THE CELTIC CONNECTION • OCTOBER 1993
Page 11
TIP Splinter: Enjoying Wave of Popularity
By BRENDAN LANDERS
TORONTO — TIP Splinter's music defies definition. Critics fill wastepaper baskets with their failed efforts to define the band's unique blend of Irish and Canadian musical traditions.
No weepy troubadours are these, content to do the rounds of the Irish bars crooning knackered renditions of Kathleen Mavour-neen and crying into their beer. Nope. TIP Splinter looks back at the past with the future firmly in hand. Ireland is in their bones, but so is Canada.
"We've been described as an Irish-Canadian Celtic band and I honestly feel that's the best description of us. Sixty percent of our stuff is our own material and even though four of us come directly from Ireland, we've been strongly influenced by the music of the Maritimes and Cape Breton in particular," says Henry Gerag-hty, TIP Splinter vocalist and bodhran and bones player.
Geraghty says the Maritime influence is largely due to fiddler Jamie Snider, who joined the band in 1990. Snider is a seasoned veteran of the Canadian folk circuit who cut his musical teeth in Newfoundland.
He was a member of The Wonderful Grand Band who had their
own television show in the early eighties and scored a big hit with the song Sonny's Dream.
After The Wonderful Grand Band broke up, Snider came to Toronto and hitched his star to TIP Splinter. He's the only member of the band who works full time in the music business.
Another source of TIP Splinter's inspiration is the musical tradition of Ireland's County Sligo, where Brian Taheny and Loretto Reid grew up and learned their craft.
"Sligo is definitely in our music," says Geraghty, "especially in the dance tunes, the jigs and reels. I'd say that when you hear TIP Splinter playing jigs and reels, the reels in particular, if they're not from Newfoundland, they're from Sligo."
The one remaining member of the original band which was founded in 1978 is Jonathan Lynn. Orginally from Kilkenny, he began his musical career in Newfoundland as a member of the Sons of Erin.
Geraghty attributes their current success to the recent release of A Living Tradition, a retrospective CD of the band's tunes from 1986 to 1992 which they produced and distribute themselves. "It's a good CD. It's getting a lot of
A Startling Discovery Invokes Old Memories
By MAURA McCAY Many moons ago, my family ran a pub in Ottawa called Molly McGuire's. At the time, my mother was an entertainment agent and so a number of musicians from across the country passed through Molly's. One of the visitors of that time was Jamie Snider, now with the Toronto-based group, TIP Splinter.
Often, our guests would travel up the Gatineau Valley for a rest and to enjoy the spectacular scenery. My grandparents still lived on the farm and we were related to half the countryside through my mother's family who settled in the valley after the Famine.
Jamie met my grandfather during that period and the two began sharing fiddle tunes. Grandpa would play some of the old ones for Jamie and they would talk for hours, while Grandpa reminisced about the past. One of the songs my grandfather used to play was Paddy When You Die, Will You Leave Me Your Fiddle.
On TIP Splinter's new album, A Living Tradition, there is a song about a young man meeting an old man, and they played their fiddles together while everyone danced in the kitchen. The old man sang "Paddy, when you die, will you leave me your fiddle." The young man went to visit for a day and stayed for a week, working in the fields by day and playing music every night.
He then went on a long journey and travelled the world-over. When he returned, he went looking for the old man but everyone said he was gone.
So, he went for a walk through the fields they had worked to-
HENRY GERAGHTY, LORETTO REID, JAMIE SNIDER, JANATHAN LYNN AND BRIAN TAHENY
airplay on the radio. People are playing it who never played our stuff before," he says.
Any chances of them going professional? "The answer to that is, I think the band would like to, but will it? Right now, I think I would have to say no, the chances are slim." he says. The chances
may be slim for now, but if the upsurge in the band's popularity continues, TIP Splinter fans may yet give the lie to Geraghty's prognosis.
An exciting bit of news which might influence the band's future is that out of 215 North American bands whose material
was auditioned to showcase for the Sixth Annual Folk Alliance conference to be held in Boston in February 1984, TIP Splinter are one of only five Canadian artists selected.
This article is reproduced from Ireland's Eye, a Toronto-based quarterly magazine.
gether and he hummed, "Paddy, when you die, will you leave me your fiddle," and in the distance, he thought he heard the echo of a fiddle.
I suppose the songwriter could never could have imagined that a newspaper in British Columbia would be reviewing A Living Tradition, only for the publisher to discover, to her astonishment, that a song on the album was about her own grandfather.
When I called Henry Geraghty, leader of TIP Splinter to verify photo captions for our review, we chatted a bit and I asked Henry if Jamie might be the same musician who played at our pub so long ago.
Henry said yes, Jamie knew my family well, and in fact was doing well with his song Paddy When You Die.
I enquired what the song was about and he told me the story about Jamie playing the fiddle with an old man. I said, "that's funny, Jamie played the fiddle with my grandfather too."
When Henry suggested that maybe the song was about my grandfather, I couldn't believe it. I hadn't heard the song yet, so it was hard to judge but when I finally heard the CD, I could have no doubt.
TIP Splinter: A Living Tradition, is a joy to listen to. It brings alive the musical roots imbedded in all of us. Much of the work combines the energy of youth with the old traditions.
The title is very apt, we are the living legacy of our traditions and TIP Splinter are carrying that life forward in their music.
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