Award-winning two-row button accordionist Paddy O’Brien, aside from being a much-admired virtuoso with a career spanning nearly four decades, is also a noted one-man repository of Irish traditional music, much of which was picked up from living masters during his travels. For the current outing, he has gathered tunes from a variety of sources, ranging from sprightly instrumental jigs, reels, polkas and hornpipes to unaccompanied sean-nos (ancient style) inflected vocal airs. He favors moderate tempos and lightly marked rhythms that allow the overly blithe melodies, most also graced by a melancholy tinge, to shine forth unimpeded.

How many songs do you have memorized? Ten? Fifty? More? Many professional musicians carry with them a “fake book” of commonly requested songs they are asked to perform from time to time. Button accordion player Paddy O’Brien has been called “a walking encyclopedia of Irish music” and has over a thousand traditional Irish jigs, reels, polkas and hornpipes in his head. He doesn’t read music either.

Paddy O’Brien is internationally recognized as a master of the diatonic accordion, but also as an authority on Irish music . A native of Co. Offaly but living many years in Minneapolis (USA), he surveyed his country from end to end, and dug up a host of old tunes. It is rumored that over his forty-year career, he has amassed nearly four thousand tunes. Joe Delaney, John Doherty, or Paddy Fahy are some of his sources of inspiration. A member of Chulrua and the Doon Ceili Band, he is back here with a new offering for us, “The Sailor’s Cravat.” Only this time, he chose American musicians, although the singer has Irish roots.