Shamrock Dance & Friends

Reels are made for moving. They come out of the dance halls and kitchen sessions of Ireland, where the fiddle sets the pace and everyone in the room keeps time with their feet. Bluegrass grew from some of the same roots, carried across the Atlantic and sped up in the mountains of the American South. Shamrock Dance & Friends puts both sides of that family together in one short release: two medleys of original reels and one bluegrass instrumental that refuses to slow down.

Shamrock Dance

The title track is a medley of three original reels, fiddle-led from start to finish. It carries the drive and lift you hear at a good session, the moment when a tune settles into its groove and the room starts to move with it. Strung together as a set, the three reels hand off to each other the way session players move from one tune to the next without stopping.

Cambridge to Connemara

This one is another set of three reels, composed and performed here, and the title points along the route this music has always traveled. Irish dance tunes crossed the Atlantic with the people who carried them, and they have been changing hands in both directions ever since. These are new tunes written in that old language, and they sit comfortably beside the traditional ones without pretending to be anything but original.

High Ridge Sprint

The last track jumps the fence into bluegrass. High Ridge Sprint is a fast instrumental built on fiddle and mandolin duets, and it feels like racing along a mountain ridge with no plan to stop. It shows how close the two traditions still are: the same instruments, the same love of a driving tune, just a different accent.

Where to find it

All three tracks are on Bandcamp, together as Shamrock Dance & Friends for $3, or one at a time if you have a favorite. Bandcamp pays artists directly, so every download goes straight toward the next recording.

Put it on, push back the chairs, and see how long your feet stay still.

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