ICONS Day 1: That voice

Yes, it rained. Not, however, in torrents -- just a persistent drizzle that later on became a fine mist, visible against the lights yet somehow not felt.

Sean Keane's voice isn't exactly visible, and yet when he sings you find yourself visualizing it: as a soft, glowing fire in the hearth, perhaps. And you can certainly feel the warmth emanating from the man, as did the appreciative audience who came to see his end-of-the-night set at the Compass Stage. (I missed the first 15 minutes or so of it, as I was ensconced for the evening at The Burren Stage playing with the BCMFest Bard Squad.)
Sean's never made any bones about genres or categories. His repertoire ranges from the traditional Irish songs he's been singing since his childhood, to contemporary material, blues, country -- well, just about anything he wants. And that voice of his, imbued through and through with the flavor of his native Galway, makes it all work. He's got other talents, too: He can play a pretty mean flute (as he demonstrated on a fine set of reels), and is a master lilter -- at one point he did an amazing duet with his fiddle player Sean Regan, who supplied all kinds of vocal effects underneath Sean's rapid-fire "deedle-lee."
In the end, though, it was all about the songs. Love songs, gently comical songs, others with a sweep of history -- including "Isle of Hope, Isle of Tears," Brendan Graham's moving piece about Annie Moore, a 15-year-old Irish girl who was the first passenger to be registered at the Ellis Island immigration station in 1892.
Sean had wrapped up his set and said a cheery "Good night" when two young women rushed toward the stage and begged him to do "There Were Roses," Tommy Sands' based-in-fact lament about the awful, tragically ironic toll The Troubles inflicted on a neighborhood whose residents had tried to move beyond sectarian divisions. As Sean remarked in his introduction, it's a song that is now about "a different Ireland" -- one that thankfully seems to be receding further into memory.
As he and his accompanists eased into "Roses," one of the women who had made the request swayed to the soft rhythm, holding up a cell phone for the benefit of an absent Sean Keane fan, who no doubt was joining the rest of the crowd in that evocative chorus, bespeaking a solidarity built on mourning and hope.

There were roses

There were roses

And the tears of the people

Ran together

(I'm working on a story about Sean for the October Boston Irish Reporter -- lots to talk about, obviously.)
And what do you know: The sun's just now trying to peek through the morning clouds.

--Sean Smith