CHAPTER ONE:
In 1985, Tom Lenahan was in England to attend the sixth annual reunion concert of his favorite Celtic band, Fairport Convention.
While staying in London, he attended a concert by a new band, not yet known in the US- The Pogues.
“I’d always wanted to play in a band like Fairport, but no one in the States could play like that, and the people who could, they hated rock music, so it seemed hopeless. Then, when I saw the Pogues, I said to myself, ‘Hey, if THESE guys can pull it off, maybe I’ve got a shot after all!’
“To be clear, I wasn’t going for a Pogues-type thing, but I realized that maybe I didn’t have to have Dave Swarbrick and Richard Thompson in the band either and people might still like it.”
While staying in London, he attended a concert by a new band, not yet known in the US- The Pogues.
“I’d always wanted to play in a band like Fairport, but no one in the States could play like that, and the people who could, they hated rock music, so it seemed hopeless. Then, when I saw the Pogues, I said to myself, ‘Hey, if THESE guys can pull it off, maybe I’ve got a shot after all!’
“To be clear, I wasn’t going for a Pogues-type thing, but I realized that maybe I didn’t have to have Dave Swarbrick and Richard Thompson in the band either and people might still like it.”
He returned to New York, where he'd been living since 1982, and put an ad in the Village Voice.
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Among the people who responded were singer/guitarist Martin Daley, from Cork City, and flute and whistle player Tom Scanlon, from Sligo. Along with local keyboardist Susan Murphy and a bass player (“We went through nearly twenty bass players in the first five or six years”, says Lenahan, “so I’m a bit vague on that”) they settled in a studio in Manhattan’s notorious Music Building on Eighth Avenue to start rehearsals.
“There was a fella there named Steve Missal who ran a studio on the tenth floor. He had been Billy Idol’s drummer, played on the first album (White Wedding). I’d been playing in his band, a sort of Rock’n’Roll Big Band with three drummers called the Rhythm Team. Steve thought the Irish stuff was all kind of weird but later he started playing with some of the Irish bands that were springing up around town, like the Kips Bay Ceili Band with John Whelan and Pat Kilbride". |
The Clan played their first gig on July 4th, 1986, on the Hudson riverfront in Hoboken NJ, as part of the Liberty Weekend festivities celebrating the 100th anniversary of the Statue of Liberty. “We ran into the Mayor, Tom Vizzetti, in a pizza place on Washington Street (Hoboken) and asked him if we could play at the Festival and he said ‘Sure, why not?’ He was a bit of a character.”
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“We went through three or four singers at first. I didn’t want to be the singer because I thought we had to have someone with an actual accent. Later I realized that it didn't really matter- I mean, nobody seemed to care that every English band had been singing with a fake American accent since forever.
“I also didn’t want to be the singer because I felt that having the drummer as the singer just wasn’t very good showbiz- not interesting to look at, you know? It's fine if you're singing backups............but after having to replace three or four guys I said, the hell with this- I’m the singer now. People think of the singer as the leader of the band anyway, so this cleared all that up as well.”
After going through their early personnel shakedowns, The Clan settled into a more or less steady lineup that included some future musical big shots!
“I also didn’t want to be the singer because I felt that having the drummer as the singer just wasn’t very good showbiz- not interesting to look at, you know? It's fine if you're singing backups............but after having to replace three or four guys I said, the hell with this- I’m the singer now. People think of the singer as the leader of the band anyway, so this cleared all that up as well.”
After going through their early personnel shakedowns, The Clan settled into a more or less steady lineup that included some future musical big shots!
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LISA GUTKIN is a world-renowned violinist who performs with the Grammy-winning Klezmatics. She played in Sting's Broadway show The Last Ship, and has performed with such artists as Steeleye Span, Arlo Guthrie, John Cale, Jane Siberry and Tommy Sands. Even more impressively, she played the fiddle on the first Clan album, Beginning of the World!
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GREG ANDERSON has played guitar with many top Celtic acts such as Eileen Ivers, Susan McKeown and Cathie Ryan as well as such diverse artists as Itzhak Perlman and the Klezmatics. He first joined the Clan as the bass player, left for a year, and then came back as the guitarist.
"He hadn't really played any Celtic stuff when he first joined up, but he said 'When I hear this kind of music, it makes me happy!' That was all I needed to hear." |
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CHRISTA PATTON is a specialist in early wind instruments and harps who plays with New York’s Ensemble for Early Music and Piffaro, the Renaissance Band. She's a former Fulbright scholar and has played with many of North America’s premier early music groups and is the co-director of the Baroque Opera Workshop at Queens College. NY. She filled out the Clan's sound, playing flute, whistle, accordion and guitar!
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After Susan Murphy left, band manager DIANNA SUNN took over on the keyboards. "Dianna played keys for three or four years until we started to get really busy, and then there wasn't time to do both. You couldn't go out on the road and still book the gigs. Now you could do it, but back then there was no email, no cell phones, wi-fi, forget about it. She left when we downsized the band."
The Clan's first regular bagpiper was LARRY COLE, who not only played Highland pipes, Northumbrian pipes, accordion and guitar, but was also the personal piper of billionaire Malcolm Forbes!
"You needed a guy who didn't just play the pipes. We only had bagpipes on 25-30 percent of the songs, so you didn't want him just standing around. Larry was brilliant."
"You needed a guy who didn't just play the pipes. We only had bagpipes on 25-30 percent of the songs, so you didn't want him just standing around. Larry was brilliant."
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The Clan started getting regular gigs opening for bands such as the Wolfe Tones, Nightnoise, the Tannahill Weavers, and whoever might come through New York. They were regulars at Tommy Makem's Irish Pavilion and at the legendary activist nightspot Wetlands Preserve, at the Coney Island Great Irish Festival and every major Irish festival as far west as Chicago. “I knew we were going in the right direction when we opened up for the Fureys at the Garden State Arts Center (NJ). After we played our set I was in the men’s room and I heard a couple of old Irish guys talking about us- they didn’t know I was in there, and one guy says to the other, ‘Well, what do ye think?’ and the other guy says ‘Well, it’s a new generation................but they’re just as damned good!’”
