Lough Key slip jig

Transcribed off Music at the House, Brendan Bulger, Marty Fahey, and Kathleen Gavin — it’s a lovely thing, extremely well wrought, and I might never have noticed it if not for Jeff Lindblade getting all fascinated with it while I visited Chicago early this week. Thanks, Jeff, I love it. Especially the way the B elides into a certain mood and back out again.

From the notes: Lough Key is a Larry Redican composition. Larry Redican (1908-1975), a great composer and fiddler - and uncle of Nancy Harling’s - was born and raised in Dublin and emigrated to New York. He was a member of the famed New York Ceili Band of the early 1960’s and a member of an All -Ireland Senior Championship Trio with Galway native, Jack Coen (flute) and the late Paddy O’Brien (box). this tune was published (Treoir, 1970) along with the description that it was amongst a group of tunes presented to Paddy O’Brien during his return visit to New York at that time.

BTW, if you like great liner notes, take a gander at the notes for Music at the House. Great stuff.

Nice tune. Can you tell me if this one is on the CD too? https://thesession.org/tunes/2714

On a quick peruse, I don’t think it is, Mark. But I’ve written Brendan to ask him if he has info on it.

Read 08:46 AET ta Zeens…

Well, go look at the other tune, silly. 🙂

Argh, so near and yet so far! Well, it’s a start.

Blimey that was a quick reply from Brendan wasn’t it?

Almost right after I wrote him. Just good timing, I’d guess, especially since he said that he was about to embark on an especially busy weekend in one hour. 🙂

The album isn’t being made anymore, and a google search doesn’t even bring up a track listing. I haven’t got the album but every site I look at says it’s influential. Maybe it’s worth posting a discussion later if no-one sheds light.

Yeah, I couldn’t find anything either. Worth trying to find someone with a copy, maybe on the discussions board?

Yes, I’m quite interested in finding out more about it.

This tune is also in Bill Black’s book where it’s in G. He calls it Larry Redican’s and gives Jimmy Keane of Chicago as the source.

It’s interesting that I’ve also seen the Redican reel Culfadda in both G and F.

Well, that makes sense given that Marty and Brendan live in Chicago, edl.

A gorgeous version of this on the album "The Big Squeeze: Masters Of The Celtic Accordion"

TheSession.org mistakenly links to a ‘Larry Redican’s hornpipe’. Check it out on youtube under ‘larry redican’s

Also can be found as "Lough Key" in track 6 on the "Forgotten Gems" CD released in 2013 by Peter Carberry and Pádraig McGovern.

As a point of interest the 1911 Irish census has only one Redican family living in Dublin in 1911, so I assume this must be Larry Redican’s family. There is a Lawrence Redican recorded in this family who was 2 years old at the time, born in Dublin, with a father from Roscommon (Thomas Redican), so I am fairly certain this is him. No Redican of the right age was living in Roscommon during this census, and only three Redican’s whose name started with the ‘L’ were recorded in the whole of Ireland, the other two being from Roscommon but 25 and 59 years old respectively. Assuming the census is complete it would seem Tansey’s information is not correct.

As played at sessions here in Austin. Learned it off Clav Levit, who got it from Liz Carroll, who apparently called it Paddy O’Snap.

An audio recording of Larry Redican himself playing the tune, from The Seamus Connolly Collection of Irish Music at Boston College:

https://connollymusiccollection.bc.edu/document/504

Enjoy!

I learned this tune when I was living in Ireland, that is quite long time ago. I learned it from a cd. I’m afraid I don’t remember the name of the cd, the only thing I can remember is that it was a band that consisted of lots of children, playing all kind of instruments and all of them from the same town in Ireland.

I loved this tune straight away and I quickly included it in my repertoire. The reason being that it is a slip jig that goes really low, still the only one a I know of this kind so far. I never heard this tune in a session, I suppose this is one of those tunes that you keep to yourself and enjoy playing on your own at home. One of those that you will never forget and will always be with you.

I tried to find the tune many times, I wanted to know the name. I never heard it again anywhere and I couldn’t find it making searches in Tunepal (playing part of the tune, I usually find everything there in this way).

And one day I found the tune by pure chance. In a Youtube video. The tune is a Larry Redican composition. In the video is the composer himself who plays the tune. I can see that the tune is a bit different from the one I played for so many years and on top of it, the parts are the other way around.

But I decided I was not going to change my setting, and here you are the music score. Regarding the modes, I am not completely sure of the mode of the second part, I think it is in E Dorian, but there are no C# or F#, that means that the key signature of E Minor could be used as well.

This is the video of Larry Redican, the tune is the first one in the set:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_Vb5tChMVM

play video

Nice tune, Mick Moloney has recorded too, it appears to be here under a different title, https://thesession.org/tunes/3201