Jess Michaels
Lilies of the Midwest.
Lilies of the Midwest: the energy of traditional music that will not be denied.
There aren’t many art forms that invite a beginner to learn dance steps along with starting an instrument. Traditional Irish music is one. As a teenager growing up in Ohio, Charlene Adzima enrolled in Irish step dancing classes as she learned to play the fiddle. The two go hand-in-hand, she says. “Yes, dance does inform the music,” she says, “and the music informs the dance.”
All three members of Adzima’s Gaelic folk trio, The Lilies of the Midwest, have dance backgrounds along with their musical experience. On March 16, the Lilies will host a St. Patrick’s Day dance and record release party at The Bur Oak for their new album Cat’s Ceili (pronounced KAY-leee). That title also connects music to dance — a ceili is a traditional Scottish and Irish house party with dancing, also known as a Highland fling. And the cats?
Adzima says the group members have more than their fair share of household cats that make up the band’s audience during rehearsals.
There are a handful of traditional Gaelic music groups in Wisconsin, but few with the Lilies’ pedigree. Adzima has been perfecting the form since she was 13. She’s toured nationally with several ensembles and even did a three-season residency (“up to four shows per day”) in the mid-2000s at Dollywood. She’s also a competitive step dancer. Mandolin, accordion and bouzouki player Jeanna Schultz is an avid set dancer, which Adzima describes as Irish square dancing. Kara Rogers studied concertina under John Williams, a former player with Solas, a group many critics agree is the best American Celtic ensemble. Rogers competed on the concertina twice in Ireland and in 2019 took gold at the Midwest Fleadh, the main regional, traditional Irish music competition. Guitarist Rick Nelson joined the three on the album as he will on their March gigs. Schultz calls him an “honorary Lily.”
The Lilies began playing together in 2016 in preparation for a competition, long a big thing in Irish music. These contests between instrumentalists were carried from Ireland to the U.S. by the people who also brought the music as early as the 1730s, and led to not only modern Irish competitions but also to the fiddle and banjo competitions that persist in Appalachia today.
Adzima is committed to preserving the music, letting it live more or less untouched from the faraway places and times of the past. A novice, either a listener or a performer, who listens hard enough can eventually hear the music like a language, a deceptively simple one. “The way that Irish music works is a bit like LEGO,” she says. “Where you play a tune and then repeat it, maybe two, three, four times. And then you move into another tune and they’re eminently detachable and reattachable.”
Cat’s Ceili bursts with the energy of traditional music that will not be denied. The nine tracks are a mixture of traditional, original and public domain. The collection includes “songs,” which Adzima says is the Irish term for music that has lyrics, and “tunes,” which are instrumentals. And while the temptation to update and/or experiment with the form is always there, the Lilies resist that.
“There are a lot of older music styles that maybe sound a little creaky, or might sound out of tune,” Adzima says. “Part of that is part of the charm, that’s part of the authenticity — which is a loaded word, but the tradition is living.” The trick is “not to whip it into submission.”
The new album will be available at the Bur Oak launch party on CD as well as on a limited edition USB drive, custom-shaped in their logo. Their music is also streaming on major services and available on Bandcamp. Adzima says the goal of the Bur Oak party is to make the audience feel as though they’re in the middle of a real old school ceili. “There will be dancers and we’re inviting some local players to join us after the show.” And she says there will be a special guest delivering some limericks. How much more Gaelic does it get than that?
