That Bodhrán Player: From Cincinnati

By John McBride

This book recounts many memories and experiences of the author after learning to play his chosen instrument, the Irish bodhrán drum. Although always a fan of various music genres, John learned to play an instrument later in life (age 47). Through dedicating a lot

• Language: English
• Publisher: John Mcbride
• Release date: Jul 16, 2024
• ISBN: 9798330292967

Book preview

Dedication

With great love, I dedicate this book to

my lovely wife, Eve.

Thanks to you, along with Paul and Keri,

for putting up with my endless hours

of practice and the many weekend nights

away while performing.

Acknowledgment

Michael Vignoles – Maker of the John McBride bodhrán drum

Mark Stone – Great bodhrán drum player in Texas who inspired John’s play.

Rob Pinkerton – Instructed John at the Riley School of Irish Music in Cincinnati and was John’s predecessor bodhrán player with the Firestarters.

CONTENTS

Dedication

Acknowledgment

About the Author

Foreword

Introduction

Buying My First Bodhrán At The 2001 Cincinnati Celtic Festival

First Lesson/Practice

Breaking The Beautiful Custom-Made Tipper

First Seisiún

Playing In Seisiúns Over The Summer

Early Accolades

The Midwest Fleadh Cheoil

Seisiún at Fiddler's Hearth

Playing in the Dallas seisiún

Silver Arm with Cincinnati Pops

Riley School CD And Bodhrán Drums I’ve Owned And Played

2004 Dayton Celtic Festival

Joining The Firestarters

Open Seas, Empty Skies And Life As A Trad Turncoat

Onstage At The Dayton Celtic Festival

First Time At Cincinnati Celtic Festival

Gig Memories Including Jockeys And Monthly Friends In KY

Branching Out To Different Festivals

First Time At Dublin Irish Festival (Introducing Keri And Leila)

My Friend Michael, Maker Of The John Mcbride Bodhrán Drum

Be Quiet... That's My Son Playing There

With Patrick Waters And Sidekick

Bringing Ric Onboard With The Firestarters

Second Show With Two2Many And Beyond

Rocky Mountain Celtic Festival (Stand Today) And Beyond

And Then There Were 4

Play Me For Rick And Penny, Along With Two2Many’s End

Writing My Own Songs

Guest Musician (Session Musician In The Studio)

The Joys I Would Have Missed If Not Learning To Play The Bodhrán

What Music Has Delivered To Me

That Bodhrán Player (from Cincinnati)

About the Author:

About the Author

Within 15 months of taking his first lesson, John qualified in the Midwest Fleadh to compete in the All Ireland Fleadh. He’s also taught bodhrán at the Riley School of Irish Music and subsequently at the Irish Heritage Center of Cincinnati. In January 2005, John joined the Firestarters and performed with that Irish/Folk Rock band for nearly seven years, then went on to perform with Two2Many. Michael Vignoles of Ireland Woodcrafts named one of his professional drum models after John in 2011. In 2013, he released his Kerry Style Beginner Bodhrán Instruction Video, which became a #1 Amazon-selling music instruction video.

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Foreword

Meeting John McBride was a revelation. He embodies not just the spirit of a musician, but also the dedication of a true craftsman. John's adventure with the bodhrán began later in life, at 47, proving that passion knows no age limits. His tireless practice, often extending well into the night, stemmed from a simple desire to bring joy to himself and those close to him. Little did he expect that this dedication would soon earn him recognition and respect in the Irish and Celtic music community.

The bodhrán, a traditional Irish drum, requires a unique touch and understanding. Played with a two-sided stick known as a tipper or cipín, the Kerry style, which John has mastered, involves holding the stick near its center to make full use of both ends. This technique allows the player to seamlessly follow the music’s ebb and flow, serving as both a timekeeper and a dynamic participant in the melody. This nuanced approach to playing set John apart and garnered him much praise.

John's journey from his first lesson to competing in prestigious events like the All Ireland Fleadh within a year and a half is a testament to his relentless dedication. His accolades, including multiple medals and his teaching roles at renowned institutions such as the Riley School of Irish Music and the Irish Heritage Center of Cincinnati, are proof of his expertise. His performances with the Cincinnati Pops and collaborations with prominent musicians across the country highlight his versatility and deep connection to Irish music.

