{"id":1326679,"date":"2018-08-02T09:13:08","date_gmt":"2018-08-02T13:13:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fnpsites.net\/playlist\/?p=1326679"},"modified":"2018-08-02T09:13:08","modified_gmt":"2018-08-02T13:13:08","slug":"alivefive-across-the-pond","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fnpsites.net\/playlist\/2018\/08\/02\/alivefive-across-the-pond\/","title":{"rendered":"Alive@Five: Across The Pond"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"1170\" height=\"878\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/GsGyErFGqFU?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"autoplay; encrypted-media\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Across the Pond is a Celtic band without a single member from Scotland or Ireland. It doesn\u2019t need one. Somehow, the music managed to unite a Navy veteran, a former chemist, and a full-time guitar instructor who got his start in a country rock group called Hired Guns.<\/p>\n<p>Sure, band leader Dan Diviney can trace his Irish ancestry back to the 1700s, when his forefathers emigrated to central Pennsylvania to work as lumberjacks and coal miners. But he had no background in Celtic music \u2014 the first instrument he ever played was a tin whistle his mother bought for him at the end of his six-year career as a Navy meteorologist.<\/p>\n<p>That was in 1980, but it wasn\u2019t until 1989 that he picked up the whistle for the first time. In the middle of relocating his family from Nebraska to Pittsburgh, he went to see Makem and Clancy, an Irish folk duo famous for songs like \u201cAnd the Band Played Waltzing Matilda.\u201d Watching the men play, Diviney said, something clicked.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cEven though I\u2019m a native-born American, the music comes out of 800 years of oppression,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s addictive. So, for the last 15 to 20 years, that\u2019s been the primary focus of my life.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He started playing whistles and bodhran, an Irish drum, at seisiuns \u2014 jam sessions for traditional Irish music. That\u2019s how he met Mike Morrison, a full-time performer and guitar instructor. In the past, Morrison had played in a country band called Latigo Smith, which later evolved into Hired Guns. But his interest in Celtic music stemmed back to his childhood on a farm near Dillsburg, Pennsylvania, where he grew up listening to bluegrass and old-time Appalachian music.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat type of music has a lot of its roots in Scotch-Irish music,\u201d Morrison said. \u201cThe immigrants who who came and settled in the Appalachian Mountains were mostly Irish and Scottish, and they brought their music with them.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>By 2004, Morrison and Diviney had formed their first Irish band, Cormorant\u2019s Fancy (the cormorant, Diviney said, is a large, black waterbird common on the Irish coasts). The group had Morrison on the guitar, flute, and mandolin, and Diviney on the drums and whistles, but no fiddler \u2014 an essential instrument in traditional Celtic music. That\u2019s something Chuck Krepley noticed when he saw the band in 2007 at the historic Fairfield Inn in Fairfield, Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n<p>At that point, Krepley \u2014 a former chemist \u2014 had nearly 30 years of experience on the violin. He had started his musical career as a bluegrass banjoist, but took up the fiddle to add an extra layer of authenticity to his French and Indian War re-enactment group.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe played a group of Scottish highlanders from the 1700s who were serving with the British Army,\u201d Krepley said. \u201cHistorically, banjos weren\u2019t around in the 1750s, but fiddles were.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In 2007, he was also halfway through a two-year apprenticeship with Bluett Bros. Violins, a handmade instrument store in York. Diviney and Morrison auditioned him for the band, and the dynamic clicked.<\/p>\n<p>Three years later, Cormorant\u2019s Fancy disbanded and rebranded as Across the Pond, Diviney said. He, Morrison, and Krepley are still the band\u2019s primary three members, and they play about 90 shows a year from North Carolina to Montreal.<\/p>\n<p>Weddings and Celtic festivals are some of their primary gigs, naturally, but the band books a surprisingly diverse range of performances. Diviney said they\u2019ve played a corporate event in Manhattan for Captify, a fast-growing British tech company. Back in March, the romance novelist Nora Roberts \u2014 a famous resident of Boonsboro \u2014 hired the band to play a traditional evening c\u00e8ilidh at her home.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCeltic music is sort of a niche market for a niche audience,\u201d Krepley said. \u201cBut I think because of the energy we put into performances, we attract fans who wouldn\u2019t ordinarily be interested. Celtic music can be haunting, it it can be ethereal, it can be powerful and driving, and it just has an authenticity that I think immediately appeals to people.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Diviney might be the band\u2019s leader behind the scenes, but Morrison is the \u201cquarterback\u201d onstage, Diviney said. That\u2019s largely because the band doesn\u2019t play with a traditional setlist. They\u2019ve worked out a repertoire that ranges from the contemporary \u2014 songs written in the past century \u2014 to traditional Gaelic ballads written over a thousand years ago. Morrison goes onstage with a loose list of songs, but mostly depends on audience feedback to decide what the band will play next.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI like the ability to be able to let the show take on its own life,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd if something is really working during a show, I want to keep that vibe going for a little bit.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The band\u2019s Alive @ 5 performance tonight will also include Emily Warren, an 18-year-old step dancer trained at the Broesler School of Irish Dance in Baltimore. By the time she was two years old, Warren said she was watching taped \u201cRiverdance\u201d performances every day at home.<\/p>\n<p>Her parents initially tried enrolling her in ballet \u2014 the classes were much closer to her home in Gettysburg \u2014 but quickly realized her affection for both forms of dance was not equally distributed.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI was not having it,\u201d Warren said. Her parents enrolled her at the Coyle School of Irish Dance near Philadelphia \u2014 an hour-and-15-minute drive from her house \u2014 and later transferred her to Broesler, a nearly two-hour drive away. But the commute paid off. She\u2019s now an open champion in Irish dance and tours regularly with Across the Pond.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think it really adds to the performance value,\u201d Warren said. \u201cI\u2019m really big on pulling people up from the audience. And it\u2019s traditional. When you go to a bar or pub in Ireland to see a band, nine times out of 10, they\u2019ll have an Irish dancer with them.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Across the Pond is a Celtic band without a single member from Scotland or Ireland. It doesn\u2019t need one. Somehow, the music managed to unite a Navy veteran, a former&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":1326680,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[54],"class_list":["post-1326679","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-alivefive"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fnpsites.net\/playlist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1326679","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fnpsites.net\/playlist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fnpsites.net\/playlist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fnpsites.net\/playlist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fnpsites.net\/playlist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1326679"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/fnpsites.net\/playlist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1326679\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fnpsites.net\/playlist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1326680"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fnpsites.net\/playlist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1326679"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fnpsites.net\/playlist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1326679"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fnpsites.net\/playlist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1326679"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}