The Bothy Band: Traditional music’s most influential group blaze back after four decades

Word of the reunion of The Bothy Band spread like wildfire at the end of last year, after the group played together again almost a half-century after they blazed into traditional music and nearly 45 long years since their last live performance, in 1979.

Their fiery reunion, which was filmed by the makers of a new documentary about the band for TG4, took place at the Complex, an unassuming arts centre near Capel Street in Dublin. You could hear a pin drop as anticipation mounted before the show. Then they appeared out of the shadows and were off at a gallop, once more playing the glorious conglomeration of tunes and songs they’d made their own from their self-titled first album, from 1975. For the audience it felt like a comet re-entering the atmosphere – except this celestial body was bringing us all on its lightning-speed odyssey.

Kevin Burke played fiddle with The Bothy Band after the departures of Tommy Peoples and Paddy Glackin. For this reunion, which is to continue with performances at the Waterfront Hall in Belfast and the National Concert Hall in Dublin, Glackin and Burke have both returned.

“One of the reasons I enjoyed The Bothy Band so much when I heard them first was that it was kind of confirming my suspicions about traditional music,” Burke says. “I always thought that traditional music has an awful lot of underlying power in it – as much as any other music – but we didn’t hear it until The Bothy Band. You had to imagine it, or it was something that was hinted at rather than stated, but when The Bothy Band got together, the strength of the rhythms was really heightened.”

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The driving power of Dónal Lunny’s bouzouki and Tríona Ní Dhomhnaill’s Clavinet, along with Paddy Keenan’s surgical precision on the pipes and Micheál Ó Domhnaill’s intricate guitar, propelled this music, rooted in solo playing, to another plane. The band’s sophisticated arrangements, along with their driving rhythms and spine-tingling tune sets, were revolutionary, weren’t they?

“It was,” Burke says. “I don’t think people caught up with it until we finished. We had really dedicated fans, you know, but I think a lot of people were a little bit unsure of it and thought it might be just a bit of a flash in the pan.” But, he adds, with “most of the groups that have come since and have done well, it’s fairly plain that they were heavily influenced by The Bothy Band, and I think many of them try to emulate the kind of set-up that we had.”

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Burke’s own background, growing up in London with two parents from Sligo who devoured traditional music, was less textbook than it might have appeared. In fact, as well as having classical violin lessons from the age of seven, he was listening to the Rolling Stones, The Beatles and Jimi Hendrix with his friends. He wasn’t averse to hanging out with bluegrass or jazz musicians, either. Boxes weren’t part of Burke’s musical landscape.

“Yeah, but I’m not a fan of every kind of music,” he says. “Sure, I’m quite happy to listen to lots of different music, but what I look for in music is excellence and emotional content, and if I can get that out of something I don’t care whether it’s a popular country singer or an unknown bluegrass player, or a flute player in the west of Ireland.”

Tríona Ní Dhomhnaill is the only woman in The Bothy Band. At the group’s Dublin reunion gig, she launched headlong into the performance on her Clavinet – also a trademark instrument of Stevie Wonder, who played it on Superstition, among other tracks – anchoring this remarkable seven-piece group with Lunny. When her brother Mícheál, the singer, guitarist, composer and producer, was alive, the pair’s sibling harmonies introduced a whole new audience to a raft of Donegal and Scottish songs that were a legacy of their Aunt Neilí. (On this reunion the band have been joined by the guitarist Seán Óg Graham.)

For Ní Dhomhnaill, the gods conspired to bring the band back together at this particular moment. Hearing the cheers when they walked on stage and played their opening chords, she says, “I just thought to myself that the time is right for this, because the magic is still there. They’re all still my heroes.”

Paddy Keenan, the piper and low whistle player, cuts a particularly striking figure at the centre of The Bothy Band. As Matt Molloy’s flute weaves its way around his sinuous piping notes, the pair delight in the counterpoint, in the shadowy harmonies that bring the listener to the heart of the tunes. Keenan can’t hide his surprise at the group’s unlikely reunion. “We went down amazingly well,” he says about their performance a couple of weeks ago at the Celtic Connections festival in Glasgow, which was billed as The Bothy Band’s official comeback gig. “It was a bit overwhelming, to be honest, but amazing too.”

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Keenan has had a long career since the group’s 1979 disbandment, both solo and playing with others. “I never knew how influential we were until I started travelling around different countries,” he says. “I’ve played on all seven continents, and everywhere I went, what I was hearing back was that The Bothy Band was just huge. So now what I’m seeing is that my generation is coming back to see the band, and they have their children and grandchildren coming to the gigs too, which is amazing. It’s crazy. They want to hear what their parents were talking about.”

And there’s an unexpected delight in revisiting the tunes, Keenan says. “I haven’t played some of them in fortysomething years, so it’s really refreshing to play them again. And to be reminded of them again.”

Tríona Ní Dhomhnaill on her lifetime achievement RTÉ Radio 1 folk award

As well as the unexpected and high-octane reunion of The Bothy Band, Tríona Ní Dhomhnaill is being honoured this month by the RTÉ Radio 1 Folk Awards for her lifetime achievement. It is a welcome acknowledgment of Ní Dhomhnaill’s impact as someone who introduced the little-known Clavinet to trad, as well as reviving a wealth of songs indigenous to Donegal and to the highlands of Scotland.

“Neilí had such a store of songs, you know,” she says of the aunt whose collection Ní Dhomhnaill and her late brother, Mícheál Ó Domhnaill, showcased. “She just loved songs. That was her life.”

Ní Dhomhnaill’s award seems fitting and timely for the month when Ireland celebrates St Brigid and the power of the feminine. Never one to seek out a spotlight, she lets her music do the talking. “I thought things couldn’t get much better than just playing with the lads again,” she says, “and it is nice to be acknowledged, but I’m nearly embarrassed. I’ll play until the cows come home, but don’t be putting me on radio and TV!”

She adds, “When I’m in the company of younger musicians who might never have seen us live, there’s an excitement about the fact that The Bothy Band are able to give it another go-round. Thinking back to the time in the 1970s, there weren’t too many women who were playing or touring, bar Dolores [Keane], but so many young women have come out of the shadows, and they’ve learned maybe in part by our mistakes. To think that there’s a working life that can be had through traditional Irish music all over the world – now that’s something to sing about. To see and to hear the beauty that is in our music. For me, you know, I would stand in the snow to listen to all the richness of our tradition.”

The Bothy Band play sold-out concerts at the Waterfront Hall, as part of Belfast TradFest’s Winter Weekend, on Sunday, February 25th; and at the National Concert Hall, in Dublin, on Tuesday, April 9th, and Wednesday, April 10th. They also play the NCH on Wednesday, August 21st, and Thursday, August 22nd. The RTÉ Radio 1 Folk Awards are at Vicar Street, in Dublin, on Tuesday, February 27th; they will be broadcast live on RTÉ Radio 1, with television highlights on RTÉ One on Saturday, March 2nd; the Bothy Band documentary, made by Big Mountain Productions, is on TG4 on Sunday, March 31st, at 9.30pm