Joining the Firestarters in 2005 marked a significant phase in John's musical career, where he contributed to the band’s Irish/Folk Rock sound for nearly seven years. His partnership with Ric Smith in the group Two2Many, starting from their memorable gig at the Dublin Irish Festival in 2010, has been particularly rewarding. Since 2011, John's full-time commitment to Two2Many was a source of immense joy, and having a professional drum model named after him by the esteemed Michael Vignoles is a fitting tribute to his influence in the bodhrán community.

Beyond performing, John has made significant contributions as an educator. He has conducted bodhrán workshops at numerous Irish and Celtic festivals, from the Dublin Irish Festival to the Savannah Irish Festival, among others. His Kerry Style Beginner Bodhrán Instruction Video, released in 2013, achieved great acclaim, becoming the top-selling music instruction video on Amazon. John's instructional methods, catering to both beginners and intermediate players, reflect his dedication to passing on his knowledge.

This book is a compilation of John’s experiences, from his early musical encounters to his many stage performances and the reactions of those who have heard him play. While some stories might seem boastful, they serve as a testament to the wonderful things that can happen when one follows their passion. John’s journey is a celebration of how dedication and love for music can lead to remarkable achievements and bring joy to many.

I hope you find inspiration in these stories, and perhaps, like John, you will be moved to pursue your own musical journey.

Introduction

Although having performed on some big stages, the author, John McBride, never played with any of the big internationally known groups in his chosen genre, Irish and Celtic music. However, his rise in notoriety within that music genre rose quickly through the years. Buying his first bodhrán at the age of 47, he practiced tirelessly (minimum of two hours per night) for the first three years after his first lesson at the Riley School of Irish Music in Cincinnati. It was not out of a desire to be a well-known bodhrán player but out of his desire to learn to play well enough to entertain himself, his family, and his friends. Yet, as time went on, he began receiving compliments that were unexpected… mostly for a bodhrán player, which is an instrument many other musicians can live without.

This book is a collection of individual stories of situations that John experienced, from early memories with music to many stage performances and reactions of those listening to his work. From his very first class at the Riley School of Irish Music, he was taught that bodhrán players are a hated breed by many. They are hated because so many of those who learn the basics try to play over the music they accompany. That is NOT what the drum is for. Fortunately, John was taught that the bodhrán player has two purposes… to act as the metronome for keeping time with the beat, and to follow the music with all of the melody players’ dynamics. If they bring the sound up, the bodhrán player brings that instrument’s sound up. If they drop the sound level, then on that same beat, the bodhrán player should drop the drum’s sound level.

Several stories within this book may seem a bit like braggadocio, but that is not at all the intention of this book. Instead, the stories are shared as a reminder that good things happen when one finds a passion upon which they want to build further. All of the practice seemed to pay off in winning medals and acclaim, but more importantly, is the fact that John’s play so often brought great joy to the listeners. His play has always been fan-driven. The more people appreciated his play, the more wonderfully John would perform.

This book was written to share with those who watched so much of his music career take off. It is John’s truest desire that you enjoy the stories within. Who knows… maybe some will be inspired to pick up their instrument and move forward.

Buying My First Bodhrán At The 2001 Cincinnati Celtic Festival

(Including meeting the esteemed John Whelan)

Ever since I can remember, I have always had music running through my mind. Although I have loved music all my life, I did not choose to learn to play music until later in life. Born the last of seven children in an Irish Catholic family, sports were always more important than learning some musical instrument. The family would talk about how I used to sing You Ain’t Nothin’ But A Hound Dog and Heartbreak Hotel in my crib as a toddler. However, I was given up for a musically hopeless case in grade school. Why? Let me see here… I could learn to master an instrument to play at halftime of a sporting event, or I could potentially be one of those on the field playing the game everyone came to see in the first place. Hmm? I suppose in my mind, there was really no puzzling decision that may have existed. I wanted to be on the field.

