Irish stew

Black 47's recipe for redemption

by Sam Smith

Black 47 play Brian Boru September 10 at 1 p.m. The tickets are $13.75 and include one Guinness.

BLACK 47 : (left to right) Thomas Hamlin, Geoffrey Blythe, Andrew Goodsight, Larry Kirwan, Fred Parcells, Chris Byrne.

In 1991, the band Black 47 were playing a regular Saturday gig at a bar called Paddy Riley's on Manhattan's eastside. The band was about a year away from releasing its first album, but the word of mouth around New York about the shows at this amazingly small bar had already generated a loyal following. The word I got at the time was that these guys were picking up the torch handed down from the Clash, with their politically conscious rock, to the Pogues, who added their own Irish inflection. I joined the crowd one weekend, packing into Paddy Riley's like sweaty, drunken sardines.

Now, while the biggest music news of the early '90s was the Seattle sound, 1991 was a watershed year for certain other music fans. This was the year the Pogues, a week before playing a handful of shows around the United States, notified ticket holders that Shane MacGowen, the band's lead singer, wouldn't be joining them. He was in detox, and as it turned out he wouldn't be joining the band again, despite the fact they would go on to record two more albums. This was also the year the Clash, those guardians of rock and roll's proletarian spirit, sold their souls to Levi's, letting the jeans giant use one of their song for use in TV ads.

So around the streets of New York that year, there were certain music fans looking to fill a void, and many put their hopes in Black 47. As these things usually go, the hype was a mixed blessing. Yes, there is some Clash and there is some Pogues in the band's mix, but to be introduced to Black 47 with expectations of what a politically aware Irish band is supposed to sound like, you're bound to be thrown off. In an oft-quoted early exchange between Black 47's lead singer Larry Kirwan and a disappointed concert-goer who demanded, "For Christ's sake, play an Irish song!" the singer replied, "I'm from Ireland. I wrote the song, that makes it Irish. So shut the fuck up!"

In an interview with Kirwan last week, the lead singer picked up from there: "Our sound was not greeted well at first. But we started playing in Irish bars because I wanted to see what it would be like to take original songs into venues that weren't used to original music. The songs would have to be great or really sturdy for the beating they were going to get."

When Kirwan says they were bringing original songs into the bars, he doesn't just mean the band wrote their own music; the band's sound is original, mixing, at any given time, rap, ska, traditional Irish, rock, or whatever else they might want to throw in the pot. Take their new album, Trouble in the Land (Shanachie, 2000), and it's song "Those Saints," a string of vignettes about friends who've passed away (reminiscent of Jim Carroll's "People Who Died"), laid over a hip-hop beat, an Irish reel, and a reworking of the standard "When the Saints Go Marching In." The band's ability to make all those sounds work together is what makes them exciting -- and much different than the Clash and the Pogues -- and it's why Kirwan says matter-of-factly, "Black 47 is not everyone's cup of tea. If you're a purist, say, or weren't musically adventurous, you wouldn't like the idea."

Kirwan says the band's mix of various styles comes from the six member's backgrounds -- the lead singer is the only Irish-born member; they all met in New York -- but in explaining the genesis of "Those Saints," he says their own expectations are often thrown out the window to give a song an unexpected tone.

"Rather than write a dirge," he says, "which is what you'd naturally want to do when talking about friends who've passed away, I decided to do the New Orleans funeral march music. I've been around New Orleans and those funeral marches, and, I don't know, it's just something great that people can get rid of their sorrow through the music. And that's what Black 47 is about, this celebration and sense of redemption. Celebration in the face of adversity, in the face of calamity."

A beat was picked out for the song first (this is usually where a song begins for the band). Chris Byrne, the band's tin whistle player, came up with the reel. And Geoffrey Blythe and Fred Parcells, the horn section, threw in the Dixieland. "And Bob's your uncle, there it was," says Kirwan.

The group turns 11 next month, and they've spread out from Paddy Riley's, playing 49 weeks out of the year around the country. And after their gig at Brian Boru on September 10, they will have introduced their music to all 50 states, finally making their Maine debut after a number of attempts. And with the plan to set up the band on Boru's back deck, they won't have to relive the cramped early days at Paddy Riley's. There are some remnants of the early years, though, the band can't seem to shake.

"The other night we were playing Indianapolis," Kirwan says, "and there were these two Irish dotcom guys over doing software business. One of the guys came up afterwards and said, `You know, I love the music, but I have one complaint.' And I said, `Oh. Alright, what is it?' He said, `The trombone has no part in Irish music.' And I said, `Oh, you've got to be fuckin' kidding me. Why not?' And he said, `Well, because I've never heard it before.' And I said, `Well, now you have heard it.' "

Sam Smith can be reached at ssmith@phx.com..