Kevin Burke and Cal Scott featured performers at RCCAC

The Randolph County Community Arts Center will welcome Kevin Burke and Cal Scott to the stage as part of the Troubadour Concert Series at the Randolph County Community Arts Center on Sunday, March 30th at 7 PM. Tickets will be available beginning February 5^th.

Kevin Burke is no stranger to Elkins, having performed at the Randolph County Community Arts Center in 2003, and before that as a teacher during Irish Week at Augusta in the 80’s. This time he brings along his newest cohort in Celtic music, composer-guitarist, Cal Scott. Both living in Portland, Oregon, the two musicians met when Scott was working on a documentary film about the recent political strife in Northern Ireland.  He engaged Burke as a consultant for composing suitable music for the film and the two struck up a friendship and mutual respect for one another’s music. “Across the Black River” their first CD together, is the result of their friendship and collaboration.

Burke has been a long-standing icon of Irish music, playing with the Bothy Band in the late 70’s, and now dividing his time between solo performances, a duo with Ged Foley, and as fiddler for Patrick Street since the mid-80’s and Celtic Fiddle Festival since 1992.  Music industry experts may wonder how he can manage the time for yet another musical foray.  Burke acknowledges that his playing with Scott was very natural and spontaneous.  Whenever he wasn’t touring, he’d “drop the kids off at school and go to Cal’s place for a few hours mid-day and then pick the kids up on the way home.”  Then he might not see Cal for another three months but when he returned, he’d hear what Cal had been working on, with either mandolin, guitar or bouzouki. The process of collecting tracks took somewhere between three to four years.  There were no deadlines; they simply waited until they had enough tracks and finally said to each other, “Okay, it’s done.”  The title track, “Across the Black Water,” is one of Burke’s original fiddle tunes about a river in County Sligo where Burke’s mother grew up in a very rural setting.

Burke and Scott both see the common ground between rock, folk, and Irish music that few others have managed to find.  Burke admits listening to The Beatles, Otis Redding, Manfred Mann, Bob Dylan, and The Rolling Stones in his teens and early twenties and saw parallels to the sorrowful Irish songs of emigration way back then.  Since Irish music has been popularized in movie soundtracks, like the Titanic, audiences everywhere are clamoring for more. Kevin Burke likes the prospect of taking Irish music into uncharted waters and playing in places where it hasn’t been played before and tossing in a few surprises. 

His new album with Cal Scott features not only a sextet of reels, some jigs and hornpipes, and an air in remembrance of Johnny Cunningham, but some original tunes by both Burke and Scott, one by Vincent Broderick, and one by the father of Kentucky Blue Grass, Bill Monroe, called “Evening Prayer Blues.” Burke is a believer that the wildest reel could have a hint of sadness and that some of the slower tunes may reflect moments of jollier times. “Nothing is totally sad or totally happy,” he reflects. “When I was playing Vincent Broderick’s tune, “Last Train from Loughrea,” I felt that it could have been written by a child – or else by someone very wise and experienced. It has the stamp of a very old style of tune, which I really like.  Cal was able to put enormous gentleness into the arrangement, because there’s wistfulness about it that I didn’t want to lose. To be truthful, this is a very tailored record, where we tried to bring our very separate skills and make them compatible with each other.”

In 2002, Kevin Burke was honored with a National Heritage Fellowship for his valued contribution to traditional music.  Cal Scott, a native of Oregon, has played in folk, rock and jazz ensembles, and recorded and produced over 20 CD’s including nine with the Trail Band, an 8-piece American Roots folk group.  Cal is also a composer of over thirty documentary film scores.

The Randolph County Community Arts Center, a non-profit organization promoting and supporting the arts in Randolph County and surrounding areas, is located at the corner of Randolph Avenue and Park Street in Elkins.  Tickets for Kevin Burke and Cal Scott’s Sunday evening concert are $12 for adults, $10 for seniors, and $5 for students, and are available in the RCCAC office. They can also be purchased at the door while they last. Advance tickets are suggested. Call the RCCAC office at 637-2355 or log onto www.randolpharts.org for more information.