Tony McManus Makes His Mark New Solo CD of 'Dream Guitars'

[Published on April 15, 2009, in the IRISH ECHO newspaper, New York City. Copyright (c) Earle Hitchner. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission of author.]
 
      A decade ago, at a small club in New York State, I gained an unforgettable insight into the character of guitarist Tony McManus. He had an opening slot for an Irish traditional band before a less than capacity crowd, so an adequate fee, mainly based on a percentage of admissions, was out of the question. From somewhere across America he had flown in to honor his commitment to perform, and despite the paltry payment he knew he'd receive at the end of the evening, McManus gave a bravura performance, full of passion and great touch. Whether in front of twelve or twelve hundred people, his effort is the same.
     Born and raised in Paisley, Scotland, McManus has Irish heritage (paternal grandfather), but the accident of blood alone does not make him a much-in-demand accompanist for such Irish musicians as singers Triona and Maighread Ni Dhomhnaill and fiddler Maeve Donnelly. He has an affinity for all forms of Celtic traditional music, and his close attention to the intricacies and subtleties in Scottish, Irish, Breton, Galician, Cape Breton, and other musical traditions has established his bona fides with the elite in each genre.
     But it is as a solo performer on guitar that allows McManus to shine fully, and his new solo recording, "The Maker's Mark (The Dream Guitar Sessions)," is an unusual collaboration between guitar master and guitar makers. He plays 15 different guitars from 15 different luthiers on the premise that each instrument brings something unique to the sound he creates with it. The album also supports his belief that "the golden age for the acoustic guitar is right now."
     Among the folk arts workshops held each summer at the Swannanoa Gathering at Warren Wilson College in Asheville, N.C., is Guitar Week, and one year a student named Paul Heumiller attended McManus's workshop each day with a different high-end guitar. "It emerged that this was no fabulously wealthy collector but a dealer in the very finest acoustic guitars currently being made," McManus explained. With guitarist Martin Simpson, Heumiller had founded Dream Guitars in Asheville as a one-stop dealership representing some of the world's premier luthiers. Out of that meeting between McManus the teacher and Heumiller the student-proprietor came the idea for this new album.
     The opening track of "Inveran / The Devil in the Kitchen / Locheil's Away to France" is a march, strathspey, and reel medley played on a Randy Lucas wedge-body guitar that affords power and control together. Those guitar qualities grow stronger through McManus's fingerpicking style: detailed, delicate, and driving over the course of two tempo changes.
     "Donal Og / The Lea Rig" is a pairing of an Irish song melody, learned from the singing of Triona and Maighread Ni Dhomhnaill, and a Robert Burns's song melody. McManus plays them on a Brian Applegate guitar, and his fingerpicking enhances the instrument's crystalline, chime-like tone and ripe bass.
     The Asturian song melody "Chalaneru" showcases McManus's ability to shape and shade a melody to evoke its indwelling beauty, and the Paul Daniel McGill nylon-string guitar he uses is an ideal instrument for digging deeper.
     The most outstanding track on the album is McManus's interpretation of "The Maids of Michelstown," a slow reel immortalized by the Bothy Band, who recorded it on their 1977 album, "Out of the Wind-Into the Sun." (For those with good memories, I used it as the outro music for a N.J. radio program I did in the 1980s.) Kevin Burke on fiddle and Matt Molloy on flute memorably shouldered the melody in the Bothy Band rendition, and McManus uses a Marc Beneteau guitar suited to the luminous detail he brings to one of the most beautiful melodies in all of Irish traditional music. This is a brilliant performance from McManus, who dedicates it to the late Micheal O Domhnaill, a founding member of the Bothy Band.
     Other Irish tunes performed by McManus are the slow air "Sliabh na mBan," the air-jig link "An Ciarraioch Mallaithe / Muireann's Jig," and the jig-reel combination "The Rolling Waves / Martin Wynne's #1." All bear the McManus stamp: superb technique, control, and expression. It is especially gratifying to hear the guitarist tackle the tune written by Sligo-born, longtime N.Y. resident fiddler Martin Wynne (1913-98), whose reels numbered 1 to 4 were played consecutively and exceptionally by his protege, Brian Conway, on the latter's "First Through the Gate" album in 2002.
     The slow-fast-slow alternation of note runs in James Scott Skinner's strathspey "The Laird of Drumblair" presents a challenge to any player, but McManus is more than equal to it, and his pulse-quickening delivery of Cape Breton's "The Margaree Reel" provides an ideal finish to the track.
     McManus offers some tantalizing exotica in the Romania-flavored "Doina / Parov's Daichevo," played with a sitar-like effect on a Linda Manzer's 42-string guitar he dubbed "the Delhicaster"; the 17th-century madrigal melody "Si Dolce e'l Tormento"; Michel Bordeleau's Quebecois-rooted tune "Reel de la Sauvagine," which McManus plays with galvanizing virtuosity on a Paul Reed Smith guitar; and an Andre Marchand waltz, "Valse des Belugas," where all 15 guitars pop up in choice spots.
     Another slice of exotica merits special mention: "N'Kosi Sikelele Afrika." It is the melody to an anti-apartheid song from South Africa, and what distinguishes the guitar version here is McManus's uncanny ability to echo in his playing two voices: one raised for freedom, and the other raised in freedom. When he was 17 years old, McManus joined the Anti-Apartheid Movement, and in his note for this track he writes, "It is satisfying, just once, to have been a member of an organization that achieved exactly what it set out to do."
     In closely listening to this album twice under headphones, which I do for every CD I review, I was reminded of an inscription on the back of a fiddle owned by the late Johnny Cunningham. Next to an engraving of a tree were these words: "In life I was mute, but in death I sing."
     Tony McManus understands that sentiment. On "The Maker's Mark" he makes the wood of 15 guitars sing. It is a glorious achievement, the mark of a master.
     The album (cat. no. 7-4500-2) is available on Compass Records, 916 19th Ave. South, Nashville, TN 37212, 615-320-7672, www.compassrecords.com.
 

