david munnelly band

A Tour to Remember -by Paul Keating, August 8, 2006

ONE of the vignettes from the Catskills last month that will remain forever etched in my mind was an early morning rendezvous between two mighty box players a generation apart.
One man was last year’s TG4 Traditional Musician of the Year, and the other received a Composer of the Year award from them as well in 2004 and 2005.Perched on the porch bench outside Furlong’s,the great music pub, sat Corkman Jackie Daly and
Mayoman David Munnelly playing accordion duets with tunes that were as varied as they were masterful. Polkas, waltzes, reels, hornpipes and jigs played note for note in an amazing display of respect and recognition between the two box players like I had never seen before.

The ace Bullet from Belmullet made a big impression in the Catskills this summer, and even more so when his full band joined him at the weekend to perform in East Durham. Their jazzy, innovative approach to traditional music make the David Munnelly Band a real crowd-pleaser for sure, and one of the more fascinating groups coming out of Ireland these days.
Listening to them and watching them give a fresh contemporary interpretation to the music of the 1920s associated with the Flanagan Brothers, make them the band to see if you can.
They have some gigs surrounding their appearance at this year’s Milwaukee Irish Fest (www.irishfest.com) here in the east, with the first date this coming Friday at the legendary folk music emporium Towne Crier Cafe at 9 p.m. in Pawling, New York.
Munnelly’s marauders will appear at the Hibernian Cultural Center in Worcester, Massachusetts on Saturday, August 12 at 8 p.m. Visit www.coolbawn.road.com. On Sunday, August 13 they are appearing at two free concerts (12 noon and 6 p.m.) as part of the Gigantic Musikfest (www.musikfest.com) currently underway from August 4-13 that takes place down in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.
After Milwaukee they appear in Ridgefield, Connecticut at another free concert as part of their Concert Happenings series in Ballard Park on Tuesday, August 22 at 7:30 p.m.
Their final tour appearance is on the Kennedy Center’s Millennium Stage on Wednesday, August 23 at 6 p.m. which will be available as a webcast on their site which is www.kennedy-center.org.

THE DAVID MUNNELLY BAND ROCKS KERRY RECORDS ST. PATRICK’S DAY CONCERT
-by Aidan Flynn, Reporter – The Irish Herald, CA April 2007 publication

The Kerry Records shows never fail to have at least a surprise or two, even for those who keep coming back to them season after season. The St. Patrick’s Day show in Thousand Oaks was no exception. In addition to the pleasure of regular performers like Kathleen Keane, Redmond Gleeson, Patrick D’Arcy, Sheelagh Cullen and the talented Irish dancers one has come to expect at these rousing shows of drama and music, the second half of the concert featured The David Munnelly Band, an Irish group of musicians based in Mayo & Dublin who very nearly blew the roof off at the Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza
Margaret O’Carroll has a remarkable ability to seek out and present musicians and musical groups with talent rarely seen in these parts. She has done this over and over again so that one has to assume she has her pulse on Irish music like few others, presenting them on CD and at this regular series of Irish shows. This was no different in the St. Patrick’s show dedicated to the memory of accordionist and musician Des Regan, who was bringing authentic Irish music to Southern California audiences before some of the performers on the stage were born.
The David Munnelly Band features Irish button accordion sensation David Munnelly, who started things off with a bang, playing his instrument with consummate skill and bravado until he very nearly had the conservative audience dancing in the aisles. This was hard music to keep still about and it resonated even in the aircraft hangar that is the Janet & Ray Scherr Forum at Thousand Oaks Plaza. Those who were unlucky enough to be absent for this truly astonishing performance will have to content themselves with trying to get hold of the new hit albums the group has recorded abroad.

It was another full capacity house for a Kerry Records concert and that tells you about everything you need to know. A good time was indeed had by all.

LiveIreland.com - Bill Margeson, March 2007

We were at the Concert of the Year Thursday night, March 8.The Dave Munnelly Band was at The Irish American Heritage Center in Chicago under the invite of the man, John Daly and his Concert Series featuring the best in Irish music. The five artists provided the greatest Irish music concert we have ever attended. Dave Munnelly on box, Kieran Munnelly on flute and bodhran, Tony Byrne on guitar and Paul Kelly on fiddle and mandolin were joined by Chicago's own Kat Eggleston
on vocals in a stunner of an evening. Just ask anyone smart enough to have been there. The tunes! Good Lord---then there was Kat singing her heart out and winning ours all over again.
As we write this, it was five nights ago, and we are still gob smacked and out of words. Unbelievable. We are sure John will have them back. Can't wait. Can't wait. Can't wait---BTW, Munnelly Band WILL be at Irish Fest again this summer in Milwaukee. What a great night!!!

