I've been enjoying Dan Gurney's boxplaying for a while now.

I gave him his first few lessons on the B/C box when he was 7 years of age. We were at The Catskills Irish Arts Week back in the mid-1990's, and as Sean McGlynn would have said, "He was like a sponge."

Dan credits concertina player Father Charlie Coen as his greatest musical inspiration. Fr. Charlie used to run a monthly concert series/session, and it was as real and as good as it gets. Young Dan and his parents Jim and Jeanette were there for all of it, soaking it in and putting the musical pieces together. It's where he learned The Music and met the people that love it. And Father Charlie made it happen.

Dan is comfortable with the mighty New York musicians that came before him. Actually, he's well-liked by players young and old, including my sons Sean and Mikey. With coaxing, he'll speak of the great boxplayers like John Nolan, John Whelan, James Keane, Martin Mulhaire, the legendary Joe Madden and National Heritage Fellowship recipient Joe Derrane from Boston. They're but a few of his favorite boxplayers here on the East Coast.

As you'll hear on this recording, Dan is becoming a pretty great player himself. His music is tasteful, beautifully thought out and elegantly executed. As the Irishman said, "If it were any better it would be wrong."
I learned this past August that Dan is also a fierce, fearless, and flawless competitor. My wife Annie and I proudly witnessed his stellar debut performance at the Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann in Co. Cavan, and I can safely say that the All Ireland Championship title will be his if he chooses to pursue it.

Players and fans of Irish Traditional Music are going to love this recording, which I hope will be the first of many. Part of the fun is that Dan is still a bit ahead of his time, a relative unknown. To quote Sean McGlynn again: "There's such a thing as being too good". It takes us time to recognize genius.

But time is catching up with Dan Gurney.

I love it.

Billy McComiskey, September 2011

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Having known Danny since he played his first tune at the old Rhinecliff Hotel , it is an honor for me to say a word of appreciation for him and his new CD.

I suppose he was about seven years old when he first started showing up at the twice monthly sessions. He would come back each time having mastered some new tunes all on his own. Every artist who performed there recognized his very special talent, and all wanted to offer "Advice" which at times must have been very repetitious and annoying. Dan, however, listened patiently to all and was able to pick the best from all his "tutors".

Traditional Irish Music on the Button Accordion is a joy to listen to. It is not one you will play once and put aside. I have played it over and over and enjoy it more each time. Dan has stamped his own identity on the music, which makes it so interesting to listen to. His choice of tunes provide plenty of variety, and with the many changes in rhythm and tempo, it is never boring.. I especially liked the slow air SLIABH GEAL GCUA;
jigs, DRIVING THE COWS AND THE BOW-LEGGED TAILOR, AND THE ECLIPSE, which latter does not allow the tremendous
finger dexterity to interfere with or slaughter the beautiful melody.

Traditional Irish Music on the Button Accordion is a beautiful CD and I know you will enjoy it as much as I have.

Monsignor Charlie Coen

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Something Clicked for Dan Gurney
by Earle Hitchner

In July of 1998, I wrote an article for The Wall Street Journal on a musician born and raised in Rhinebeck, New York, who was making a stir playing Irish traditional tunes on the button accordion: Dan Gurney. He was 11 years old at the time. Largely self-taught, Dan was already a U.S. button accordion champion in Irish music and had composed at least one reel I heard him play back then: “Mad Maggie.” His musical potential was obvious, and his artist parents, James and Jeanette, had provided a nurturing home for his talent. But still I wondered if this precocious pre-teenager would stick with Irish traditional music and explore ways to improve his playing and deepen his understanding of the culture from which the music springs.

During the past 13 years, the answer has been emphatically yes. Dan Gurney’s progression in Irish traditional music has been as steady as his progression in accordions. After the toy ones he broke through constant playing as a very young child, he has played a Hohner C/G, Hohner B/C, Saltarelle B/C, Cairdin B/C, and the box he uses today: a Paolo Soprani B/C, two-coupler, four-bass button accordion. Those accordion acquisitions certainly served the advancing technical side of Dan’s music-making, but it was the formal and informal tutelage he received from East Galway-born singer and concertina, flute, and whistle player Father (now Monsignor) Charlie Coen in New York’s Hudson Valley that proved pivotal. “The Irish traditional music I want to play comes from the values instilled in me by Father Charlie,” Dan said. “If he hadn’t been nearby, I would probably be playing something totally different. I owe him so much.”