The Maker's Mark by Tony McManus

Tony McManus, "The Maker's Mark: The Dream Guitar Sessions," Compass Records, 2009

Tony McManus, "The Maker's Mark: The Dream Guitar Sessions," Compass Records, 2009
 

This CD features great tunes, expertly played on some of the finest acoustic guitars available today, all from North Carolina's Dream Guitars shop. Tony McManus is perhaps the most technically and intellectually
gifted Celtic-based guitarist currently recording and performing, and "Maker's Mark" meets the high standards of his earlier solo albums and breaks some new ground as well. He begins with a set of pipe and
fiddle tunes," Inveran / The Devil in the Kitchen / Locheil's Away to France", displaying the technique and speed that account for much of his appeal. A medley of "Donal Óg" and "The Lea Rig" follows, showing McManus' skill in rendering beautiful melodies. There are no weak selections here, but several others are worth mentioning for the variety each lends the program. McManus plays "Chalaneru" on a nylon-string
guitar built by Paul McGill (a novelty of sorts, since he favors steelstringed instruments). Several baritone guitars make an appearance, on Monteverdi's "Sì Dolce è'l Tormento", "Nikosi Sikelele" (the South African national anthem) and Donald Lunney's "Coast River".  Another medley, "Doïna / Parov's Daichevo" is played on a sitar-guitar built by Linda Manzer, which is closely miked in order to capture the dynamics of this delicate instrument. McManus' arrangement of "The Maids of Mitchelstown" would have fit well alongside other Celtic tunes on John Renbourn's mid-1980s album, The Nine Maidens. He plays "Reel de la Sauvagine" with both flatpick and fingers (without overdubbing). The closing selection, Andre Marchand's "Valse des Bélugas", is multitracked and has McManus playing all of the guitars used on the session (and a mandolin). Since all but this closing track are solo performances, the sound on "The Maker's Mark" is a bit more intimate than McManus' previous solo recordings. His mastery of the broad range of material on the disc indicates continued artistic growth, and leads me to expect more variety to come. It's arguably his best album to date, and that's saying something.

Tony McManus: The Maker’s Mark (the Dream Guitar Sessions)

PG doesn’t review CDs. It’s not our mission; besides, there are plenty of publications out there with staff dedicated to reviews, so we don’t feel compelled to add our $.02. And don’t think that because I’m new, I’m a pushover—I’m not. We don’t do CD reviews. Unless it’s a project so guitar intensive and in such perfect alignment with our mission that we can’t help ourselves. Tony McManus’ new offering, The Maker’s Mark is subtitled the Dream Guitar Sessions. Born at Dream Guitars in Asheville, North Carolina, the idea was to take some absolutely killer axes, arrange a piece of music specifically to be played on each instrument and take the whole kit ‘n caboodle into the studio. Gorgeously recorded and lovingly played, this project is designed to make us drool while we dream. McManus’ playing is rave-worthy. Loaded with flawless ornamentations, most of which should only be attempted on a very well set-up fiddle, his playing is wild and delicate, passionate and tender. But the thing that really gets me is how un-edited his playing sounds. I mean, come on—we can tell when stuff is punched in or cut-and-pasted from elsewhere, and I can’t hear that on this recording. If he played all this stuff simply live, he’s not human. If he did cut and paste this together, he should win an award for production. The guitars themselves are beyond incredible. We joke a lot about “guitar porn,” and the booklet packaged with this disc is all about that. McManus chose some extremely unique and beautiful instruments: baritone guitars from William Kelday and Kathy Wingert, a piccolo guitar from Charles Hoffman, and Linda Manzer’s haunting and visually stunning Sitar Guitar. Each musical offering is tuned perfectly to each guitar, and the pieces let the guitars do what they do best, whether it’s ringing or barking or singing like a whole mess of angels. A must have for acoustic guitar lovers.