So, I spent no time preparing to perform music in any form. The music teacher at the Catholic grade school I attended once had me stay after school to talk about music. She was quite convinced (for reasons still beyond my understanding) that I had a very good voice that could be beneficial to her choir. She was trying her best to understand why I quite obviously did not want to use my God-given talents during her singing lessons.

The problem was that the other boys in class would stand there and sing like Frankenstein, Tarzan, and Tonto from the old Saturday Night Live skits. They had no tonal differentiation throughout any given song, just a flat, out of tune, and bereft of talent pronunciation of the lyrics, some words being strung out a bit more to stay in time with the music being sung (quite well by the girls in the group), but without any semblance of singing from the guys.

I knew all along that I could sing (well) anything she could throw at us. I’d sung along with music at home while listening to albums, so I knew I could stay in tune and time with any song. However, in grade school the other guys had an unwritten pact to NOT sing well in class. Just stand there and say the words, but never with any identifiable tone fluctuations or musicality. Hence, I joined my male classmates by singing very monotone. We had to do singing in class, but the guys never had to do it well. Therefore, we didn’t! Mrs. Behrens, the grade school music teacher I admired most, the one who knew I had a good singing voice, finally gave up on me. This boy had no foreseeable future in the field of music!

It is certainly NOT the case that I don’t like music! Oh contraire… I have always loved music. I cannot remember a time in my life when some song or tune wasn’t running through my mind exactly as I’d heard it. Some of my earliest memories include sitting in my bedroom with a small portable phonograph playing Classical music records from my Mom’s collection. Grieg’s Peer Gynt Suite, In the Hall of the Mountain King, Ravel’s Bolero, Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake, and more. I loved them all and stayed well entertained in my room, playing with toys while enjoying the captivating sounds of Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Philharmonic Orchestra, flawlessly performing selections from the above-mentioned composers.

I was 9 years old the evening that the Beatles performed one early February evening on the Ed Sullivan Show. Talk about turning the music world on its collective ear! Prior to them. We had some Do Wop groups, Teeny Bopper songs about their boyfriend being back, or wrapping around a bridge abutment as the pack leader, folk music, and some excellent enticing pre-Motown music from groups like the Drifters. Suddenly, we were watching a band change nearly all the rules through their music, style, appearance, and attitudes. We all know what took place in music after the Beatles revolution. Although my parents weren’t impressed by the new music, my siblings and I were thoroughly enthralled with the entire British invasion that followed.

On the heels of the Beatles American introduction came many others, including the Dave Clark Five (who I thought at the time would outlast the Beatles), Rolling Stones, Animals, Herman’s Hermits, Peter & Gordon, and so many more vying for the top spot on the charts. Additionally, Motown was now coming well within its own by introducing the great Temptations, Supremes, Miracles, 4-Tops, and more. What a GREAT time to be growing up! We got to hear fresh, first-hand, the songs that would shape the next decades of music to come. The initial invasion was closely followed by American bands such as the Mamas and Pappas, Paul Revere and the Raiders, Beach Boys, and the Byrds, compositions concerning their view on life, often with a different take than the British groups. What a fantastic ride that was!

My brother, Tim, who is just older than me among the seven children, has an outstanding, trained voice. He has brought tears to many eyes with his singing of Ave Maria. Ask him to sing anything previously done by Tony Bennet, Frank Sinatra, Andy Williams, and the like, and you’ll be serenaded by Tim's inspiringly smooth vocalization.

As he began working with a voice teacher at one stage of his later years, my Mom observed, You’ve got such a beautiful voice. Why did you never sing around the house as a child?

Tim replied, Easy… because of John, He went on, I’d be singing to myself, and then John would walk in and tell me I was singing it wrong. He’d tell me how the song actually went, and I’d tell him he’s wrong. Invariably, I’d listen to the song again, and it was exactly how John said it went.

His solution was that he never sang out loud in the house again, so I couldn’t correct him.

