music
There is an old Irish legend about the giant, Finn McCool, and some of his buddies sitting around discussing what makes the most beautiful music. One said it was the sound of waves on the rocks of a beach. Another said it was the sound of a maiden laughing who had just been kissed. Another said it was the sound of a horse in the early morning fog.
Finally, Finn spoke up and said, "The most beautiful music is the story of what has happened".
The story of what has happened is really the theme for most of the songs played by Celtic Creek. We search old albums, the Internet, and the memories of old Irish players for the best story songs we can find.
We have new and professional equipment and a repretoire of about 100 songs.
We've been to Ireland and Scotland on the hunt for traditional music and playing styles. In Northern Ireland we visited Belfast and Derry as well as many smaller towns looking for the best Irish music we could find. We played traditional music with some of Ireland's best at Murphy's Pub, in Dungiven, home of the McQuiston family. In Scotland we visited nearly the entire country, from remote villages to Edinburgh and Glasgow.
Here is a quick description of the type of music we play.
Jim plays mostly guitar. He is learning the mando and fiddle. Beth plays flute and is the main soloist in the band. We work out unique solos for as many songs as we can, solos which stray from the melody to add interest to the song. A few songs seem to call for a harmonica and so Beth adds a haunting background with that instrument. Our typical song features the guitar and flute, with Jim singing. Beth adds harmonies occasionally.
Our songs are mostly stories set to music. They cover themes like love and war, sailing, outlaws, and drinking (obligatory - since we're an Irish band. LOL). We perform the standards like Danny Boy and Irish Eyes, Loch Lomond and Scotland the Brave. But we also dig deep for unique and ancient songs that sing of the edge of life - on a whaling boat, in a prison, out on the moors, wherever the old Scots and Irishmen were likely to be found.
Due to requests, we added both Great Lakes tunes and Civil War tunes to our repetoire. We have found these songs to be similar in nature to Celtic music as many Scots and Irishmen were brought to the Great Lakes specifically because the weather on the lakes was similar to that of the North Sea and Irish sea. Also, many Irish fought on both sides in the Civil War. So we found a common bond in all this music. Recently we've added a few regional mountain and river songs, like "Across the Blue Mountains to the Allegheny", as an example.
We play a wide variety of specialty music with the emphasis on the Celtic sound, and on authenticity.