Jack Firneno, the Wire
The River Drivers hail from Bristol Borough, but their music spans continents. A quick listen to the traditional Irish folk quartet’s eponymous debut album reveals its influences from the Emerald Isle before crossing over to far-flung Appalachian towns and eventually the U.S.-Mexican border.
But through all those places, the songs, some hundreds of years old, carry a common thread: freedom, and a fair shake, for the workingman.
“We went for the most powerful songs we had, and the theme came out organically,” noted fiddle player Meagan Ratini.
The album opens with Come Out Ye Black and Tans, easily the most overt Irish rebel music offering here, and runs through spirited versions of other Irish folk standards like Erin Go Bragh and Dirty Old Town.
Then there’s that smattering of American music. Guitar, banjo and bass player Kevin McCloskey’s years in a hardcore punk band that toured America and Europe finds him channelling bands like Rise Against more than, say, Cisco Houston, when he sings Woody Guthrie’s Plane Wreck at Las Gatos (Deportees), a song about migrant Mexican workers.
“I started out listening to Irish music, then got into punk,” he said. “I was still in my teens when I went back and realized the connection. [Irish groups like] The Clancy Brothers, the Dubliners have that raw punk feel.”
Meanwhile, songs like Tell God and the Devil and the album’s sole original composition, Blair Mountain, explore the history of mining and union movements in Appalachia — particularly West Virginia, where guitar and banjo player Mindy Murray worked as a medical student.
“We did rotations through hospitals near the mining towns, places where they’d put on TV which mines were open when. There was a lot of poverty,” said Murray. “The things you see get under your skin.”
The tracks, all recorded mostly live in a 12-hour session, are often as much tempests as they are songs. Guitars, banjos, fiddles, and whistles and the last-minute addition of a bass guitar swirl in each one, evoking the communal approach of a traditional Irish session, or maybe a hootenanny.
The approach is even similar to how the players got together in the first place. In what the band calls “an act of God,” the multi-generational River Drivers formed when Murray and McCloskey were asked to play some ’70s folk music for a church event in early 2013.
McCloskey was a childhood friend of Murray’s daughter, Ratini. Soon, Ratini and Murray’s old college roommate Marian Moran, playing whistles and concertina, were brought into the fold.
The chemistry was instant and the band stayed together, gigging casually and settling into a residency running Irish sessions at the Kelch House.
But it wasn’t until they started recording, said Murray, that it all truly came together.
Hearing the playback during that long recording session was the first time the band heard the songs as a whole, not just what they were playing or the instruments closest to them.
“It took us to another level, being able to listen to each other,” she said. “Once we noticed we had a sound, that’s when we figured this was all real.”
And, as of last week, it’s becoming even more so. Even before the album came out, the River Drivers were making a splash on both sides of the Atlantic.
Already, a handful of radio stations from Missouri to Maine have their songs in rotation. The BBC is also playing them, and they recently drew a favorable review from the prominent Trad Connect magazine in Ireland.
It’s much more than the group planned on when they started out, and even more than they expected as they finished their recording. And, it’s changing their approach as well.
For now, the band is playing some familiar haunts: Saturday night at Albert Hall in Waretown, New Jersey, a release show at the Ancient Order of Hibernians lodge in Bristol on April 4, then the Delaware Canal Fest in June.
But after that, the group is eyeing up the festival circuit and a tour of the Appalachian states. There’s also the possibility of a group trip to Ireland, where Moran already visits regularly.
“At first we just wanted to put out a good product. It was all about the music,” she said. “We’re proud of this album, and now we’re looking for ways to create opportunities for more people to hear it.”
For information, visit www.theriverdrivers.com.
