Wednesday, November 13, 2019

The Seamus McGarvey Band - Seamus O'Boogie

I’m sure lots of bands recording an album regard it as a labour of love, but Seamus O’Boogie is really in a different category.  Irish bassist Pat McGarvey had had a long-standing notion to record with his harmonica-playing brother John and their amateur musician dad Seamus.  But it was only with the passing of Seamus’s brother, sister and father-in-law that the idea crystallised, bringing this album into being.
Now in his seventies, Seamus McGarvey has been a lifelong music fan, collecting records 
Seamus sings the blues, in bars of twelve or less
and attending shows by many famous blues, rock’n’roll and country artists, as well as singing and playing guitar himself.  Seamus O’Boogie is a collection of cover versions that celebrate his enthusiasm and have personal meaning for the family, recorded in Edinburgh with the assistance of local guitarist Jed Potts and drummer Calum McIntyre.
McGarvey senior’s affinity for blues music is demonstrated by the feel of his vocal delivery on tracks like Robert Johnson’s ‘Rambling On My Mind’, and Sonny Boy Williamson II’s ‘Don’t Start Me Talkin’, on both of which John McGarvey’s harp and Jed Potts’ guitar combine very nicely, with Potts delivering a shivering and shaking solo on the latter.  The same is also true of songs like Lonnie Johnson’s ‘It’s Too Late To Cry’, an acid tale of a no good woman on which McGarvey captures the man’s breaking point with an emphatic “That did it!”, and Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee’s ‘Walk On’, which opens reflectively with sparse harp and guitar accompaniment.
More upbeat blues comes in the form of ‘I Ain’t Superstitious’, with its snapping, lurching arrangement and a brittle-toned solo from Potts, as well as the sturdy grind of Elmore James’ ‘Look On Yonder Wall’.
Meanwhile McGarvey’s penchant for country music is well represented by ‘Sea Of Hearbreak’ and ‘Deep River Blues’.  On the former it’s apparent that while his voice doesn’t have the basso profundo quality of Johnny Cash, it does have something of Cash's character, with restrained banjo and amusing “bom-bom-bom” backing vocals from Pat McGarvey
Seamus and his sidekicks
providing some variety.  The latter is a more laid back, country-ish take on a traditional blues, with McIntyre providing washboard percussion that even stretches to the use of a bicycle bell.
Crossover tunes like Brook Benton’s pop hit ‘Hotel Happiness’ and Carl Perkins’ country/rock’n’roll ‘Honey Don’t’ feel like throwaways by comparison, and I’ll never go a bundle on a crooning-style Elvis tune such ‘Don’t Leave Me Now’, nicely enough done though it may be.  But on Duke Ellington’s ‘Don’t Get Around Much Anymore’ the understated delivery and McGarvey’s liltingly romantic vocal are good enough to have me digging out a DVD of When Harry Met Sally, in which the tune gets the briefest of airings courtesy of Harry Connick Jr.  Such is the power of a classic song.
There’s some rock’n’roll too, in the form of ‘Roll Over Beethoven’ and Jerry Lee Lewis’s ‘Break Up’.  The band rock away satisfyingly enough on the former, with McIntyre’s drums becoming more urgent in support of the guitar and harp solos, but the latter rattles along more vibrantly, with whoops of enthusiasm from McGarvey, and a nifty solo from Potts.
There are some curiosities added to the album too, harvested from a family cassette tape dating back to 1983 - snippets of song introductions and conversation, and renditions of a few Irish tunes on which Seamus McGarvey’s late brother John can be heard singing, add to the personal touch.  And even if these songs don’t mean much to me (other than ‘Mush Mush Mush Tooral-i-Addy’, familiar from the movie The Quiet Man) they underline my original point:  Seamus O’Boogie is a labour of love.

Seamus O'Boogie is available now on Johnny Rock Records.

1 comment:

  1. Great. You sound as good as you did 25 years ago. Keep it up.

    ReplyDelete