The cover charge is only two bucks, and to get to the restroom you have to walk right in front of the band. But the three band members don't seem to mind, and neither does anyone else. Things are moving in the bar, a place that was moribund as a passed-out drunk only months before. But Paddy's Racket is performing, and on this particular night the saloon has revived in fine form.
The resurgence of Irish music at a bar in South Bend echoes its climb in popularity around the country. That makes David James the driving force behind Paddy's Racket, happy as a thirsty man being served a glass of stout. And Jams does love his stout.
Music, however, is the real love of the man who calls himself a "crazed Irish music lunatic." Even though his pay-the-mortgage job is doing historical restoration carpentry -- "you come to us when you want a double-hung window that looks exactly like the one in the back of your kitchen that's rotting" -- he gives another six or seven hours a day to music. And, just in case he doesn't seem to do enough, the indefatigable James also volunteers for a variety of tasks, from sharing his musical instruments with mentally retarded children at the Very Special Arts Festival to setting up sound systems for other performers. "I could put a sound system on the moon," says James, who calls himself a "gear junkie."
When performing with Paddy's Racket, James, a 1970 graduate of Notre Dame, also proves to be an instrument junkie, as he easily switches from the banjo to fiddle to bodhran, an Irish drum. He's also known for his fine boogie-woogie on the piano. Still, above all that, the instrument of choice for the slight, pony-tailed James is the hammered dulcimer. It's an interesting preference for a man who spends hours transcribing and disseminating traditional Irish tunes. For hammered dulcimers, notes James, "have not been fully accepted into the Irish tradition."
The reasons for that are as politically embroiled as Irish history itself and probably date from the 16th and 17th centuries. To the English, a harper in Ireland was a dangerous character, his music apt to be seditious and nationalistic. When the Penal Laws intensified in the 1700s, it was illegal in Ireland to be, harbor or teach a harper. James theorizes that dulcimer players, while not specifically named, probably were in the same social circles as harpers, and suffered the same bans. Unfortunately, the crackdown on harpers, bards and poets ultimately was responsible for interrupting the oral transmission of Irish music.
The harp survived and is revered as the national instrument of Ireland. The hammered dulcimer wasn't quite so lucky, and no one seems to know why. "They just sort of died out," says James. The scholar in him would dearly love to research the hammered dulcimer's history in Ireland, but to do so, he says with a sigh, "You gotta be going into museums and archives and running all over hell. It takes some digging." And when he's in Ireland, James says, his time is fully booked with musical session and visits with old friends.
Although the hammered dulcimer's history in Ireland may remain misty, its history in the United States is not so unclear. Particularly among those who play Irish music, says James, "The instrument has a bad reputation." Part of that, it seems, isn't the instrument but the players. "A lot of dulcimer players approach Irish traditional music in much the same way they approach other tunes - without necessarily trying to use the Irish style." Although he has happily offered dulcimer lessons to others, they're not always so happy with him. "I demand they learn from tradition."
The Irish tradition of music is high on James' list of important things. Voluminous records of some old Irish tunes do exist, he says, but others have not been transcribed at all. With the use of a computer for transcribing, James does what he can to help fill that gap. "I like to pay the Irish world back," he says. And if people don't take the time to transcribe previously unwritten songs, says Kim Hoffmann, a member of Paddy's Racket and close companion of James', "you can lose traditional music."
The work James does with traditional tunes does not earn him any money, but it does earn him plenty of respect. "It's a big competition in Irish music to know jigs and reels that no one's ever heard of," says Molly Moon, who plays the mandolin and penny whistle for a South Bend group called Wattle and Daub. James, she says, frequently astounds other musicians with his esoteric knowledge of such music.
Playing well to a crowd, whether it holds musicians or pub crawlers, is definitely one of James' strengths. "Truth to tell, he's a bit of a ham," says Hoffmann. And it's not just on stage that he shines. Energetic, full of bonhomie and bagpipe of information on whatever topic is under discussion, "he's got that Irish gift of just being a great talker," says Moon.