Let loose with a galaxy of guitars

TONY McManus, doyen of contemporary "Celtic guitarists" (should you recognise such genres), reckons that, while violinists may look with yearning to 17th-century Cremona and mandolin players to the Lloyd Loar Gibsons of the 1920s, so far as acoustic guitar-making is concerned, we're in a golden age right now. "There's no need for us to be looking backwards," the Paisley-born guitarist says from his home in Elora, Ontario. "Guitar-makers are being very innovative, and kids have access to instruments that would have been beyond anyone's means when I was starting out, in the mid-1970s, when entry level instruments were more of a hindrance than anything else. I taught myself to play on a guitar that was warped in more dimensions than I knew there were dimensions." Gratuitous dimensions clearly didn't cramp his style – last year saw McManus receive Acoustic Guitar magazine's Gold Award in the Celtic guitarist category. But his latest album, The Maker's Mark, just released by Greentrax, is a showcase for state-of-the-art craftsmanship as well as his own artistry. It originated when he discovered that one of his guitar students at the annual Swannanoa Gathering in North Carolina tended to arrive with a different top-end instrument for each class. He turned out to be Paul Heumiller, proprietor of the Dream Guitars instrument dealership, and something of a kindred spirit. "He was very enthusiastic about the state of guitar building at present," recalls McManus. As a result of their conversations, last summer saw the Scots guitarist wander into Nashville's Compass Sound Studio, armed with 15 masterpieces chosen from Heumiller's range. The words "child", "let loose" and "toyshop" do spring to mind, and McManus agrees: "It was fantastic. Not only did I have something like 175,000 bucks worth of instruments to play with, but I had Paul Heumiller as my guitar tech." It may take a practised ear to appreciate some of the finer differences between instruments, but McManus's consummate musicianship over 15 tracks and 15 instruments ensures that The Maker's Mark is much more than a mere guitar road-test. Out of this finely crafted cornucopia of rosewoods and blackwoods, spruces and figured mahogany, emerges the often luminous playing we associate with him, ranging from up-tempo jigs and reels – such as the Rolling Waves set he plays on an instrument by the Tokyo-based maker Michihiro Matsuda – to more contemplative material such as the great Irish air Sliabh na mBan, drawn from one by the Santa Cruz luthier Jeff Traugott. The instrument might influence the choice of tune, or vice versa, he explains. "Paul and I talked on the phone about what I'd like to record and what guitars would suit what and he offered me a few choices. For example the Asturian song, Chalaneru, I specifically wanted to do on a nylon-strung guitar." Other tunes, however, simply fell from his fingers, as it were, when he picked up a guitar, such as the pairing of Donal Og with Burns's The Lea Rig. He managed to acquire one of the instruments for himself, – a distinctively twanging "sitar guitar", which he fondly refers to as his "Dehlicaster", by Toronto maker Linda Manzer. He recently attended the New York launch of a limited-edition signature guitar Manzer, developed with the contemporary jazz hero Pat Metheny.  "Paul Simon bought the first one." While the sleeve carries enough information about construction and tunings to keep the aficionados happy, McManus hopes the album will appeal well beyond the anoraks – which it does. "After all, if I'm listening to Miles Davis. I'm not bothered by what particular brand of mute he's using. I hope the music stands on its own."
 

Tony McManus - The Maker’s Mark

On the face of it the Edinburgh-born guitarist’s latest outing has more than a touch of the guitar anorak’s dream project about it, but the music is simply glorious. Tony, now based in Canada, got together with guitar dealer Paul Heumiller to put together a selection of tunes, each played on a different instrument supplied by a top contemporary guitar maker (full details are supplied in the insert notes). The results are stunning, and substantiate their claim that right now is the golden age of acoustic guitar making. It also confirms the guitarist’s ranking in the top echelon of contemporary fingerstyle players. He draws his material from a variety of musical traditions, taking in various shades of Celtic music, Quebec, Eastern Europe, Italy, and a fabulous version of the South African anthem ‘N’Kosi Sikele Afrika’. The variety of both instruments and musical idioms keeps the music multi-dimensional and constantly changing.