T’was the night before the night before the night before etc, McGoldrick and crew hit the Irish Quarter as Toss The Feathers!

SPARE TIME?

Ever wondered what Michael McGoldrick gets up to, in his spare time? That’s the time between putting out myriad albums and performing in multiple duos and trios, playing with his family band of nieces and nephews, Transatlantic Sessions, Capercaillie, Mark Knopfler and more. The list goes on, questioning as to whether he actually ever sleeps, but the truth is, when all else is going quiet, he teams up with his old band, the group he joined as a schoolboy, in Manchester. And that band, Toss The Feathers, nearly forty years on, are on a bit of a roll.

Various iterations of the band have been existence over the years, but, since reviving their annual Christmas shows in Manchester, they have started now to again stray beyond that home turf, hitting other parts of the country that are painted equivalently and proudly green. Digbeth is Birmingham’s Irish Quarter, and Norton’s may well have a claim as to being it’s centre. True, there are a great many Irish bars in this neck of town, but, since opening back in 2019, there is more going on here than most, and, with bands playing most nights, trad sessions and Irish language workshops, it can sometimes feel more Ballyragget than Brum. Did I say they sell Guinness, too?

AMONGST FRIENDS

Despite it being a fair old while since they, as a band, played in this city, it became quickly apparent they were amongst friends. As the five members partook of their creamy pints in the bar, a steady procession of punters made their way to greet them and be greeted. So much so it seemed the show might never start, but not so long after nine, it did, it taking relative new boy, drummer, Kevin Burke, to rouse his bandmates from their craic. Last on, McGoldrick brandished his flute and they were off. Eddie Sheehan is back where he belongs, at the front, on acoustic guitar and vocals, with Dezi Donnelly on fiddle and the remarkable bassist, Dave Smylie, either side of him. Remarkable? You’ll see.

Opening with Highwayman, the first song from their 1993 album, Columbus Eclipse, this record was to be the lodestone for much they tonight played. Rousing folk rock, of a flavour that is essentially a more muscular iteration of Country ‘n’ Irish, with distinct traditional flavours permeating all through it, courtesy the flute and fiddle. Music for dancing and drinking. Sticking to largely that instrumentation, aside from the flying fingers of McGoldrick and Donnelly, attention was swiftly drawn to the stocky figure of Smylie, who was pulling all sorts of unexpected features out of his mixed high bass. The melodies may be a mix of trad and archetypal, but the flurries of notes thwacked out by his thumb and four fingers were anything but, smacking more of Bootsy Collins than, well, of any other Irish bassist.

THE BOYS ARE BACK

Irish bassists? That must have been the cue for an early crowd pleaser, a rousing rout through The Boys Are Back In Town, which would have Phil Lynott surely nodding in approval, as the fiddle and flute swirled around Sheehan’s sand polished delivery. With McGoldrick switching to first a penny whistle, and then low whistle, there was next a flourish of traditional tunes, demonstarting the near symbiosis between he and his fiddle playing chum, who have history including so much more than just Toss the Feathers.

A surprise insert to the set came then with the introduction of a guest singer, seemingly picked up earlier in the sound check. This was Tara, who had been only been one of the more consistent dancers during the show thus far. Not even a singer, as she told me later, she nonetheless played a blinder in the Kirsty MacColl parts of, what else, given the date, but FairyTale Of New York. Sheehan can sing nothing like Shane, but it wasn’t as if anyone cared, as we were all singing along too.

A WORD WITH THE MANAGEMENT

Around about this stage, the band, or, rather, one of them, decided a break was in order, with Sheehan explaining that Mr McGoldrick needed a word with the management. It became swifly apparent that that word was drink! Supposedly for fifteen minutes, it spread out more than a little, allowing yet more chat and even more porter. That last train home looked less and less likely……

Back on stage as a four piece, Donnelly was nowhere to be seen, not that it stopped his colleagues cracking on with a word perfect rendition of Christy Moore’s hiberno-rap, Lisdoonvarna. Donnelly appeared mid song, casually joining in so seamlessly as to have it seemed rehearsed. But, with the setlist (below) now bearing less and less comparison with what they were actually playing, there was little sense of rehearsal at all, just a group of musicians integrally locked into their groove, muscle memory the magic ingredient of experience. At last, too, McGoldrick brought out his pipes, he as fine a player of the uillean instrument as any first generation practitioner. Returning to, loosely, the Christy Moore songbook, the band rendition of Hiroshima Nagasaki Russian Roulette, that Moving Heart’s magisterial moment, was tremendous, threatening to blow the bloody doors off.

THE SHOW GOES ON FOREVER AND….

A couple more of their own songs followed, by now sounding all like standards of the genre, with, I think, Dusty Roads giving Smylie a chance to show he to could sing. My train long since departed, on and on they played. Dusting off another Christy, their version of Ride On owed more to the powerhouse version of Mary Coughlan, than to Moore’s gentler approach. Nominally the end of the set, with ever more pints being delivered to the stage, Sheehan admitted they couldn’t be arsed to leave the stage, suggesting they just play on, meeting with solid approval from all, the instrumental shenanigans becoming ever more, delightfully so, freeform.

All good things have to come to an end and so too this hooley of a night. But, as I stumbled off into the night and an Uber, somehow I suspect Norton’s was far from done with the night, nor Toss The Feathers with Norton’s. Manchester would have to wait a day to see if they all survived in one piece. I gather the band have signed up for Birmingham’s Tradfest, next year, so clearly they are doing something right.

Not much Youtube out there, but this is a grand snippet from ‘just‘ twelve years ago, the only difference being the drummer.

Toss The Feathers: Michael McGoldrick / Eddie Sheehan / Dezi Donnelly / David Smylie

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