In the early 1960s, Dad bought a Motorola all-in-one stereo console that had a reel-to-reel tape unit with a cheesy microphone, phonograph, stereo 2-way speakers, and an AM/FM receiver… all within a pretty wood cabinet. At the time we thought it was one of the coolest things one could have in their house. We learned through time that the phonograph was not too great of quality and that the needle would dig into the records more than it should. We started calling it the Scratch-O-Phonic player, but at the time it was delivered, we could not think of a cooler item to have in the house.

Shortly after his purchase of that stereo, my Dad started purchasing music he liked, including albums by Tommy Makem and the Clancy Brothers. These were authentic Irishmen singing authentic Irish traditional music and pub tunes, and it was GOOD! When I first heard that music, I was fully captured. There was something within me that was quite familiar with that music. It felt like home, a home I had not previously experienced, but something very important all the same. Later in life, I experienced a similar feeling when I pulled up to Bunratty Castle after landing in Ireland at Shannon Airport. When getting out of the car and smelling the turf (Peat) burning in the hearth, I had this feeling as if that scent were so familiar and homey. I recognized that same feeling that I’d felt listening to the Clancy Brothers with Tommy Makem decades previous, and I LIKED it! I’d play those albums as a kid while dreaming of a mythical Ireland that I never imagined visiting.

Once the Beatles came to America, I was no longer listening to the classical albums I had loved previously. I’m not saying that I stopped loving classical music, but the music that was higher on my music list was now the music of British invasion bands. The new Rock had drawn me in full boar, and I would not purchase any Classical albums for a couple of decades. At the same time, Motown music was coming along in full swing. The Miracles, Temptations, 4-Tops, and Supremes were filling the airwaves. Additionally, bands such as the Mommas and Pappas, Beach Boys, Raiders, Turtles, Sonny & Cher, and so many more were all putting out interesting music in their efforts to reach the top of the charts. Music was experiencing a rich new awakening in the early to mid-1960s, and I loved it all.

Time marched on, and as the music evolved, so did my musical taste and allegiance. Out of school and in the work-a-day world, I was listening intently to bands such as Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Black Sabbath, Jethro Tull, Yes, Bad Company, and Alan Parsons Project. The thing happening in my mind through this stage of my musical tastes is that I felt these musicians were unapproachable. I attended as many concerts as I could afford to see. The bands/musicians would come out onstage, play a great show, then be whooshed off (in my mind), not to be seen again until their next show. The thought of actually seeing and talking to these musicians without being a member of the press or various record labels was a preposterous concept. That was my view of these talented musicians. I could not imagine going up to any one of them and just shooting the breeze on any number of non-music-related subjects. I had placed all of them high on a pedestal not to be broken by a lowly fan such as myself.

That pedestal was about to be shattered in the mid-1980s while out at a bar with my brother-in-law, Chris. He and I worked at the same company and had attended a very boring trade association meeting together one evening. On our way back home to the far other side of town (Tucson), we decided to catch a late night-cap drink at the new Hilton lounge. As we were sitting at the bar talking, these gentlemen entered the lounge, walked up to the bar next to us, and struck up a conversation with us. They were served their drinks but continued our conversations there at the bar. Out of the corner of my eye, I now see their band leader, Stevie Ray Vaughn, enter the room. Stevie came up and joined in the conversation while ordering a drink. My brother-in-law and I remained as cool as we could while continuing to converse with this legend. We ultimately finished our drinks, and it was time to head home. I shook hands with Stevie and the others, all of whom said they’d enjoyed the conversations. Stevie then asked if I’d like his autograph. I declined, saying that the entire experience was irrevocably burned in my brain, which was more important to me than something written on paper. He liked that. That encounter certified in my mind that the guys performing that music in my extensive album collection were just regular folks once offstage. That was nearly inconceivable to me until that experience. I think it was because a lot of them were searching for any subject beyond music once away from the stage and studio.

In 1978, I’d saved up enough money to purchase my own stereo. Because music was important to me, I didn’t want to get just any stereo, so I prepared a lot for that purchase. Beyond the magazines dedicated to the subject of stereos and High-fidelity music, I spoke with friends and family members about their stereo equipment. Without fail, everyone I spoke with who already had stereo equipment would begin their response by stating what they currently owned, BUT SOMEDAY they wanted to get such and such. That such and such was always some fantastic, expensive high voltage powerhouse, the monster sound system that could jack the roof of the house and set it back down in another county. Of course, such a system was out of my reach financially, but I was convinced that I needed to purchase my someday system today.

