In Good Company

Kevin Crawford of Lunasa, playing with almost every living Irish fiddler out there. The tunes are played unison, “session style”, with a small amount of accompaniment (except for a couple of beautiful slow airs played with chamber orchestra). This CD may be of interest to fiddlers too, besides flute players.

The fiddlers featured are: Se

This album is a really nice one to have, loaded with good playing & good tunes. The backup on the slow airs is disgusting & the only flaw on the album.

Some great tunes and technically excellent playing, but this is a deadly dull album. It does not sound as if Kevin and each guest fiddler are playing together, but rather simultaneously. Fiddle tracks laid down afterwards? I hope not as that would be a terrible cheat. Only the track with Frankie Gavin comes close to waking up. There’s something wrong somewhere.

I agree that it is studioish -I think its lovely tho - maybe I’m talking as a fiddle player who has there choice of any number of great fiddlers on it. I also think the tunes are gorgeous - dont like the symphony stuff tho,and I would not say it was dull in the least and would love to hear you try and put out a trad cd that everyone likes!

I agree with longnote, it is pretty dull. It’s got good tunes but the playing seems to lack that spark. It’s still worlds better than I could do, but if I had heard it before I bought it - I wouldn’t have.

I still would have just to hear the fiddle players - there is no other album where you can here Tommy Peoples and Tony Linnane and all the rest - It does sound studioish like I said - but - it has some great tunes on it. It wouldnt be one of my favourites tho.

Different strokes for different folks, it’s got almost every great fiddler of our time on it, but I still think of it as a flute album.

Always willing to revise my opinion based on hard evidence or a good counter-argument, I had another good listen to Kevin and friends and find that I really can’t change my original impression al that much.Yes, I like it a little better, I greatly admire these musicians, but still only the Gavin and maybe the Peoples tracks make me listen more closely. Maybe, it will grow on me but I think it has been almost studioed to death, there’s more life on Mars. It makes a good argument for recording “live”. Anybody familiar with the Joe Cooley album where you can hear the clink of bottles, people coughing and shouts of encouragement to the players? Now that is living Irish traditional music! As Rev Gary Hastings unhygienically puts it, “you have to get close enough to smell the musicians.” Curiously, I don’t mind the bombastic string arrangements so much, though it does occasionally remind me of the soundtrack of a Douglas Sirk movie. I suppose, as usual, it was the deflation of high expectations. By the way bb, I do not think that not having a CD out of my own precludes my right to criticize those who have recorded. I am not a published author, but I know bad writing when I read it. Some of the most enthusiastic and knowledgeable trad music heads I have met couldn’t play a note and did not hesitate to criticize my own playing. It’s all part of the craic. For more exciting fiddle/ flute try PJ Crotty/ James Cullinane “Happy to Meet”, the Molloy/ Peoples classic or the recent Rev Hastings/ Rev Quinn’s “Slan le Loch Eirne”. As a parting shot, is it my old CD player or are the fiddle tracks sometimes mixed too low?

I posted this cd here, and i was very excited about it when i first got it. However, time has passed and all i can say is that i don’t play it very much anymore. It got bumped off by other more exciting recordings.

I’m not trying to hurt Kevin’s feelings, i think he’s a mighty player, but Kevin is someone i listen to and like, but i don’t feel the compulsion to “be like him” in my playing the way i feel when i listen to, say, Harry Bradley or Hammy Hamilton. Different blows for different flokes, i mean different blockes for different strokes, i mean, whatever.

I still like the “Bag of Spuds”, though.

g

In some ways this is a stellar album but it does have a lot of faults. All the fiddle tracks are mixed too low as if Kevin Crawford wanted himself heard foremost. Well, it is his album but, after all, if you advertise it as a duet recording - oh well, having done some recording myself I can say that the final product doesn’t always turn out exactly the way you wanted it to.

The slow airs, except for one, have dismal arrangements and sound like they belong on some other album. My main objection to the airs is the overuse of reverb on the flute.

That said the tunes are very enjoyable and well played for the most part. And the beauty of CDs is that it’s so easy to skip over tracks you don’t care for.

I wasn’t a big fan of the CD at first, but it has grown on me. Yeah, it isn’t one that blows you away because everything is basically laid back and in unison. However, it has been a wonderful source of tunes. I know this varies from session to session, but around here in Baltimore at the current time, a bunch of tunes get played from this CD. Probably because the CD has a bunch of good flute tunes that deserve to be played at sessions. Unfortunately, Kevin plays a bunch of them on an E flat flute, which makes them tough to learn at times. Overall, in my opinion, a nice little CD.

I love this album,except the airs.I really don’t care for the orchestration at all.
The rest of it is beautiful,I think.And I like that there’s a little less fiddle than flute.In a lot of other recordings,it seems like there isn’t enough of the flute,so this kind of makes up for it.
-Kelly

This recording isn’t bad. It seems to me that it just fails to meet the very high expectations of the listeners who saw the great lineup of guest musicians first.

As said, the sleeve notes of this recording are most informative. For more info on his Birmingham days, refer to the notes of “D Flute Album.”

The Link tho the “Bag of Spuds” -Reel on thesession is misleading to the G-major tune with the same name.
It should be this link:
https://thesession.org/tunes/579/details

The Bellharbour - Link also leads to a tune that has to my eyes nothing in common with the one on the recording.
As there are thousands of reels in Eminor/Edorian I have no idea where to find the right one…

Most of what I’ve heard from here was “Coilsfield House”. Not my first choice of accompaniment, but I like it, though I think it would be better with a few changes here and there.

The track list links to the wrong “Tommy Peoples’.” It should point to this one: https://thesession.org/tunes/1100

Track 11 links to the wrong “Rolling Wave(s)” jig.
It should be this one, aka. “The Humours of Trim”:
https://thesession.org/tunes/88
[better late than never!]

Track #1 on “Youtube” :
https://youtu.be/N4So5tQ4who

play video

PS - in view of the mixed reviews above, all of the tracks would appear to have been uploaded onto “Youtube”, so it might be interesting to have some new opinions if anyone wants to give the tracks a listen.