Matt
& Shannon Heaton blend Irish traditional music with original
songs about bicycles, love, and death. Their own compositions
tell timeless tales, while their renditions of centuries-old songs
feel modern. They access real stories, real emotions, and each
show is unique.
Their
traditional music backgrounds are conventional enough:
They
learned in Irish music sessions in Chicago. They took regular
trips to Ireland, where they learned tunes with some of Clare's
finest. (They took just a little time out to get married.) And
they moved to session-rich Boston in 2001. Hear them play, and
you&8217;ll know that they&8217;ve logged a lot of time building
straight-ahead Irish music chops.
But
once you scratch the simple traditional music pedigree you find
something else&8212;a unique personality and vibe that could
only come from these two.
Shannon,
for her part, brings a keen love of language and folk melodies
to the duo. She was raised by writers who took her and her sister
around the western United States for research trips for their
book Let My People Know, a history of Native American journalism,
which involved countless visits to Navajo reservations to collect
oral histories. She learned about highlife music—and started
on the tin whistle from a Belgian neighbor!—while living
in Nsukka, Nigeria, where her folks taught journalism. And she
was drawn into the mournful sound of the Saw Sarm Sai while living
in Suphanburi, Thailand (a sound she still refers to when writing
melodies).
Meanwhile,
Matt's first taste of professional music was turning pages
for his father, an organist and choirmaster, behind the organ
console. After a couple of false starts on the piano and trumpet,
Matt discovered
the guitar. His very first electric, a Harmony electric plus amp
($35 at a garage sale, pointed him in the right direction. After
the amplifier exploded, he focused his energies on the acoustic
guitar. Though he has played classical guitar in Italy, rock in
Chicago, and tango in Denver, it is Irish music in Boston where
he has made his musical home.
Matt
and Shannon have been performing together for over a decade with
a variety of groups, including critically-acclaimed Irish band
Siucra (which they formed with Beth Leachman during their three-year
“sabbatical” in Boulder, CO), tangeuros Orquesta Atipica,
as well as traditional luminaries Aoife Clancy, Robbie O'Connell,
and Scottish gem Emily Smith.
Since
breaking out as a duo in 2003, Matt and Shannon have released
three CDs and one songbook.
Like
Richard Thompson or Nic Jones, the Heatons' music comes
from a traditional aesthetic, a devotion to strong traditional
bones, and a passion for reaching out to the modern world around
them.
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