Country Music Concert Review Walnut Valley Festival gets Magical
-by Corinne Brown 13th September 2006

If oz exists, it's at the Walnut Valley Festival National Flat Picking Championships, a magical place where new artists emerge and musical greats mingle with the fans.
Now in its 35th year and billed as the Walnut Valley Reunion or "Picker's Paradise," three days at this fest proved why it's a mecca for lovers of bluegrass, finger style and flat pick guitar.
According to Rex Flottman, public relations director of the festival, 35 acts filled the schedule, chosen from 300 applicants. Originally, the festival grew out of bluegrass, the primary style of many of its original founders, but over time audiences wanted more diversity.
Performers returning this year included the Byron Berline Band, Misty River, The Waybacks, Andy May, Chris Jones & The Night Drivers, Steve Kaufman and Dan Crary & Thunderation. First timers were Cadillac Sky, mandolinist Bruce Graybill, Hot Strings and Mountain Smoke.
The bluegrass lineup featured Pat Flynn, Buddy Green & Friends, The Greencards, Marley's Ghost, The Wilders and Spontaneous Combustion. Traditional Irish or "green grass" featured the Celtic sounds of The David Munnelly Band, direct from Dublin.
For lovers of Western music, "cowgrass" included Bluestem, plus Roz Brown and Bill Barwick of Denver, and newcomer Dave Stamey, a California artist. Instrumental composers / performers included Stephen Bennett, Tommy Emmanuel and Pete Huttlinger, while cross-over entertainers featured Tim O'Brien, Small Potatoes, and Still on the Hill.

Bluegrass band The Wilders proved repeatedly why they drive fans to a frenzy: a cross between rockabilly and traditional bluegrass, the excitement of their almost Cajun music has to be heard to be believed.
The absolute highlight was the tightly woven David Munnelly band from Ireland, also featuring American born tap dancer, Nick Gareiss, who lit fire to the stage with his air born feats, and fiddler, Daire Bracken, who absolutely stole the show.

Irish Music Magazine -by Bill Margeson - February 2005

Mayo box player, David Munnelly has a new album out, By Heck! His regular group joins a list of guests and offers an album of real variety and depth. Playing a Franz VanderAa accordion made in Holland, David gets all there is to get from the double row configuration, tuned to C#/D.
On offer are 11sets of tunes, with three songs added by regular vocalist, Andrew Murray and guest, Helen Flaherty. Reels, polkas, barndances, airs, jigs and hornpipes ensure the variety. Well arranged tunes dip, slide and change with a real sense of creativity. Often, the group achieves a sound and ambiance that is like no one else. This is a young group with fresh takes on the tradition, while remaining true to the bone.
Munnelly is one of the best button box players to come out in years. Technique and speed are leavened by soul and a deep understanding of the heart of the tunes. David's brother, Kieran, plays the bodhran and a flute bordering on the South Sligo style, Daire Bracken offers some wondrous fiddle work, and Gavin Ralston is featured on a really solid rhythm guitar. This is a truly exciting new group on the scene. The energy of youth meets real ability.
Highly recommended, Munnelly's is a career to follow closely. Great show in person. Big talent. Big time.—

