It's not everyday you do a write up on two separate bands that consist of the same members. Bird Alone and Blue Lilac are duo Jack McCarthy and Eimear Lynch, two incredibly talented musicians that have performed together over 11 years, beginning that stint with Monday meet up group The Lazy Band. So why two separate bands? Why two separate albums? Why don't they just put all the songs together and make one big Blue Lilac or Bird Alone album?.
While other kids in her town were out robbing pallets from local businesses for their Halloween bonfire, Eimear Lynch was on the fiddle else where. A classically trained child prodigy, she has been performing with veteran musicians since her early teens, bouncing from country to country engaging audiences throughout Europe. On returning back to Ireland, she found herself a home among a group of musicians that would meet up in the International bar on a Monday, a group that would later become The Lazy Band.
Jack McCarthy grew up in a musical family. His three sisters all played instruments with a classical background, but Jack had discovered the world of rock music, bands such as Nirvana and Metallica, and around the age of thirteen he picked up the guitar to try to emulate these rock icons. When Jack got to college he done something your typical aspiring rock star would do.. He joined a gospel choir. Okay that wasn't very rock and roll but it was there he met Cathy McEvoy the director of The Ballymun Gospel Choir and she invited Jack to a musical gathering she was part of and this is when he was introduced to The Lazy Band and Eimear Lynch.
The Lazy Band saw some incredible musicians come and go over the years, names such as Mark Flynn, Lisa O'Neil and Enda Riely, all household names among the Irish music scene. They would perform cover songs and some originals written by members that would later be included on their own personal projects. To give you an idea of what the talent in that room was like, think of a football team with Messi and Ronaldo or a kitchen with Bobby Flay and Nigella Lawson, just imagine that, something else isn't it?. And now I'm hungry. The band had a residency every Monday night in Bewley's bar, they released one album together, but as the years went by, members focused on their solo albums and The Lazy Band eventually dwindled away. Jack and Eimear continued to perform together and took a few gigs performing covers in bars around town, but there was something lurking on the horizon that would change everything for this duo. Que the pandemic, pulling into town like a steam train packed full of manure ready to sh*t all over everything and anyone that got in it's way. It was during the lockdown the duo decided to work on the original songs they had accumulated over the years.
Haven't Seen You In Days is the debut album of Bird Alone. All the songs were written and performed by Jack and Eimear in this incredibly simplistic acoustic undertone filled with hauntingly beautiful harmonies. It was recorded and mixed by Jack in his house and later mastered by Sara Carter, it sounds like an album that was recorded in a full production studio, an incredible sound for home recording. There's a mix of genres running throughout, weaving between the Americana, roots and Irish folk styles the pair would have been familiar with during their time with The Lazy Band. Jack's songwriting and delivery has elements of Bon Ivor, Iron and Wine and Mick Flannery running through it, with a little sprinkling of his rocker days creeping through the surface, but hidden nicely in the background alongside Eimear's wonderful classic folk element that she carries to each song. It's a beautifully written and performed album.
That classical folk element that Eimear has developed throughout her career shines strong throughout the Blue Lilac debut album New Arrivals. It was mixed by Anthony Gibney and mastered by Simon Francis, and once again shows, with the right knowledge of recording and a great mixer and masterer, you can get studio quality sound at home. A lot of the songs on this album were taking from poems written by Eimears father Phillip Lynch, and I think that's what gives off that real Irish folk richness. Eimear and Jack perform on all songs and are joined by Christophe Capewell, George Guilfoyle and Phil Murray throughout, all displaying masterful performances. I would put this album up against any of the great albums in the history of Irish folk, it's incredible.
So here we come back to the question of why two separate bands? Two separate albums? Why not together? When you look back at the pairs musical journeys along with the rise and fall of The Lazy Band, the answer is simple, this was always going to be the case. The Lazy Band was never a collective all working in the same vein, it was a space for individual musicians to meet up and perform together, to work on their craft alongside other musicians and to develop themselves as artists in their own right. It was a music work shop that called themselves a band, but they were never officially a band, and that is why members would come and go throughout the years, the idea was for musicians to connect and to support each other on their own musical journeys. In his time with The Lazy Band, Jack, like everyone else, had always being writing his own songs on the side, Bird Alone was starting to hatch within Jack's creative psyche. Over the years Eimear had taken her father's poems and transitioned them into songs that she would perform at open mics, as well as writing her own songs. So when you listen to Blue Lilac, you're listening to Eimear Lynch, and when you stick on Bird Alone, that's Jack McCarthy talking to you. They're two separate bands and albums because they're two separate creative entities. Within Bird Alone and Blue Lilac is the very foundation of The Lazy Band, a couple of musicians performing together and supporting each other as they navigate the rocky roads of their creative paths.
Keith Eastwood