Martin Hayes encapsulates that definition of a fiddle – a violin with attitude. He was born at Maghera near Feakle in East Clare in 1962. The area is rich in Irish traditional music, his father PJoe Hayes was a founder member of the famed Tulla Ceili Band and noted Clare fiddler Paddy Canny was an uncle. The young Martin was aware of the music from the moment he could hear and picked it up not from recordings but from the primary source.
He started playing the fiddle at the age of seven. At 13 he was participating in national competitions; he won his first championship title at age 14. He won six All-Ireland titles. Also at 14 years, he started with the Tulla Ceili Band, playing every week for traditional dancers throughout Ireland, and performing at dances and concerts in England and the U.S.
“My father says that he taught me seven tunes and after that I was out on my own,” he once told an interviewer. “He spent a short period teaching me direct things and after that he became a kind of mentor. To this day he still acts as a mentor and I ask him what he thinks.”
His sister Helen is a fine traditional singer.His brother PJ isn’t a musician, but as well as being a local politician (member of Clare Co Council) is involved in organising the annual Feakle Festival. “I remember watching Martin and he learned to play the fiddle without actually reading the music,” he told The Clare Champion. “He learned by watching my father’s finger movements up and down the finger board. I tried but obviously didn’t have the flare for it.”
So immersed was Martin in the world of traditional music, he was into his late teens before he became familiar with with pop and rock n’ roll.
His influences range from Micho Russell to Miles Davis. Russell, he said, “had a natural innocence about him and a lack of ego.” He was also impressed by accordionist Joe Cooley and Paddy Fahey, the East Galway fiddle player and composer of many dance tunes. Another important figure in his development was the Dublin fiddle player Tommy Potts. From the Coombe area of Dublin, Potts (1912-88) cultivated a strong individual interpretation while remaining inside the tradition.
In his early twenties Hayes went to live in Chicago. Here he became disenchanted with his own playing on the Irish circuit. “I became bored with traditional music,” he told journalist Paul Byrne in 1995. “And more precisely, I became bored with what I was coming up with myself. I was also at a phase when I was being sacrilegious about being Irish. I was a time in which I needed to rip it all apart and start again. I felt Irish music had to progress, that it needed to develop, to be as good as any other form of music.”
Around this time he met guitarist Dennis Cahill who had been playing on the the Irish scene in Chicago with people like Jimmy Keane, Larry Nugent and Liz Carroll. Hayes and Cahill joined a jazz/rock group, Midnight Court, 1988-91. “When I got involved in Midnight Court it was very much in the context of fighting what I’d grown up with in regard to Irish music,” he told Byrne.
“On a personal level I was going through a real rejection of my past, my culture, my upbringing. I rejected everything and Midnight Court was very much a scream born out of that rejection. I desecrated everything, brought everything back to level one, and started all over again. And if there were things that were worth salvaging, I’d keep them. But I was taking nothing on board out of tradition, or nostalgia.” The more he experimented with sheer volume the more he became convinced that as the great jazz trumpeter Miles Davis once pointed out, it’s the silence that marks great music.
Following this long period of deconstruction and change, he left Midnight Court, went to live in Seattle and recorded Martin Hayes, released in 1993. The album received critical acclaim and was named among the Top Ten best albums of 1993 in both The Irish Times and the Irish Echo. More importantly, it earned him a growing respect back in Ireland among musicians and listeners for his ability to interpret the music afresh which still staying within the tradition. He had come full circle, but with a greater understanding of himself as a musician and of the truth and spirit of the music.
The critics heaped more praise upon Under the Moon, released in 1995. Bill Graham of Hot Press gave it a full 12 out of 12, noting that “it’s not easy to select peaks when there’s no troughs.”
There have been notable duets in Irish music: Sean Maguire and Barney McKenna teaming up on The Mason’s Apron, Tony MacMahon and Noel Hill for the album In Knocknagree, and so on. But it is rare to find a duet which so endures and in which the pair are so much a part of each other’s music, as Martin Hayes and Dennis Cahill. A friend from his early days in Chicago, the fiddle player has consistently referred in interviews to Cahill’s contribution. They get equal billing on for The Lonesome Touch, 1997 and Live In Seattle, 1999. Cahill’s innovative accompaniment is widely regarded as being a breakthrough for guitar in the Irish tradition. “I couldn’t play this sort of music if Dennis wasn’t playing with me,” Hayes told one interviewer. “We’re like two hands on a piano.”
He has been playing the same fiddle throughout his musical career. A German fiddle, late 19th century, his father bought it in the early 1950s. He didn’t like it, so it got put up in the attic. When Martin was 12 and needed a full-size fiddle, it was retrieved. “I’ve had it ever since – it’s what I record with, perform with, everything. It’s rare to find an instrument for life so early.”
He reckons he travels 70,000 to 80,000 miles a year from his new base in New England. He returns to Ireland for about three months every year. “I come back so often that I don’t feel disconnected from it. If I lived here, I’d probably spend as much time away from Ireland as I do now. Teaching at the Willie Clancy Week in Miltown Malbay as well as playing in the Feakle Festival each year he regards as a must. In 2010 he collaborated with Caoimhin O Raghallaigh and Peadar O Riada on an album of the latter’s compositions.  © Ronan Nolan, 2000-2010.
Discography
Live in Seattle, Martin Hayes and Dennis Cahill, Green Linnet, 1999
The Lonesome Touch, Martin Hayes and Dennis Cahill, Green Linnet, 1997
Under the Moon, Green Linnet 1995
Martin Hayes, Martin Hayes, Green Linnet 1993
The Shores of Lough Graney, Martin Hayes and P.J. Hayes, 1990
The Boston College Irish Fiddle Festival: My Love Is in America, Green Linnet, 1991
The Humours of Clare, Clare FM, 1991
An Fhidil, Gael Linn, 1979
Slogadh Naisiunta Champions, Gael Linn, 1977