Irish Echo -by Erle Hitchner August 2005

The past is ever-present in the playing of Mayo-born melodeonist and two-row button accordionist David Munnelly, whose ornamenting brio and brisk tempo could earn him the moniker Belmullet Bullet.
Munnelly's strongest musical influences include Brooklyn-born melodeonist John J. Kimmel (1866-1942), nicknamed the Irish Dutchman; the Waterford-born Flanagan Brothers, who recorded during the 1920s and early 1930s; and Boston-born Joe Derrane, who surpassed Kimmel in virtually every technical area and is still going strong at age 75.
The homage to the Flanagan Brothers is explicit in the title of Munnelly's second solo album, "By Heck," which was the title for a medley of barndances recorded by the Flanagans in May 1931.
The homage to John J. Kimmel was equally apparent in "Kimmel's Jigs," the second medley appearing on the "By Heck" CD and the second medley performed on July 27 at Satalla, a club on West 26th Street in Manhattan, by David Munnelly and his band. The latter comprises his brother Kieran on snare drum, bodhrán, and flute, Galway's Andrew Murray on vocal, Wicklow's Gavin Ralston on guitar, and Galway's Fergal Scahill, All-Ireland senior fiddle champion in 2002, who recorded the
Irish Echo's 10th-best trad album of 2002, "A Flying Start," with harmonica player Paul Moran. During the "By Heck" medley, Scahill replaced a snapped fiddle string on stage and managed to rejoin the band on a change between tunes.
The homage to Joe Derrane, who called his own recorded tribute to Kimmel an "Accordion Fantasy" in the mid-1940s, was detectable in Munnelly's frequent use of tight, cascading triplets and his refreshing use of both sides of the box, melody and bass keys, as he played. He doesn't use the bass on his box just for sporadic accents but instead employs it to summon up a fuller, richer palette of tonal colors and complementary texture.
Like Derrane, Munnelly also knows how to swing (his first solo CD in 2001 was entitled "Swing"), and that was engagingly evident throughout the Satalla concert.
"The American Polka" was played by Munnelly and his band with a verve and virtuosity that Ellington and Basie would have approved. "The Two Bridgies' Barndances," named for Munnelly's grandmothers, centered on his two-row playing with Scahill's fiddling in another highlight. The reels "Miss Montgomery's/Tailor's Thimble/Over the Moor to Maggie" rose
in impact step by step: starting with the two-row and fiddle, then moving to the box and flute, and finishing up with all four
instrumentalists playing together. Another reel, "Lively Leah," written by Meath musician Tina Price for her daughter, also sparkled in the hands of the four tune players.
But it was David Munnelly's tender, evocative, two-row accordion solo on a slow air learned from fiddler Frankie Gavin and button accordionist Máirtín O'Connor that brought Satalla to an appreciative stillness. On a night full of hard-charging, high-energy moments, this quiet one stood out.
Like David Munnelly, Inishbofin vocalist Andrew Murray toured for a time with De Dannan. Now a member of Munnelly's band, Murray has a low-register voice that tended to get lost in the accompaniment, especially in the slow-to-respond sound engineering this night. But what Murray sang still came across with reasonable effectiveness: "Lord Franklin," Richard Thompson's "The Dimming of the Day," "Green Grows the Laurel," and "I Wish My Love Was a Red, Red Rose."
As a whole, the David Munnelly Band is something special. They may not cater to a purist's taste in trad, but their skill, invention, and daring were often exhilarating. If Ireland has any interest in re-creating America's Irish dance-hall era or France's musette-swing period, David Munnelly will be in the vanguard of that movement, not mimicking the past but incorporating it into something new. Every time he picks up the box, the Belmullet Bullet guarantees excitement.......

......On a sultry, sticky Wednesday night in the Big Apple, the double bill of the David Munnelly Band and Moakland was an ideal way to combat the heat with, well, more heat.

Folking.com

His accordion playing could be described as magical, he gets such excellent sounds from the box. This is his second solo release. Through 14 tracks he brings us a wide range of styles and traditions with the common thread of quality and love of the music. The album opens with a set of traditional reels under the title ‘The Cuckoo’s Nest’ featuring the ingredients of a top-flight ceili band including piano and drums. The full sound will transport you. The title track is a traditional barndance on which you get the usual instruments plus sax and bass. The international musical cuisine continues with a set of Quebec Reels followed closely by ‘McGurn’s’ hornpipes. There are songs here too, starting with Richard Thompson’s ‘The Dimming of the Day’ featuring Andrew Murray on vocals. The other songs are ‘Garden Valley’ written by Dougie MacLean under the excellent vocals of Helen Flaherty and the traditional ‘P Stands for Paddy’. The CD closes with a beautiful waltz composed by Munnelly called ‘Last Orders Waltz. This is a wonderful album that will delight musicians and ordinary listeners alike

LiveIreland.com

Now that we have stopped hyperventilating, we can tell you about Dave Munnelly. Well, we may start hypering again. Wait a second here as we put his album on. K. David is from Belmullet, Mayo. 28years old. Button box. The best young musician we have heard in years. He is a stunning box player, and he is incredibly well-backed by his group. It includes vocalist, Andrew Murray, David's younger brother Kieran on bodhran and flute, Daire Bracken on fiddle, Gavin Ralston on guitar and a brilliant Bryan Molloy on keyboards ( when he is not at Oxford majoring in Chemistry! ).

