Brian Slattery Photos
A Drop of the Pure.
State Street on Sunday afternoon was filled with signs of the end of the St. Patrick’s Day Parade, whether it was the lines of people in green shirts outside Modern, the full marching bands gathered on street corners, the policemen guarding the barricades for closed streets, or the long rows of parked cars. The parade has changed a lot over the years and continues to, reflecting New Haven as it is, a diverse place in which successive waves of recent immigrants find a home. And in Cafe Nine, a steadily growing crowd came to hear A Drop of the Pure, a quartet purveying traditional Irish music and pulling at the long cultural thread that connects the present to the past.
Dan Dalton.
A Drop of the Pure — Tucker Smiley on mandolin, banjo, and guitar, Pat Dalton on guitar, Dan Dalton on whistle, harmonica, and bodhran, and MorganEve Swain on fiddle, with everyone singing at the top of their voices — had that intergenerational connection built in, as Dan is Pat’s father.
Dan grew up playing and singing traditional Irish songs and tunes. He has a picture of himself with his family from when he was 12. They’re all gathered around a songbook, mouths open. “I know we’re all singing ‘The Wild Colonial Boy,’ ” Dan said. “We had a Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem songbook.”
When he became a father, he sang the same songs in the car with his kids, but didn’t force the music on them much. Pat grew up and left the house; one day Dan came over to visit his son and found Pat and his roommate singing a slew of the songs he remembered from his own youth.
“I know that song!” Dan said.
“That’s because I took all your Clancy Brothers albums,” Dan recalled Pat replying.
A Drop of the Pure is making the rounds across the state for the next week, with upcoming gigs at NewSylum Brewery in Newtown and Nod Hill Brewery in Ridgefield. The NewSylum show, which has a capacity of 250 people, is already sold out. Before a show, “we always get together and give a toast to Terry Dalton,” Dan’s brother. “He had all the albums.”
“It’s nice to see the tradition carried on,” Dan said, though it’s easy for him to see why. “It’s folk music,” of a kind that “speaks to every generation” that discovers it. “People keep coming back to it,” in part because it’s accessible — you just need your voice and maybe an acoustic instrument, with none of the amplified gear that other music requires — but also because it’s a connection to a heritage to draw strength from.
A Drop of the Pure leaned into that strength, as the musicians dug into their instruments and sang with full throats, whether taking leads, creating unisons, or spreading into four-part harmonies. Among the audience, many had been to the parade — a few, dressed in the uniform of a fife and drum corp, had been in it — but others had come down just to hear the music. There were people with gray and white hair, and people in their 20s, and a couple of babies. Among them, many knew the words to the songs already.
The band gave the audience a ride through traditional Irish music, sea shanties, and a few modern takes on both, from a few fiddle tunes, to drinking songs (whiskey and beer), to pro-IRA rebel songs, to songs about missing home and dangerous sea voyages, to songs about partying and having a good time, all delivered with sincerity and humor.
“Whenever we sing a song that involves some kind of dismemberment, you all have to take a drink,” Dan Dalton explained to the crowd after singing Stan Rogers’s “Barrett’s Privateers,” in which the narrator loses his legs. “At least one.”
“One per leg,” Swain added.
People kept coming in, making a full place crowded. As it warmed up, the band got into a few of the more tongue-twisting songs of misadventure, like “The Rocky Road to Dublin,” the lyrics from which the band’s name is drawn.
Usually, Pat explained, “this is one that starts fast and ends incomprehensibly fast. We thought it’d be fun to start fast and end slow.” It gave the audience a chance to appreciate the torrent of language that comprises the lyrics, and to hear how the cadence of the words carried rhythm, as much as any drum. It also gave them a chance to sing along.
A Drop of the Pure ended its first set to hearty applause and declared it time for a little fresh air before starting up a second set. More people were still coming. They weren’t going anywhere.
The St Patricks Day Parade and post parade attendance at restaurants, cafes and bars are part of a grand New Haven tradition. Its a beautiful coming together of people happily celebrating that Spring is right around the corner and bumping into and catching up with old friends you havent seen in a while. Whether raining, snowing, cold wind blowing, avoiding the occasional over-indulger, or a atypical overly warm day, local turn up and turn out to cheer on the marchers and enjoy being together in our little city.