May Morning Dew

I heard Mikie Smyth speak so much about this album during the German Easter Tionol 2005 that I bough it immediately afterwards.
A very good decision and defintely an album to be recommended NOT ONLY FOR PIPERS.

For me it is one of the best pipes-albums I have ever heard, full of lovely tunes (many of them new to me), nicely played and arranged.
😉

Besides the Uilleann Pipes Mick also plays the whistle on some of the tracks.

https://thesession.org/recordings/631

It looks like the link for this tune goes to the wrong place (a Polka). Here’s the link to the Planxty version, which is fairly close to Mick’s.

https://thesession.org/tunes/4953/

This is a lovely album, if you ignore the fact he hasn’t a clue about ‘flings’, tracks 3 &13, but if you think of them as relaxed reels, they ain’t half bad… The piping and whistle playing is geat, and I don’t hesitated to recommend this to others, including here. As far as being clueless about flings, he isn’t alone. As flings became separated from the dance the ones that survived tended to do new duty as single reels, sometimes as double reels… Here they have that feel, missing the swing and lift that drives them as dance music for the dances they used to be used for… Despite that small proviso, there’s no doubting the talent here, and ignoring the issue of flings, it brings joy and a smile to me to listen to this… Maybe someone will teach him to dance and play a fling in the future? 😉

Thanks for the pleasures Mick…

Tracks 3, 7 & 13 ~ slipped and missed the middle set. There are three tracks of ‘so-caalled’ flings on this CD… I’m enjoying listening to track 7 now, as ‘reels’… As far as ‘Moneymusk’, even your average English musician does a better job of it as a ‘fling’… 😀 ~ But Mick’s playing is sweet, no doubting that…

& not forgetting the flat hornpipes, however sweet the playing might be, that form, and especially melodies like “The Cuckoo’s Nest” and “Johnny Cope” take flight with the kiss and nudge of swing added ~ rather than as one finds so often across the Atlantic Bog where the North Americans take all such things under that heading, ‘hornpipe’ and its relatives, as just another reel…

Yes, they can still be fun that way, and there’s not a wink of question regarding the talent here ~ but why must all things be played fast and flat. If God didn’t want us to swing she’d have never allowed us the occassional whack against the shin or stone bruise to the heel and the following limp… If it’s possible in rhythm and adds interest, and has the lilt of dance to it ~ 😎

This album has got to be amongst my most favourite. It gets played over & over again in my car at the moment. I’m not a piper but it’s possibly the best piping I have heard.