Those values from Monsignor Charlie Coen, further instruction from button accordionists Joe Derrane, Billy McComiskey, and John Whelan, membership in the Hay Brigade (an adventurous American roots-music quartet also featuring fiddler Duncan Wickel, mandolinist Forrest O’Connor, and bassist Nicky Schwartz), and sessions or concerts with Hudson Valley fiddler and flutist Dylan Foley, Boston-based flute and whistle player Jimmy Noonan, and other musicians in the U.S. all shaped Dan’s aptitude and attitude in music. In late spring of 2009, on the cusp of graduating from Harvard University with a B.A. in music, Dan won the Henry Russell Shaw Fellowship allowing him to study and play traditional music in Ireland for a year. It turned out to be a life-altering decision. “I grew up in the States and had acquired a certain knowledge of Irish music, but I didn’t really understand the culture, which is just as important as the music,” Dan explained. “It took living in Ireland for a year to get a sense of what’s around the music. It’s not just the notes you’re playing. It’s what is behind the notes you’re playing: the people, places, and emotions. Those are at least half of Irish music.”

In Galway City, where he lived in an apartment beside the Spanish Arch, Dan regularly played in sessions at Tigh Coili’s and also did a few concerts with Caherlistrane singer Dolores Keane while he worked part-time in Powell’s music shop. There he met fellow employee Brian McGrath, a highly respected banjoist and pianist originally from Fermanagh, who in 2002 had recorded the album Ireland’s Harvest with one of Dan’s instructors, Joe Derrane, and fiddler Frankie Gavin. The meeting between Dan and Brian was fortuitous, leading eventually to the recording of Traditional Irish Music on the Button Accordion, Dan’s solo debut with Brian accompanying on piano. “The album definitely grew out of my living and playing in Galway,” Dan said. “I was trying a lot of different things musically over the years, but I realized that nothing connects with me as much as Irish traditional music does. I think that’s the nature of Irish music itself. For some, it seems simple at first hearing, but it’s actually nothing of the kind. All the things I have tried or experimented with musically have given me a much better perspective on what Irish music has and what a lot of other kinds of music don’t have.”

Before heading over to Ireland to record his solo debut, Dan spent most of the summer of 2011 just playing tunes on his accordion in his Cambridge, Massachusetts, apartment. It was another turning point for his music. “I basically stopped gigging and sat on a futon in my room for hours with my music,” he said. “I didn’t practice per se. I just wanted to focus on and figure out what I was trying to say with my music. It’s easy to overlook your own voice when you’re playing with other people all the time. I felt I had something I wanted to express, so I called Brian, and we arranged to record in Longford with engineer Paul Gurney.”

Relying on a notebook of tune sets he had already mapped out, Dan entered RealWorld Studios on August 13, 2011, at 11:30 in the morning and finished recording 15 tracks with Brian by 3:00 in the afternoon. “From the first note, everything flowed,” Dan recalled. “We did reels at the outset, then we did jigs, and I was waiting for something to go wrong because it was all happening too easily. But we kept going because it was working. I had booked additional days in the studio, but Brian and I felt we were on a roll, so why not finish it up? The order of the 15 tracks on the album is the order that I recorded them in. The first note you hear on the album is the first note I recorded with Brian.”

In three hours, the album was essentially done. It’s an impressive achievement for Dan Gurney. His unfaltering taste in tunes matches his interpretation of them, whether in the triplets he executes so nimbly during the hornpipes “Fly by Night / The Eclipse,” the emotion he wrings so delicately from his unaccompanied solo on the slow air “Sliabh Geal gCua,” or the musicality he invests so spiritedly in the reels “Farewell to Ireland / The Beauty Spot / The Flowers of Red Hill.”

“I wanted to approach the recording in a way similar to the experience I had playing music in Galway during the prior year,” Dan said. “I wanted the music to be laidback, not rehearsed, because if it’s too rehearsed, the tunes don’t have as much life in them or as much spontaneity. Recording the album was a chance to play a lot of the music I learned over the years. It was also a chance for me to say that this is what I want to play and how I want to play it. During this whole album experience, something clicked for me. It’s something I’m happy to have done, something I’m proud of, and something I can build on.”

