David Murphy: Irish slow airs on pedal steel are the real deal

Cork artist David Murphy's album Cuimhne Ghlinn gives a unique and new life to traditional Irish melodies, Pet O'Connell discovers

David Murphy. Picture: Celeste Burdon

'Turlough O’Carolan goes to the American Southwest' encapsulates the confluence of musical influences on David Murphy’s debut album.

Though the pedal steel guitar is more closely associated with the sliding notes of American country music than Irish slow airs, Murphy marries the two with ethereal effect on Cuimhne Ghlinn. 

The steel guitar sound, developed from Hawaiian antecedents to pedal steel ventures into jazz and ambient music, can now be heard swelling and gliding over the notes of ‘Bridget Cruise’ and ‘Eleanor Plunkett’, compositions of 17-18th century blind harper O’Carolan, and tunes from Alan Lomax and Edward Bunting’s collections.

“The pedal steel lends itself very well to Irish music, with the melancholic feel of it and the keening voicing of the instrument,” says Cork multi-instrumentalist and producer Murphy.

Its glissando and vibrato echo not only the haunting swoop and lingering, atmospheric sounds of the uilleann pipes but the mournfulness of sean-nós song.

“I think it can almost mimic the human voice in some ways, and it can be harp-like,” says Murphy.

“The pedal steel plays a number of different roles across the record. It can be a supporting, harmonic role, it can play the lead voice of the tune, and it can be an accompaniment. The instrument is hugely versatile and I think it’s underappreciated in that regard — it’s capable of doing a lot more than country music.”

Usually found playing with The Delines, The Lost Brothers, John Blek, Arborist, or bluegrass with The Blackest Crows, Murphy’s North Cork upbringing exposed him to an eclectic mix of music, first at his parents’ dancehall at Liscarroll’s Old Walls pub, then learning piano and playing horn and trumpet in Buttevant Brass Band.

Summer Gaeltacht visits to Cúil Aodha gave Murphy an appreciation of sean-nós song, Seán Ó Riada’s music — and the opportunity to learn guitar.

“I played guitar in my teens and into my 20s. Growing up in the 80s there was a lot of country music in Ireland,” he says.

“I fell into a love of American folk, blues, and country music and I was playing a lot of slide guitar. It eventually led me to the lap steel guitar, the dobro resonator, and the pedal steel guitar. 

I picked up a beginner’s model in my early 20s and threw myself in at the deep end — there was no one to get lessons from at that time; no YouTube, so it was just a case of playing along to records.

"I can remember being in a studio in Youghal with a rock band I was playing with and saying ‘I’ve just bought a pedal steel and I think I’ve found my instrument’.”

“There’s not too many people around playing it and I would get a lot of calls for recording and session work.”

David Murphy's Cuimhne Ghlinn album.

Murphy, who works in IT at UCC, has during 20 years played with rock, folk, electronic, and experimental groups, but “reminiscing” during pandemic lockdown, he returned to earlier influences: “I was listening to a lot of Irish music — Iarla Ó Lionáird, The Gloaming, Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh, and I wanted to do something that was in my own voice, but with the pedal steel.”

Inspired by Davy Spillane’s introduction of the dobro on Atlantic Bridge and Neil O’Connor’s ‘spectral’ recordings of Ó Riada compositions, Murphy chose Ó Riada’s ‘Aisling Gheal’ as his album’s opening track.

“Ó Riada’s approach was to expand and extend traditional Irish music with more modern composition methods and European flavours and I tried to have that in mind with this project; it's contemporary interpretation of the tunes, and brings in a lot of my influences as well,” he says.

He includes a re-imagining of Peadar Ó Riada’s ‘An Draighean’, while ‘Cití na gCumann’ is an air from the Lomax archive, recorded in 1951 by Máire Ní Shúilleabháin of Ballylickey.

It was interesting to think that Lomax was here creating that seed for the renaissance of traditional Irish music at the same time that the pedal steel was developing and blossoming in America.

“It was the same sentiments, the same roots in a rural population," he says.

The album, with self-composed title track, features among others Steve Wickham, fiddle; Laura McFadden, cello; Rory McCarthy, piano; Anthony Ruby, pipes; and Alannah Thornburgh, harp.

Though Arty McGlynn was among Ireland’s leading pedal steel exponents, Murphy’s is likely the first recording of Irish laments on the instrument and he was “wary” about the reaction.

Ó Lionáird, “a big influence on the sound of it”, was “curious” about the album, and his response on social media unequivocal: “Traditional Irish music melody on pedal steel. Who would have thunk it? Well David Murphy did and it’s exceptionally beautiful.”

• Cuimhne Ghlinn: Explorations in Irish Music for Pedal Steel Guitar launches in Cork at a sold-out Coughlan’s on April 18, with dates at Rollercoaster Records, Kilkenny (April 19), Plugd Records, Cork (April 20), and Galway, Doolin, and Kilkenny festivals