Beoga's Musical 'Mischief'
 
Singer Niamh Dunne Extends Band's Appeal
 
CEOL
 
By Earle Hitchner
 
[Published on June 20, 2007, in the IRISH ECHO newspaper, New York City. Copyright (c) Earle Hitchner. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission of author.]
 

The spirit of Limerick-born Mick Moloney's "McNally's Row of Flats" album last year may have seeped into the singing of another Limerick native, Niamh Dunne, in her rendition of "Please Don't Talk About Me When I'm Gone" on the new CD "Mischief" by Beoga.
     

Although the track description places the song in the 1920s and credits its composition to Sidney Clare and Sam H. Stept, it was actually composed in 1930 by Clare, Stept, and Bee Palmer. Dubbed the Shimmy Queen for the risque way she moved on stage, former Ziegfeld Girl Beatrice "Bee" Palmer was the first to perform the song. Steeped in vaudeville, late flapper fun, and the "red hot jazz" of the time, the song has since been covered by Gene Austin, Ethel Waters, Eubie Blake, Louis Armstrong, Cab Calloway, Billie Holiday, Kate Smith, Johnnie Ray, Sammy Davis Jr., and Willie Nelson, among others.
     

Backed with speakeasy charm by her four Beoga bandmates, along with clarinet and muted trumpet from guests David Howell and Linley Hamilton, Dunne brings a saucy, soubrette style to such lines as "Please don't talk about me when I'm gone / Though our friendship ceases from now on / And if you can't say anything that's nice / It's better not to talk at all is my advice." The track is an absolute hoot.
     

The boldness of Beoga's repertoire and approach on "Mischief" can be gauged from its rendition of that 1930 song and its rendition of a song written and recorded 42 years later, "Dirty Work," by Walter Becker and Donald Fagen, founders of Steely Dan, a band known for its appealing confection of pop and jazz overlayed by wry, sly lyrics.
     

An Irish traditional group tackling an American pop song harks back to the days of De Dannan's relatively successful covers of the Beatles' "Hey Jude" and "Let It Be." But De Dannan itself faltered embarrassingly with its 2000 album, "Welcome to the Hotel Connemara," consisting mainly of dimwitted renditions of such pop-rock songs as Procol Harum's "A Whiter Shade of Pale" and Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody." Even I preferred the silly sing-along version of the latter in the 1992 film "Wayne's World" to De Dannan's insipid treatment.
     

This points up an ongoing challenge and often treacherous undertaking for Irish traditional musicians: how to deliver a freshly styled, coherent, compelling interpretation of modern pop or rock music in a different genre without distorting or fracturing it. Failure is all too common. Beoga, however, succeeds largely because of Dunne's unforced, modulated lead vocal, Liam Bradley's tasty Hammond organ and Mudd Wallace's electric guitar playing, and Lisa Murray's touches on whistle. To the implied question "Why?" Beoga emphatically answers "Why not?" Most importantly, it works.
     

The difference between Beoga's "Mischief" and "A Lovely Madness," the band's intrepid debut album in 2004, is greater seasoning and control of its more ambitious flights of fancy, as well as the addition of singer, fiddler, and composer Niamh Dunne in 2005.
     

From a distinguished musical family in Limerick, with her father Mickey a master uilleann piper and her sister Brid an excellent fiddler, Niamh Dunne previously showed her skill at interpreting more modern material by covering Sandy Denny's "Listen, Listen" on the Dunne Family's splendid "Legacy" CD in 2004. On that same album Dunne sang Tommy Sands's "County Down," learned from the singing of Muireann Nic Amhlaoibh, Danu's lead vocalist, who covered it and another Sandy Denny-sung ballad, "Farewell, Farewell," on Danu's "The Road Less Traveled" album in 2003. Like Muireann Nic Amhlaoibh for Danu and Nicola Joyce for Grada, Niamh Dunne is a real find for Beoga. These gifted young Irish women are part of an open-window trend in trad-based vocals, letting in a breeze of new ideas, far-reaching repertoire, and interpretive pluck.
     

Not the same-titled song recorded by the Bothy Band on its "Out of the Wind Into the Sun" album in 1977, "Factory Girl" was learned by Dunne from the singing of Kerry's Eilis Kennedy, but a more memorable rendition was cut by Dublin native Rita Connolly with the Voice Squad on her solo debut in 1992. Dunne and her Beoga colleagues provide an almost insouciant beat to this ballad that literally describes "dirty work" in a factory. Again, the interpretation works, if counterintuitively.
     

Of the album's three songs, only "A Delicate Thing," composed by Johnny Duhan, is instantly forgettable. Any lyric with "Milky Way" as a recurrent image needs rethinking, and the rest of this love song rarely rises above the cliched sentiments choking it.
     

My lone other reservation about the CD is a smattering of a Sharon Shannon-like arrangement in some of the medleys, especially "Eppleborn Dance-off/Mischief," written by one of the band's two button accordionists, Dunloy's Damian McKee. But the intentionally unsmooth bridge in "Jazzy Wilbur/The Narrowback" reveals a group not dependent on the past, whether its own or anyone else's, as a crutch. A mix of trad and jazz-dipped swing percolates inventively in that pairing of tunes.
     

The interlocked button accordion playing of McKee and Portglenone's Sean Og Graham, nimble keyboard playing of Tobermore's Liam Bradley, imaginative percussion of Randalstown's Eamon Murray, and Dunne's adept fiddling represent a powerful instrumental engine for Beoga. Add all that to guest contributions from the Prague Philharmonic Orchestra on four tracks, banjoist Brona Graham on two tracks, harper Claire Creelman on two tracks, and bassist Odhran Devlin on one track, and you get a heady, virtually head-spinning sonic blend stamping Beoga as perhaps the most audacious Irish band rooted in trad today.
     

At the same time, the five members of Beoga understand and respect Irish traditional music and play it very well. It's evident in Dunne's hard-core fiddling of "Mickey the Pipes," a tune she wrote for her father, and in the box-led, out-of-the-box jigs "Ryan's Air/Beoga on Ice," penned by Sean Og Graham.
     

Purists may cry foul at Beoga's seemingly blithe integration of diverse outside influences into an Irish trad band sound. But the quintet avoids the usual pitfalls of polymorphic music through well-thought-out, well-executed performances with a little, well, "mischief" tossed in for good measure. Beoga is what Reeltime and Kila wanted to be but never were: edgy without novelty.
     

For finesse, fire, and flirtatious fun, this album is an overflowing treat, and among Irish bands launched in this new millennium, Beoga joins Grada as two of the most promising to watch.
     

Beoga's "Mischief" (cat. no. 4457) is available from Compass Records, 916 19th Ave. South, Nashville, TN 37212, 615-320-7672, www.compassrecords.com. Also visit the band's website at www.beogamusic.com.