James also has a gift of creativity getting what he wants. When he wanted to play at a festival in Winfield, Kansas, he didn't simply contact the festival manager. Instead, James wrote three chapters of a mystery novel featuring the festival and mailed them with his request. He got to play. He played so well there that he snagged the 1986 U.S. National Championship on the hammered dulcimer.
Awards from a large part of James' resume, which lists him as the "first and only American ever to win an All-Ireland Championship on the hammered dulcimer," in 1989. Just to prove it wasn't a fluke, he won it again in 1995.
While his life is filled with everything from performing at music festivals in places like Texas or Maine to teaching master classes in Wisconsin or California, James has made literally hundreds of appearances at a very different type of event: labor and political rallies and demonstrations. That all began when the Atlanta-born James arrived at Notre Dame after a year at Georgia State College (now university) in 1965. "It was a wonderful time to be at Notre Dame," he says. He immediately joined the civil rights and peace movements, his activism ranging from counseling draft resisters to teaching at the student-led "free university." At Notre Dame, he says, "I was a member of the old left. The new left was talking about bombing the ROTC building. I was much more a mass-movement oriented person."
James' immersion in both social and activism and the lively music scene that existed then took a tremendous toll on his mental health. He dropped out of Notre Dame in 1968 and became a full-time draft counselor, but returned and graduated in summer 1970. His beliefs led him to what he calls "social activist" jobs - poorly paying and emotionally draining. As a juvenile probation officer, James says, "You could hit me over the head with a spaghetti strand and I would let you out."
Somewhere in there James got married and became the father of a son, now 26 who's working on a Ph.D. in molecular biology and is, in the proud words of his now-divorced father, "a berserk bluegrass guitarist." But the real break in his plans came when James enrolled in law school and worked so hard his weights dropped to 103 pounds. James finally had to drop out of law school to regain his health. "I'd be a lawyer now if I hadn't run out of money," he says.
Instead, he became a popular South Bend figure of the old left, working a variety of jobs and grabbing a spot in an old-time string and bluegrass band. Between his jobs and music, James freely gave of his time to make musical appearances at local labor rallies and strikes, an activity he continues to this day. "We make it more fun for them," he says.
As the political fervor of the 1960 and '70s died, however, James turned more and more to music. Even today, explaining how he came to focus on Irish music brings a look of delight to his impish face. The story he tells has as much to do with the women and good times as with music. "It started at Notre Dame," James says, where he joined up with some students who played Irish music. When the neophyte group discovered that regional members of the National Federation of Catholic College Students were all women's colleges -- Notre Dame was all-male then - the fun-loving young men quickly joined the federation. "We'd have great conversations," he says, laughing.
The rest is typical of the gregarious James and his networking - he'd hear someone he liked, such as Irish fiddle player Michael Clancy '80 Ph.D., and talk to the player, who would pass on names of people James should meet and learn from. James, as always, would follow through. On Clancy's advice, he talked champion fiddler Liz Carroll into giving him lessons in Chicago. As he became immersed in the Irish scene, James soon learned what have become two of his favorite aspects of Irish music: "It's a real family scene," he says. "The kids and the parents play together. Everyone is so glad to be there." Another bonus, says James, is that "sooner or later you get to play with all your heroes." That hasn't included anyone from The Chieftains yet, but James does not discount the possibility.
The one thing the 50-year-old James has discounted is the possibility of sudden fame. "I'm a terrible booking agent," he says. "I can't consistently organize myself as an agent."
But James isn't really complaining; that's not like him. He's thrilled with Paddy's Racket, which features fiddle player Rick Willey, along with Hoffmann and James. The group recently released the compact disk Tiopan Alley whose title is a clever pun using the Gaelic name of the dulcimer. He still enjoys his hobbies, from photography to mechanical work on cars and sound equipment. He still lives a crazy schedule, which can mean finally grabbing dinner at 10 p.m. during a busy day or quick trips to Chicago or even Ireland. And he still is trying to figure out how to pay back the musicians and their families who shared their musical knowledge and hospitality with him.
And somewhere in all that, he'd really like to do a book on the history of dulcimers in Ireland and maybe trace his genealogy to learn just how Irish he is and maybe come up with a great pun that fellow pun-lover Molly Moon can't ever top, and always, always he wants to continue to play the music he loves.