Ireland
www.PaddyKeenan.com

Paddy Keenan was born in Trim, Co. Meath, to John Keenan, Sr. of Westmeath and the former Mary Bravender of Co. Cavan.  The Keenans were a Travelling family steeped in traditional music; both Paddy’s father and grandfather were uilleann pipers.  Paddy himself took up the pipes at the age of 10, played his first major concert at Dublin’s Gaiety Theatre at 14, and played with the rest of his family in a group called The Pavees.

At 17, having fallen in love with the blues, Paddy left Ireland for England and Europe, where he played blues and rock.  Returning to Ireland after a few years, he began playing around Dublin with singer/keyboardist Triona Ni Dhomhnaill and singer/guitarist Micheal O Dhomhnaill.  Fiddler Paddy Glackin joined the three, followed by flute player Matt Mollov, accordion player Tony MacMahon, and guitarist Donal Lunny.  The loosely-knit band began calling itself “Seachtar,” the Irish word for “seven.”

After Seachtar decided to turn professional, the band experienced a number of personnel changes, with Donegal fiddler Tommy Peoples replacing Paddy Glackin, and Kevin Burke eventually replacing Peoples.  The band wanted a new name.

Micheal O’ Dhomhnaill had recently returned from Scotland, where he happened across a photograph taken in the 1890s of a group of tattered musicians.  “The Bothy Band,” it was titled, in reference to the migrant Irish laborers who worked in England and Scotland and were housed in stone huts known as “bothies.”  Micheal suggested this name for the band and thus was born one of the most influential bands in the history of Irish music, The Bothy Band.

The Bothy Band forever changed the face of Irish traditional music, merging a driving rhythm section with traditional Irish tunes in ways that had never been heard before.

Those fortunate enough to have seen the band live have never forgotten the impression they made — one reviewer likened the experience to “being in a jet when it suddenly whipped into full throttle along the runway.”  Paddy was one of the band’s founding members, and his virtuosity on the pipes combined with the ferocity of his playing made him, in the opinion of many, its driving force.  Bothy Band-mate Donal Lunny once described Paddy as “the Jimi Hendrix of the pipes”; more recently, due to his genius for improvisation and counter-melody, he has been compared to jazz great John Coltrane.

Paddy’s flowing, open-fingered style of playing can be traced directly from the style of such great Travelling pipers as Johnny Doran; both Paddy’s father and grandfather played in the same style.  Although often compared to Doran, Paddy was 19 or 20 when he first heard a tape of Doran’s playing; his own style is a direct result of his father’s tutelage and influence.

Paddy’s style has continued to mature in the intervening years since the break-up of The Bothy Band as he has pursued a solo career.  He is in demand as a guest artist for prestigious Celtic festivals and weekends, concerts, benefits, and tionols (piping festivals) around the US, and in Canada and Ireland.  Notable among these are Gaelic Roots I and II (Boston College); Eigse na Laoi at University College, Cork; the Washington Irish Folk Festival at Wolf Trap; the Stonehill College Festival in Boston; and the Philadelphia Ceili Group’s Irish Music and Dance Festival.

Dubbed ‘the Paganini of the uilleann pipes,’ Paddy is certainly one of the most brilliant musicians of his generation.  He can rightfully claim his place alongside such open-style legends as pipers John Cash and Johnny Doran.

“In Irish music there are legends and legends and then there’s Paddy Keenan.” – John O’Regan, Rock’n Reel