ICONS Finale: Friends old and new

Really, was there any better way to close out ICONS?
Liam Clancy has done this sort of thing how-many-thousands of times for decades, and for all that at the Compass Stage Sunday night he was clearly relishing the chance to once again sing songs and spin yarns -- which he did as if he was sitting in an easy chair in the parlor with just a few close friends, instead of in front of several thousand people on a good-sized stage in the middle of a field south of Boston.
There was a surprise or two along the way, like his rendition of The Pogues' "The Majestic Shannon." But no, Liam wasn't about to transmogrify into Shane McGowan before our eyes.
It's sometimes easy to forget that Liam had a pretty good grounding in theater before this whole Irish music revival took off, and he used that background very effectively at one point, telling about the sinking of a ship that took more than lives -- it also meant another loss to the eroding knowledge, expertise and experience of sea-faring. But instead of launching into a lament, Liam used his introduction as a point of departure: Out came "The Mary Ellen Carter," Stan Rogers' classic tribute to perseverance and solidarity in the face of certain disaster.

Rise again, rise again
Though your heart it be broken or life about to end
No matter what you've lost
Be it a home, a love, a friend
Like the Mary Ellen Carter, rise again

There was a certain poignancy at work here, because Liam had indeed lost a friend, and a dear one at that, the year before: Tommy Makem. But Liam honored his memory the way Tommy no doubt would've loved, reminiscing about their days of yore in 1960s Greenwich Village, and their unlikely friendship with one Robert Zimmerman, AKA Bob Dylan, who was wont to fashion a song or two from the folk tradition. Accordingly, Liam brought on his son Donal and Robbie O'Connell to do "Rambling Gambling Willie," with Liam doing a side-splitting Dylan imitation for a verse.

Next was another Makem-Clancy standard, "The Wild Colonial Boy," and an encore with "Those Were the Days," sung with just the right amount of winking-eye humor to keep it from getting way too sentimental.
Liam et al temporarily made way for a huge contingent of festival performers, including members of Crooked Still, Solas, Lunasa and Footworks. Taken as a whole, this was one impressive spectacle.

But if you narrowed your focus here and there among the assembled multitude, you could catch some other diverting scenes, like Sean Smyth (Lunasa) and Winifred Horan (Solas) having a fiddle-off:

Or Crooked Still's Aoife O'Donovan, obviously enjoying herself far too much, alongside hot-picking Alison Brown.


Or fellow Crooked Stiller Corey DiMario and John Doyle, who had that whole "we-be-getting-down-with-our-bad-selves" head-bobbing thing going on with each other.

Liam, Robbie, Aoife Clancy and just about everyone else came out for the finale of the finale, "Wild Mountain Thyme."


...and Liam made sure to compliment the audience on their singing of the chorus.

The last "Will you go, lassie, will you go?" resounded in the misty air, there were hugs all around on stage, and the audience gathered up jackets, umbrellas, back packs and other belongings, ready -- if not entirely willing -- to trek back out to the parking lot and begin the drive home.

The Littlest Postcript

That young lady in the pink shirt and galoshes in the photo below is Alison Brown's daughter Hannah, who during the weekend showed herself to be lacking little in stage presence: On Saturday, she made a cameo appearance in her mom's set and belted out "California, Here I Come," and then at the finale joined Liam Harney and some of the Footworks folk for a bit of hoofing.

After "Wild Mountain Thyme" was over, Hannah could be seen (barely) amidst a Redwood Forest of grown-ups as they mingled on stage before going off to pack away instruments, check messages and relax -- or in some cases, head to the airport and their next gig.

I don't know how many festivals or concerts Hannah goes to with her mom, whether any of them stand out in some way, shape or form, or if it just becomes routine after a while -- but hopefully she enjoyed herself at ICONS at least as much as the grown-ups did.

--Sean Smith

(Note: Honestly not trying to be self-aggrandizing here, but I'll mention that the above photo was an honest-to-goodness happy accident. I was standing near one of the rear stage entrances, and just held up and pointed my camera toward the crowd on stage without looking through the viewfinder. It wasn't until later that I saw the photo I'd taken. I think the only similar experience I had was at the 2004 Red Sox victory parade, when as the cavalcade passed by I snapped a picture of Curt Schilling and wound up including unofficial Sox mascot Nelson de la Rosa in the shot.)