The David Munnelly Band is just out with a stunning piece of work, By Heck. The last time we remember being this thrilled with a new traditional group was either the first time we heard Reeltime or Moving Cloud. It does not get any better in traditional music than this.We were truly gobsmacked. This is Mayo, the West, the urgency and barely controlled drama of the music at its absolute zenith. We just cannot recommend this highly enough. The only thing as great as these musicians is their arrangements. This is a perfect and creative take on the tradition. You will not hear this style of playing out of Dublin, to be sure, and nobody in America is remotely playing like this.

Munnelly is a creative force at the true epicenter of Irish traditional music, which is getting harder to find. Extremely entertaining on stage, this group is proudly planting its standard of excellence in the tradtion. Beautifully crafted. This is rare. Perfectly played, traditional music with a modern interpretation, and it is totally accessible. We love the David Munnelly Band. It is perfect.

Order the album direct or go to the LiveIreland.com shop. Do what you have to do, but get this album. Miss it, and you'll be missing where the tradition is going

Pay the Reckoning

Here's an album that'll get your attention at first listen. Melodeon and accordion (and piano) player Munnelly wears his heart on his sleeve and his heart lies in the music of "the golden age", when exuberance and a lack of cynicism combined to add an edge to Irish music which is often lacking in the more clinical and more cynical playing encountered today. Munnelly has no time for po-faced restraint; like a man possessed, he trots out a gleeful, purposeful intro, then tears into "The Cuckoo's Nest" with such pace and vigour that the listener's left gasping and wondering how he managed to fit so many intricate ornaments and curlicues into the tunes while maintaining such a uncomprising tempo and rhythm, so much so that the change to "The Silver Spire" comes as a shock - a further subtle build-up of energy and foot-tapping fun. And then Munnelly's guru gets a nod as the rhythm shifts and Munnelly and co apply themselves to the infectious Kimmel's Jigs.

Energy and fun are Munnelly's stock in trade. This is a great album to lift the spirits, brimming with unselfconscious musicality, at times playfully exploring those jazz tinges that coloured the Irish music of the 20s and 30s (some cheeky soprano sax from Richie Buckley and banjo from Paul Kelly enhancing the effect on, for example, Munnelly's own infectious barndance, the smileful By Heck).

But let's not give the impression that Munnelly is a one-trick pony. His original composition, the slow air "Ar Boithrin na Smaointe" finds him in soulful mood.

A star-studded cast of friends lend their support. As well as the aforementioned Buckley (who also provides tenor sax) and Kelly (who also plays mandolin and fiddle), Munnelly is joined by brother Kieran (flute, bodhran), Daire Bracken (fiddle), Gavin Ralston (guitar), Ryan Molloy (piano), Lloyd Byrne (drums) and Joe Csibi (bass, double bass). His friends Helen Flaherty and Andrew Murray are invited along to sing, Flaherty giving us "The Garden Valley", Murray turning his attention to Richard Thompson's "The Dimming Of The Day" and "P Stands For Paddy".

Unpretentious, uplifiting music like this doesn't come along every day. Hitch a ride on the Munnelly juggernaut and enjoy the journey!

The Living Tradition -by Gordon Potter

Anyone who has heard recordings of the likes of the Flanagan Brothers will be aware that fusion music has been with us for a long time, as they were among the pioneers of integrating Irish traditional music with the swing and ragtime genres of the 1920s. David Munnelly has been greatly swayed by these influences, and produces a vibrant, catchy multi-layered sound which grabs your ears right from the first notes.

David plays accordion, melodeon and piano, and is joined here by a plethora of musicians and singers whose enjoyment is self-evident - it must have been fun in the recording studio when these tracks were being laid down. However it's not all 1920s swing. There are more modern sets of both traditional and more recent composition, and a Quebecois set which perfectly captures the nuances of that distinctive genre. The inclusion of guest singers, namely Andrew Murray and Helen Flaherty add an extra variety, as does the ever-changing line-up of musicians.

The overall effect is a CD that's fresh and lively throughout, bringing an innovative approach that works really well.