Fade to ‘Black’

I got to do a fun story for the NY Times on the Irish bar band Black 47 wrapping things up next week after 25 years together. It was an exciting assignment; I’d seen the band a bunch at Paddy Reilly’s in the early ‘90s. There were Irish acts at Paddy’s just about every night: Speir Mor, Rogue’s March, etc. It was a rite of passage for young Irish American dudes—I knew a few of those guys—to have a Guinness and see Black 47 and other Irish bands at Paddy’s. When I had money, I’d walk to Paddy’s from my East Village tenement, get a Guinness from one of the bar’s eight Guinness-only taps, and see the bands.

In reporting the story, there turned out to be a ton of really rich material, from the raconteur Malachy McCourt—Black 47 front man Larry Kirwan was in the house band at McCourt’s Bells of Hell bar many years ago—to up and coming musicians who counted Black 47 as a serious influence, to the band members themselves.

“Black 47 took Irish music out of the lachrymose ‘Tora lora lora laddy’/‘Did Your Mother Come From Ireland?’,” McCourt told me, “and gave it real soul.”

The band prominently features horns—not just a horn section, spicing up a song at opportune moments--but trombone and various sax’s with driving roles in the song. Geoff Blythe had been a founding member of Dexys Midnight Runners before turning up with Black 47 at a festival out in Rockaway in 1990. The song arrangements had “all the space in the world,” Blythe says. “They said, do what you like. It was a blank slate.”

That kind of creativity was absolutely key to the band surviving for so long. I mean, name another New York band that’s stayed together, without hiatus, that long.

The band got big, with a video on MTV and “Funky Ceili” on rock radio. They played some stadiums. Paddy Reilly’s was reconfigured to make more room for Black 47 and its fans. The bar shut down its kitchen and set up Black 47 in the vacated space. Steve Duggan, longtime “man behind the bar” at Paddy Reilly’s, as he puts it, says a record label called one day about a private party, and asked about food. “I got a kitchen,” Duggan told them. “But the band plays in the kitchen.”

Black 47 never did break from the Irish pub scene entirely. Over time, with higher NY rents and people seemingly less open minded about hearing new music, the gigs thinned out.

Band members expressed no regret, saying it was always about the music and the message, not fame and fortune. “I think the guys have a bit of, what if?” says bassist Joe “Bearclaw” Burcaw, who joined in 2006. “Not regret. Just, what if?”

The decision to call it quits came following a festival in Buffalo last year. There’s a new album, fittingly called “Last Call”, full of songs about colorful characters, typically with Irish roots, in NYC. There’s a second CD of its best political songs called “Rise Up.”

“The band has great momentum—it’s good to end it on our own terms, on a high point,” says Joseph Mulvanerty, who replaced founding member Chris Byrne on the uilleann pipes, bodhran  and various other traditional instruments in 2000.

The guys will pursue side projects; Bearclaw will play in a Hendrix tribute band, Blythe has his horn-fueled rock band GIBlythe. Kirwan will perform solo occasionally and work on his plays. He’s president of the Irish American Writers & Artists organization. Quips McCourt: “We’ll find a way to impeach him.”

So what’s Black 47’s legacy? It was Irish music, but it was so much more. With the hip-hop and the punk, the reggae and the horns, it was New York Irish music. “It was something you never heard before,” says Pete Ganbarg, who signed the band to its deal at SBK Records in the early ‘90s. “The closest was the Pogues, but those guys were over there—not over here.”  

Mike Farragher, Irish Voice music critic, said Black 47 made him appreciate the traditional Irish that was on in his home growing up, and which he says he despised as a kid growing up across the Hudson in Jersey City. “It was a translation and interpretation of Irish and American cultures,” he says. “I didn’t get the Clancy Brothers growing up. But I heard the reggae and hip-hop of Black 47, went back to the Clancy Brothers--and I got it.”  

Looking forward to seeing the band tonight.