Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, March 17, 1990 TAG: 9003172161
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JOE KENNEDY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
"I remember being very drawn to the music at that time," he said. He is drawn to it still, only now, others are, too.
Baldwin is a principal in Second Wynde, a Roanoke band that mixes Celtic tunes with rock 'n' roll, rhythm and blues and even show tunes. The group, which is a consortium of musicians as much as anything, can tailor its playlist to the desires of its employer of the moment, or mix it up.
But always the group members like to play some Irish or Scottish tunes, just to keep things lively.
Second Wynde is not Roanoke's oldest Celtic music group or even its best known. That distinction belongs to No Strings Attached, the Blacksburg- and Roanoke-based hammer dulcimer band that plays both traditional and progressive Celtic and "world" music, tours other parts of the country and releases recordings at regular intervals.
NSA is about 10 years old. It started around the time that Baldwin, Blake Medding and Polly Sabean were playing folk music. Baldwin, who grew up loving Celtic sounds, had never met a musical soul mate until he enrolled at the University of Richmond.
Later, in Medding, he found someone whose tastes ranged from folk to bluegrass to old-time and Irish fiddle tunes.
"He had the same feeling I did: `No one else in Roanoke knows about it' " - it, of course, meaning Celtic music.
Baldwin, Medding and others formed Hawthorne, a traditional Celtic band that dissolved after a couple of years because of its members' conflicting ideas about musical direction.
Baldwin and several others then formed MacCeisgh-O'Merdh, a Scottish and Irish band that sometimes put as many as 10 people on stage. It, too, lasted about three years, and it, too, dissolved, partly because of an inability to find showcases for its talents.
"We could do two or three things in Roanoke per year and get 400 to 500 folks," Baldwin said. Otherwise, crowds and venues were difficult to muster.
Until a few months ago Sgt. Pepper's British Pub in the Plaza of Roanoke-Salem offered a weekly night of Irish music. It proved popular with the players, less so with the public.
Out of those musicians came The Banshee, a traditional Irish band that has been playing lately at Potpourri in Southwest Plaza in Roanoke.
Limited though its audience may be, traditional tunes from the British Isles cast a spell over their apostles that more mainstream songs do not.
"When Irish Eyes are Smiling" may bring a tear to some eyes, but Baldwin prefers songs "coming from an older and more rural folk tradition . . . dance music and ballads, things that recounted the history, as in all folk music, a retelling of historical events."
He especially likes to trace American folk songs to their origins in the British Isles.
Forced to flee because of famine and oppression, the Irish "took with them a desire to still be in their homeland and they expressed it through their music," he said. That helps account for the political vitality of Irish music even today.
"England could take away their culture, their political system, but they really couldn't take away their music and stories."
After arriving in their new homes, many Irish buckled down to "a struggle of just surviving in a new world with its problems and challenges." The traditional songs from the homeland often went ignored.
In more recent times, the true songs of old Ireland have been revived, often by young adherents who, like Baldwin, are not even Irish.
by CNB