Earle Hitchner is a contributing music writer for The Wall Street Journal and the “Ceol” columnist for the Irish Echo.

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1. The Brook / Ambrose Moloney's
I learned the first tune from Boston-based flute player Jimmy Noonan, who heard the London band Le Cheile playing it. The second tune I associate with the playing of Roscommon flute player Mike McHale and the Catskills Ceili Band.

2. Contentment Is Wealth / Tae in the Bog
When I was living in Galway, I often played the first tune with Ronan O'Flaherty in Tigh Coili -- my favorite music pub anywhere. Tae in the Bog is a composition of Fermanagh fiddle player Seamus Quinn.

3. Fly By Night / The Eclipse
Two hornpipes from the playing of a fantastic box player, teacher, and true gentleman -- Joe Derrane.

4. Paddy Reynolds' Dream / I Buried My Wife and Danced On Her Grave
I put this set together with New York fiddle player Dylan Foley, although I've transposed them into the key of A to sit more easily on the box.

5. Farewell to Ireland / The Beauty Spot / The Flowers of Red Hill
The first reel is my own version of Farewell to Ireland. Same goes for the second. The Flowers of Red Hill is a tune commonly played around the Galway sessions; I associate it with Mick Conneely, Jonas Fromseier, and Johnny Ringo McDonagh.

6. The Ebb Tide / Courting Them All / The Hut in the Bog
Isaac Alderson played this one night at the Burren in Boston. It appears to be a minor-key version of the G major hornpipe. Courting Them All was recorded by Jimmy Noonan on his album The Maple Leaf with Chris McGrath, Ted Davis, and Michael Shorrock. This particular version of The Hut in the Bog I learned from the playing of Seamus Quinn.

7. The Princess Royal
I got this unusual march from Woodford concertina player Monsignor Charlie Coen, who has been the biggest influence on my music over the years. There's also a hornpipe and set dance version of this tune.

8. Greensleeves / The Banks of Newfoundland
I remember learning the first tune from Galway-based flute player Gary Hastings during a great session at Ward's Hotel in Salthill along with guitarist Kevin Hough. The second tune I picked up from accordionist Colm Gannon and fiddler Jesse Smith during a memorable night in the Catskills during the annual Irish Arts Week.

9. Molly Brannigan / The Humors of Loughrea / The Green Fields of America / The Mouse Behind the Dresser
The Green Fields of America, usually played as a reel, was brought to my attention as a sean-nos song called Molly Brannigan by the singer Bridget Fitzgerald. Boston-based fiddler Tina Lech and her husband, guitarist Ted Davis, played the second tune one night at the Druid in Inman Square. The final tune, The Mouse Behind the Dresser, was a big hit (for me, anyway) during the Catskills week.

10. The Teena Jig / Dinny O'Brien's / The Twopenny Bit
The first tune comes from Monsignor Charlie Coen, with a tonality that I associate with the East Galway music of him and his brother Jack. Seamus Connolly recorded the second tune on one of my favorite albums, The Banks of the Shannon, with Paddy O'Brien, the father of the B/C accordion. I found The Twopenny Bit while looking through O'Neill's Book of 1001 Gems.

11. Sliabh Geal gCua
A beautiful air from Monsignor Charlie which he usually sings in Irish.

12. Parnell's March
This tune was recorded on Monsignor Charlie Coen's first album entitled "Father Charlie."

13. Driving the Cows Home / The Bowlegged Tailor
Two old East Galway jigs with great names that I have never heard elsewhere. They come, again, from Monsignor Charlie.

14. The Humors of Bandon / Sweet Molly Brown
These two set dances were often played at sessions in the now-defunct Rhinecliff Hotel, a legendary concert series run by Monsignor Charlie in Upstate New York, which I regularly attended while growing up.

15. Master Crowley's / Finbarr Dwyer's / The Spike Island Lassies
I learned this version of Master Crowley's from Kerry concertina player Cormac Begley, but you shouldn't blame him -- I'm the one who added the extra part on the end. The second tune I learned from a recording of Finbarr Dwyer and Brian McGrath playing at Dolan's in Limerick. The final tune is a tribute to my first teacher and the first person to lend me a B/C box at 7 years of age -- the one and only Billy McComiskey.