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Sibling revelry

February 16, 2011

By Staff Reporter

“When you’re separated by 3,000 miles of water, it tends to get in the way,” 46-year-old Johnny Cunningham said from his home in New Bedford, Mass. Phil, two and a half years younger, still lives in Scotland. But on Tuesday, Oct. 14, at 7:30 and 9:30 p.m., the brothers who were the instrumental heart of acclaimed Scots traditional band Silly Wizard will be making their first concert appearance together in New York City since the late 1980s.
Last summer, they managed to get together for the Smithsonian Folklife Festival in Washington, D.C., and a festival in New Bedford. Those performances kindled the desire for the Manhattan one. “We’d actually forgotten how good it is to play together,” Johnny said.
Still, it took quick planning to schedule this New York City concert reunion. Before coming to Nashville to organize a Hogmanay (New Year’s Eve) show for BBC Scotland, Phil phoned his brother to suggest they do a concert in Manhattan, where he would be staying for a few days in October. Johnny called New York’s World Music Institute for venue recommendations, and WMI immediately responded with an offer to sponsor two shows at Leonard Nimoy Thalia, a theater named after the actor who played Spock in the “Star Trek” TV series and movies.
“Phil and I are hoping a lot of Trekkies show up,” Johnny said. “I’m going to be wearing my pointy ears. I have a pair that I wore for a concert in Tucson, but nobody noticed. When I took them off, I realized my own ears were similarly shaped.”
This irrepressible humor is an integral part of any stage performance by the Cunninghams. “Phil will be at one end, playing ‘Lady of Spain,’ and I’ll be at the other end, serving drinks,” Johnny said. “You have to realize that when you play traditional music, you have to have a backup, otherwise known as bartending or cab driving. Somebody once asked, ‘How do you make a million dollars in traditional music?’ The answer is: ‘Start with two million.’ “
Seldom taking themselves seriously, Johnny and Phil Cunningham do take their music seriously. In fact, they are two of the finest instrumentalists to emerge from the Scottish folk revival of the 1970s and ’80s, and are greatly admired by their musical counterparts in Ireland and Irish America.
Dolores Keane, for example, had Phil produce her self-titled CD in 1988, and Altan brought Phil in to produce their “Horse With a Heart” album in 1989. Cherish the Ladies invited Johnny to produce their “Out and About” CD in 1993, and Solas got Johnny to produce their self-titled debut in 1996 and “Sunny Spells and Scattered Showers” in 1997, each of which won an Association for Independent Music award as best Celtic recording of the year.
Besides their long, stellar career with Silly Wizard, the Cunningham brothers have recorded and toured together with Relativity (a quartet including ex-Bothy Band members Tr

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