February 17, 2011
By Staff Reporter
After adopting the name of a popular traditional jig and officially becoming a band, Cherish the Ladies recorded – and no strict chronology is implied here — three studio albums with Green Linnet Records, three studio albums with RCA Victor/Windham Hill/BMG, and two studio albums and one live album on their own Big Mammy Records.
Last year, Rounder Records reissued one of those Big Mammy releases, “On Christmas Night,” and Cherish the Ladies’ new CD, “Woman of the House,” begins a multi-record deal with the Cambridge, Mass., indie label, best-known today as the home of platinum-selling bluegrass singer-fiddler Alison Krauss.
The sheer will and perseverance exhibited by CTL since their emergence in the middle to late 1980s is both admirable and rare. Bands of lesser resolve have crumpled under the weight of marketplace volatility, personnel flux, record-label changes, and heavy touring. Cherish flourished.
Much of the credit goes to CTL’s founding member and leader Joanie Madden, who seems to have a magician’s gift for pulling replacement talent out of the hat. The current CTL lineup of Irish Americans Madden and fellow founding member Mary Coogan, Kildare-born Heidi Talbot, Galway-born Mirella Murray, and Belfast-born Roisin Dillon is well meshed, befitting the band’s road-earned reputation, and their new CD captures them in excellent form.
Last week I generally chided some bands, Irish American in particular, for issuing albums aswarm with guests, and “Woman of the House” features no fewer than 14 of them. But to their credit, Cherish the Ladies preserves their distinctive quintet sound throughout the album, using guests to unobtrusively enhance, not encrust, the music. In that sense, CTL adheres to the emergent, frills-free trend in trad coming out of Ireland.
A good example is “Carolan’s Favorite Jig/The Rakes of Cashel/Highland
March in Oscar & Malvina,” a medley where CTL links up with ex-Bumblebee
Laoise Kelly on harp, ex-Woodchopper Liz Kane on fiddle, and Flook’s John Joe Kelly on bodhr_n as guests. The pace is lively, the weave is tight, and the interpretation is focused. CTL expanded with guests is not CTL overreaching with guests.
A similar sharpness of execution pulses in “The Fairy Queen/The Gooseberry Bush/Paddy Kelly’s/Woman of the House,” featuring Kane, the two Kellys, button accordionist Sharon Shannon, and pianist Tr