start a session for that organization.

Hickman was too busy, so Nevins began running sessions with a different guest host each month, starting in October 2005. "Tom Dunne was the first host I think. We had no clue how it would go!"

While storms, like the one this Saturday, May 8th, can make a session less than ten players, for Hickman's surprise birthday party in March "there were almost 40 musicians!" With a group that large, sometimes half the room can't hear the other half.

The first concert Nevins programmed was May 2006, with herself, Willie Kelly and others, all from IAANJ. It was planned as a fundraiser, to raise guarantees for musicians she knew she wanted to book.

After Catskills Irish Arts Week that summer, she programmed Jackie Daly, who had been teaching and playing there. She never looked back.

More well-known musicians are offered guarantees; lesser known musicians get a percentage of the door - but everyone makes money. Some musicians make as much as $3000 with the combination of cd sales and workshop fees - the workshop rates all go directly to the musicians themselves.

When Nevins programmed Alan Morrisroe, for example, a box player from Mayo, she offered him a percentage of the door - he was unknown. "He's a total complete maniac! He plays in a 200 year old style he learned from his grandmother; his family never left the farm. He's like a guy in a Japanese jungle who doesn't know World War II was over." After the successful concert, and a packed CD release session at Dempsey's in New York City, Morrisroe is hardly unknown now.

Randal Bays and James Keane are already well known. In addition to their IAANJ date, they play Glucksman Ireland House in NYC (www.irelandhouse.fas.nyu.edu) on May 14th, Fairfield, Connecticut at the Shamrock Irish Music Association (www.shamrockirishmusic.org) on May 16th.

Bays then plays some solo house concerts in Boston and in New Hampshire; check www.randalbays.com for more info.

James Keane is "just a genius; I hope we get some accordion players out to take the class with him!"

He's based in Queens, but Washington-based Bays only had Sunday open - so, for the first time, IAANJ will hold its monthly session/concert on a Sunday. Nevins tried to time it so it wouldn't conflict with the sessions she knew about.

Keane has been instrumental in developing an Irish style of button accordion playing, through studying other European traditions on the instrument, and was a featured artist in the celebration of Dublin's designation as a Cultural Capital of Europe.

His bio is long and impressive; he seems to have played with everyone, including Mick Moloney, Seamus Connolly, Séamus Egan, Tommy Peoples, Matt Molloy and others.

He's from a musical family, and brother Seán plays with the Chieftains. With Randal Bays and County Derry-born singer/guitarist Dáithí Sproule, he's a founding member of the band Fingal.

Bays, born in Indiana, now lives in Washington State. He started off as a trumpeter and then a rock guitar player, but attending a session in 1978 in Portland, Oregon inspired him to take up fiddle.

He accompanied Martin Hayes on guitar for Haye's first album in 1993, and that trip to Ireland sent him further into his fiddle playing. Since then he's played with Tony McManus and Gerry O'Beirne, and has performed at the Willie Clancy Festival and Summer School in Ireland, Catskills Irish Arts Week, the Swannanoa Gathering in Asheville, North Carolina, and Augusta Heritage Week in Elkins, West Virginia.

To see these two play together is a treat at any time. But it might be worth a visit to IAANJ to spend a whole day with them.

Workshops begin at 4pm, with a break for dinner - if the weather is fine you can picnic on the lawn outside the white frame school building.

The concert begins at 7pm, with the session immediately after. Food at intermission is free.

"I bake and freeze constantly!" Nevins explains. And usually there is "Marge Greenan's famous brown bread."

IAANJ volunteers Nevins calls "our kitchen angels" help with the food. "It's like the fairies, filling up the jugs overnight... It's a whole big kind of party, with the atmosphere of a house concert, though we can hold easily 100 people."

The old Mount Hope school has two sets of stairs, one for boys, one for girls. Workshops are in the classrooms upstairs, with the concert in the hall below. There's a comfortable green lawn. The whole environment is idyllic.

Sessions often go late, though she tries to get everyone out by midnight. One has the feeling that that this attempt does not always succeed. The festive feeling may be one reason why performers are so eager to play in Rockaway.

Nevins never has to seek them out; they come to her - and she's already booked for the monthly events through the end of the year. "It breaks my heart to tell people sorry, we are booked up!" although, she admits, she has told some people unofficially, I'll fit you in.

Look for accordion player Damien Connolly and young fiddler Cleek Schrey in June, fiddler Tony DeMarco in August.

Nevins has no concert, just a session planned for July, since it's so busy with the Catskills Irish Arts Week - and because Nevins likes to keep it open in case one of the great players who visit there wants a gig before returning home - but that does not mean there's nothing happening at IAANJ, which will have ceili classes and a barbecue at the end of the month.

IAANJ (www.iaanj.com) was founded in 1974 to promote and preserve Irish culture. It offers ceili and step dancing classes, Irish language classes, and music lessons, among other events.

The organization organized the first St. Patrick's Day parade in Morris County, hosts a yearly dance and just completed a successful blood drive, among other events. As a member of IAANJ, concerts are only $15 instead of $20.

And you don't have to be Irish to be involed. Just ask Nevins. "I'm half Mexican. I have roots that are Galician and Breton. No Irish at all!"

The self-described "token Latina" hopes to program more Celtic music that isn't necessarily Irish.

Meanwhile, if you're coming in from out of town, let Nevins know. You can take the train to Dover, and a cab from there, but people often carpool, and if she can, she'll arrange to have you picked up. That's a little bit different from a bar gig or a concert. That's kind of like going home.

Contact irisnevins@verizon.net for reservations.