Molsky masters that old-time music

Over the last three weeks, I’ve seen American old-time singer, fiddler, banjoist, and guitarist Bruce Molsky perform twice in concert: on Feb. 28 at Mick Moloney’s Irish Music and Dance Fest in Manhattan’s Town Hall with a cast of more than 30, and on March 2 at the Towne Crier Cafe in Pawling, N.Y., where he gave a solo show. Both times, I came away as impressed as Moloney, who featured Molsky on four tracks of his latest solo album, “Far From the Shamrock Shore” (Shanachie, 2002).
I first met Molsky at Boston College’s Gaelic Roots last June when he and his wife, Audrey, a former Green Grass Clogger and a fine guitarist in her own right, taught classes during the week and also performed in concert at night. Their students were among the happiest and most proficient by week’s end, able to play fiddles, banjos, and guitars in an old-time style while at one point simultaneously singing an old-time song.
Bruce Molsky himself holds a stage as few roots musicians can: with skill, a varied and deep repertoire, a reverence for the past, a healthy curiosity about music outside old-time, and a relaxed, conversational wit that draws listeners in as if they were sitting in his living room. In a sense, they were, for as established as he is in old-time music and able to play in familiar venues, he still loves to give house concerts.
“When I started to perform, house concerts were all that was available to me,” he said over cups of tea in the dining room of the house he and Audrey share in Beacon, N.Y. “But now that I play in all these other places, I find I love playing house concerts all the more because they’re intimate and done without a sound system, so people can really hear the beauty of acoustic instruments.”

Irish connections
Part of the provenance of the music Molsky performs, old-time, is Irish. It originally stemmed from melodies and balladry brought over by Ulster Irish and Scottish immigrants to Appalachia that mingled with rhythms found in African America, fiddle bowing, five-string banjo playing, and body percussion (hamboning and other forms of torso slapping), all further enriched by hymns and other sacred music sung in the mountains.
“I think that old-time Southern Appalachian music has more in common with traditional Irish music than, say, bluegrass,” Molsky said. “Old-time and Irish are much closer in style and spirit than old-time and bluegrass, which takes in elements of jazz and pop. There are lots of tunes we have in common. The Irish ‘Pigtown Fling’ is old-time’s ‘Old Dad,’ and there are many other examples of crossover tunes, like ‘Kitty’s Wedding’ and ‘Boys of the Blue Hill.’ It’s easier for me to sit in with a musician playing Irish jigs and reels than a musician playing a bluegrass breakdown.”
On “Poor Man’s Troubles” (Rounder, 2000), Molsky’s brilliant solo album that rightly earned an Association for Independent Music award, he joins Martin Hayes for “Billy Joe Banes,” a track featuring “Joe Bane’s,” an Irish traditional reel, followed by “Billy in the Lowground,” an old-time tune. Backing on acoustic guitar is Beverly Smith, a former member of Big Hoedown, a trio featuring Molsky and fiddler/banjoist Rafe Stefanini.
“It was an easy fit for Martin and me because each of us loved the other’s tune,” Molsky said. “There was a learning curve, of course, but we didn’t play at each other. It took some work, but I think we reached a nice synthesis of Irish and Appalachian playing together. Rhythm is different in Irish music, the accent in the measures is different, but melodically it’s not all that different.”
Martin Hayes and Mick Moloney aren’t the only Irish performers with an appreciation for old-time music. The Chieftains have recorded “Cotton-Eyed Joe” and “Sally Goodin,” and on “The Gift” (Shanachie, 1998) uilleann piper Jerry O’Sullivan recorded some old-time tunes with Stefanini on fiddle and John Hermann on guitar and five-string banjo.
On “Somewhere Along the Road” (Shanachie, 2001), Cathie Ryan sings “High on a Mountain,” a ballad composed by North Carolina-born Ola Belle Reed that both old-time and bluegrass musicians enjoy performing. New York resident flutist Linda Hickman, who’s recorded with Celtic Thunder, had a passion for old-time music before she embraced Irish traditional music many years ago in Washington, D.C., and guitarist, fiddler, and songwriter Mark Simos, who’s recorded with John Whelan and Eileen Ivers, still plays both in Massachusetts.
Moreover, Richard Nevins, co-founder of Shanachie Records, a label internationally known for its Irish traditional music, is a highly respected collector and producer of American old-time music for County Records in Virginia and his own Shanachie imprint, Yazoo, in Newton, N.J.

Well traveled
Ironically, Bruce Molsky, born in an Irish neighborhood in the Bronx, N.Y., was not aware of the Irish music scene around him as a youngster.
“I just never knew about that music,” he said. “It wasn’t on my radar back then. I was into the Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, Doc Watson, Mississippi Fred McDowell, and Mississippi John Hurt, who was my first musical hero.”
Molsky played music continually, almost obsessively. “I had this crummy little six-string Hungarian acoustic guitar and a Fender Mustang electric guitar, which was much less a source of joy to my parents,” he said. At age 13, he joined his first rock-and-roll band, but there was music other than his own in the house. “My mother used to listen to show music, ‘Man of La Mancha,’ stuff like that,” he said, “and my parents had sent me to summer day camp, where I learned songs like ‘Little Boxes’ and ‘Cumbaya.’ They also bought me a Pete Seeger Folkways LP of American folk songs for kids, and I loved it.”
After graduating from the Bronx High School of Science, Molsky matriculated in 1972 at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., where he found a thriving folk and old-time music scene. He spent two years at Cornell and admitted, “I was a terrible student. I had discovered bluegrass a couple years earlier and wanted to play bluegrass guitar. After that, I played the banjo and the fiddle, in that order. When I finally heard Fred Cockerham play ‘Roustabout’ on an LP of clawhammer banjo music, I lost all interest in folk banjo and fell in love with old-time banjo. Then I went with friends in 1973 or 1974 to the Galax Fiddlers Convention [in Virginia], where I met Tommy Jarrell for the first time.”
From the Round Peak area of North Carolina, banjoist Fred Cockerham (1905-1980) and fiddler Tommy Jarrell (1901-1985) were two legends of old-time music. “I played all day with Tommy at his house once,” Molsky recalled. “It was the best fiddle lesson I ever had. He was really encouraging and played tunes a little more deliberately so I could catch on.”
Smitten by old-time music and its accepting community, Molsky lived in the South for 26 years — 22 of which he also spent as a mechanical engineer — before coming back to New York State. The transition for him and Audrey, who hails from Long Island, has been remarkably easy. “I instantly got my New York accent back,” he said, smiling.

Forging new links
A full-time musician since 1997, Bruce Molsky has toured Britain with Kevin Burke and other string players in “Fiddles on Fire,” given a concert at Celtic Connections in Glasgow as one of the “Bow Brothers” (Martin Hayes, Brian McNeill, John McCusker, Buddy MacMaster, Alasdair Fraser, and others), and is now putting the finishing touches on an exciting live CD from Mozaik, comprising himself, Andy Irvine, D