After reading countless brochures and visiting a plethora of stereo shops, I bought my stereo. It was a high voltage/watt, no static, integrated amplifier, with a separate AM/FM tuner, double cassette deck, direct drive (no belts) turntable, and state-of-the-art 3-way speakers that rendered true sound without overemphasized bass output. I later added an equalizer to perfect the sound delivered from that whole rig. Good Lord, I was in heaven! The stylus on the turntable was outstanding because it reached deeper into the record grooves for clearer sound than the old Scratch-O-Phonic turntable from my youth could attain. The maker of the turntable touted that once the tracking weight was properly set, one could turn the turntable upside down, and it would still track perfectly at the set weight. That really excited me at the time of purchase, although I later learned just how lame that promise was due to gravity pulling the record off while tipping it over, thus scratching the album being played. Nonetheless, this stereo was outstanding, delivering music more clearly than I’d experienced in the past.

Subsequently, life took me and my little family from Tucson to Casa Grande, Arizona, then the L.A./north Orange County area, and then to Mason, Ohio, north of Cincinnati. I was in industrial sales, so I went where the work was. All the while, my lovely wife, Eve, gave us two children, Paul and Keri. I traveled a lot for work, so I wanted to make my time with our children count when home on the weekends. Our way of bonding on the weekends was to get the kids in the living room about mid-morning to play The Record Game. What’s that, you may ask? I had hundreds of albums in my vinyl record collection by that time. For The Record Game, one of us would select an album. Then, we would play one (1) song from the album and take it off the turntable for the next turn to do the same. Each of us got one selection before going onto the next player’s choice. That game served to teach my children about great music from innovative bands.

Paul & Keri loved that game. For me, it was an absolute no-lose situation, because they were selecting albums from my extensive collection. Whichever album they picked, I would put my favorite song on from said album. I loved it all and would express it with some head banging and air guitar or air drums during the song. The children would join in, and we would have a blast for an hour or two. Through time, Paul and Keri would choose the songs they liked the most while playing the game. For instance, Keri liked Sabbath Bloody Sabbath from Black Sabbath. By the time she made it to 1st grade the teacher wanted to get to know something about her new classroom full of students. Keri was attending a Catholic grade school. The teacher asked each student to tell the class their favorite song. The first student said she liked Mary Had A Little Lamb. The next student liked Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star. When Keri was asked, she replied Sabbath Bloody Sabbath. We got called into a parent/teacher meeting about that. When told about her reply for a favorite song title, I responded with a great big YES! That’s my girl! Needless to say, the parent/teacher meeting ended at that point.

For the longest time I held back from purchasing a Compact Disc (CD) player. Although my dual cassette player was not playing as well anymore, I was convinced that analog sound was THE way to listen to music. Other brothers were deeply into CDs by then, and when listening to music for which I had an analog vinyl version at home, their digital CD version sounded very clear but included a false, overemphasized bass sound quality that did not sound natural. In my mind, analog-produced sound is far superior for rendering the true output of instruments and vocals. I still believe that. Hence, I would not purchase a CD player for the longest time. However, it became harder to find new-release music on vinyl as time went on. Thus, I was forced to buy a CD player.

Now, I had to start stocking up my music collection with a lot of CDs. So, I joined some music clubs where we could purchase several top-notch CDs for a dollar each with the promise that I’d purchase so many more at full price through the club membership. Each month, I’d receive a brochure with several pages showing all the CD albums available. My wife and I started selecting items we would not have otherwise purchased just to fulfill our obligations. We had begun to get interested in Celtic music, with an emphasis on Irish music. It began by purchasing some albums by Enya. We enjoyed those thoroughly. Next, we ventured into some Celtic music compilations in order to get a fuller taste of variety within that genre. Time marched on until we purchased a newly released album by a great Irish musician named John Whelan. John played the accordion while accompanied by other skilled musicians. That album