Paddy Keenan’s father John came from Westmeath, his mother, Mary Bravender, from Co. Cavan. Both Paddy’s father and grandfather were uilleann pipers and his father was a pipe-maker. Paddy’s brother Johnny was a well-known banjo player up to his death in March 2000. In 1955 the family settled in Ballyfermot, Dublin, under a government settlement scheme. Another Traveller family to settle in Ballyfermot around that time was the Fureys. Their father Ted was a fiddle player. They were neighbours and friends of the Keenan’s. Johnny also taught the pipes and has been an important influenced Paddy’s style. Paddy himself took up the pipes at the age of ten and at 14 played on stage in Dublin’s Gaiety Theatre at a travellers’ benefit show.
He told one interviewer: “When I was a young lad, my dad taught me the pipes and other instruments, and all of my siblings as well. I remember him saying that he didn’t have a whole lot to give us, but he’d give us music and that would be a great help to us. We’d never really go hungry, even if we had to sit on the side of the road and busk with it. He went on to play with the Johnny Snr and brothers Tommy and Brendan, a whistle player, in a group called The Pavees in a regular session in Slattery’s in Dublin’s Capel Street.
At 17 he travelled around Europe and England. Returning to Ireland after a few years, he began playing around Dublin with singers Micheal and Triona Ni Dhomhnaill. Fiddler Paddy Glackin then joined them followed by flute player Matt Molloy. Next came accordeon player Tony MacMahon and then Donal Lunny. They called themselves “Seachtar,” the Irish word for “seven.”
Seachtar’s first major concert was in Dublin. They played a few more gigs around the country before Tony MacMahon left. When the rest of the band decided to turn professional Paddy Glackin was replaced by Donegal fiddler Tommy Peoples, (later replaced by fiddler Kevin Burke). Renamed The Bothy Band in 1975, they became one of the most exciting traditional groups anywhere in the Seventies. They played for the last time at the Balisodare Festival in Co Sligo in 1979.
After the break-up of the Bothy Band, Paddy Keenan spent time in Brittany and West Cork before eventually going to America and settling in the Boston area in the early 1990s. In demand in the US for festivals and coffee houses, he is also a regular visitor to Ireland and the Continent. He has composed and arranged two pieces for the soundtrack of the film Traveller. He also recorded with fiddler James Kelly.
“Today, I find myself playing with far more feeling than a lot of the time when I was in Ireland,” he said recently. “Of course, I was younger, so it was one big party.…If I’d stayed in Ireland, I would have ended up pretty sick, or dead. But when I got to the States I sort of settled more, and the music has benefited from that.”
People can’t help connecting Paddy’s flowing, open-fingered style of playing with that of those other great travelling pipers, Johnny and Felix Doran, but both Paddy’s father and grandfather played in the same style. Although often compared to Doran, Paddy was 19 or 20 before he heard a tape of Johnny Doran’s playing; his own style is a direct result of his father’s teaching and influence.
In recent years, he has inspired the setting up of a pipers’ club in Moscow, and collaborated with blues and jazz musicians, as well as bluegrass players such as Junji Shirota and Tim O’Brien.
When Keenan moved back to Ireland in 2010, he settled in Shangarry, south Tipperary. It wasn’t quite what he had expected, though, due largely to matters meteorological.
“Man, that was a huge surprise for me,” he told the Irish Times. “I nearly froze to death. I stuck it out until February and then I went on the road. I want to come back, though, because I love Ireland, even though the States has been very good to me.”
He added that the popularity of piping among women players has brought a whole new dimension to the instrument. “A lot of young male pipers are very much into the technical, speed and competition side of playing. They’re into a wilder, crazy kind of playing. You won’t find that among female players, and it makes for more individual playing. It’s warmer and there’s more mood being expressed.”
Discography
Na Keen Affair, Paddy Keenan, 1996, Hot Conga
Port an Piobaire, Paddy Keenan, Gael-linn
Doublin’, Paddy Glackin and Paddy Keenan, 1979, Tara, CD & LP
