By Denise Foley
“It’s simply impossible to imagine an audience that wouldn’t enjoy what they do.” That line from a Boston Globe review of the Irish traditional music sensation, Cherish the Ladies, about says it all. On Saturday, April 22 (2006), two members of the all-woman group, founding member and virtuoso tin whistle player Joanie Madden and guitarist Mary Coogan performed for one night only at the Coatesville Cultural Society as part of the Coatesville Irish Music Series.
View review and photo essay.
This week, Irish Philadelphia caught up with Joanie Madden by cell phone as she was driving back to New York from Boston. (Don’t tell the Staties!).
1. At a very young age, you became the first and only American ever to win the Senior All-Ireland on the tin whistle. But that wasn’t the first instrument you played, was it?
I went through a couple of others, much to my parents’ dismay. My father (Joe Madden), like Mary’s father, is an accomplished accordionist. He knew fairly early on that I and my brother Patrick, out of the seven of us, had “the bug,” as he called it. When the music was playing we couldn’t stop dancing around the house. So he decided that myself and Patrick would take music lessons. I took a few lessons on the violin. I had a classically trained teacher, but the best part of having him come to the house was that he gave me a pack of Lifesavers at the end of the lesson. I hated the fiddle. We had a piano in the house and so I took a couple of lessons, and I hated that too.
Then I saw the tin whistle. It was an epiphany. The lights went on. But my father told me he wouldn’t pay for anything to do with music for me. So I got my babysitting money, asked my mother to take me to the music store, and bought my first tin whistle. Fortunately, they only cost $2 at the time. I went around the corner to [East Galway flutist] Jack Coen’s house and asked him to teach me how to play. He was a friend of my father’s, so he said, “Of course, I will!” Then the phone rang and he came back all mean. My father had called and told him that if he could make me come for lessons, I had the music in me! But no one had to make me. I went there every day after school. I was addicted from the get-go.
2. The whistle is one of the most emotionally evocative instruments there is. It can sound so poignant, it can make you cry. Do you feel that way?
I think it’s the most expressive instrument, next to the voice. There so much more emotion in it. I never thought I was the kind who would be playing slow airs, but I love to play them. They’re primal and gorgeous and evocative at the same time. And I can’t tell you how many people have written to me and told me that it made them cry.
3. Aside from your father and Jack Coen, who in the world of trad music inspired you?
I grew up in New York which was home to some of the greatest Irish traditional musicians who ever lived. Through my father I got to know Joe Burke, Mike Rafferty (father of Mary Rafferty from Cherish the Ladies) and Mike Preston from the old Tulla Ceili Band. I’m self-taught at the flute, and these men would take me aside and say, ‘Don’t do that, do this. You’re doing that right, but you’re doing that wrong.” I was once sitting next to [fiddler] Eileen Ivers at a session when Mike Preston came over, sat down next to me, and cocked his ear to me. Suddenly he said, “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” I said, “Playing the flute.” He said, ‘You’re not playing the flute, you’re bugling!” He told me I wasn’t doing it right until I could hit that deep bottom D note, which produces a raspy, powerful tone. So that’s what I worked on—getting to that D. I blew that D over and over for weeks, and then one day I hit it. It was the most beautiful thing I ever heard. So I thought, okay, time to move on. But it took me three weeks to find it again!
4. You used to play with Eileen Ivers. Have you and Cherish the Ladies ever been tempted to move beyond trad music, as she’s done, and experiment?
Eileen and I went from kindergarten to eighth grade together before we moved out of the city. But we’ve always been great friends. She called me to play in her Tara Ceili Band when we were young and I was in her wedding. We started Cherish the Ladies together. But no, I don’t want to play anything but traditional music. Our parents came here and brought their music with them and shared it with us. They were purists, and we’re purists at heart. Besides, my father would disinherit me!
5. Cherish the Ladies started out as one-time-only performance back in the late 80s—a show put together by you and Mick Moloney, who was in Philadelphia at the time. Did you ever think it was going to be a 20-year career for you?
Not really. Mick called to congratulate me after I won the All-Ireland in the early 80s, and he said, “Did you know you were all women?” And I said, “Who were all women?” I didn’t know what he was talking about. But it was true—most of the American winners, like myself and Eileen, were women. He thought it was phenomenal. I didn’t think it was phenomenal. I was part of a ceili band that was nine women and Tommy Smith, the drummer. Mick asked me if I would help him organize a show and be the emcee. I was 18 years old and horrible at public speaking. Now you can’t shut me up. But I suggested the name—it’s the name of a famous jig—and we did three concerts in New York that were all sold out. Afterwards we recorded an album that the Library of Congress called “the best folk album of the year.” Then Mick got a grant and we went on tour. That was 20 years ago, and here we are.
