KGNU DJ Caitlin Kilgannon sat down with Jessie Burns of The Bow Tides and shared details about the band’s show at Swallow Hill on February 7th and how the group formed during the pandemic through a collaboration with Gaelic Storm. Jessie also explained their unique sound, describing how they bring sophistication to Irish trad music by incorporating complex textures and layering with multiple fiddles and other instruments. (Interview date: 1/22/2025)
Caitlin Kilgannon: Jesse is here. Jesse is, as I mentioned earlier, with The Bow Tides and they have a show coming up at Swallow Hill on February 7th, eh? Yep. And she’ll tell you a little bit about it and about herself and then I’ll throw a couple questions at her.
Jessie Burns: Hi everyone. I hope you’re staying warm on these freezing nights. Great time for Irish music, I think, right now. But yeah, just like Caitlin said, The Bow Tides are flying in from all over the country. I happen to live here, so I don’t have to go so far. But we’re flying in and playing at Swallow Hill on February 7th. It’s an 8 o’clock show with 7 o’clock doors. And if you’re interested in coming, we would so love to see you there. You can get tickets at Swallowhillmusic.org and you can find out more about The Bow Tides if you haven’t ever seen us, our website’s thebowtides.com and it’s bow like a bow of a fiddle, B O W, and tides like the tides of the ocean. So thebowtides.com
Caitlin Kilgannon: Thank you so much. I think I realized the problem. My headphones were turned down. User error. So you might be okay over there. I don’t know. At any rate, here we are. And I did a little bit of reading about you before, you were coming in tonight, and I found it fascinating that of the three of you, one’s in Pennsylvania, right? One’s in Massachusetts, and you’re here in Colorado. So how did that come to be? How, from all those different places, did you come to be together and in The Bow Tides?
Jessie Burns: It’s one of those silver linings of the Pandemic. Actually, there weren’t too many of them, but that was one in that the three fiddle players in the band had all played with Gaelic Storm as a fiddle player in Gaelic Storm for years, and so we knew each other through that because that’s small club right there of women that have toured with that band. And so we knew each other through those adventures. And then because there was a pandemic, it actually was connected to the Spanish Peaks Music Festival, one of our favorite places ever. And Jonathan James, who knew me already, called up and said, “would you put a new project together? We’re doing an online festival, can’t meet in person. And I want to put on a concert with you guys on a new project.” And I called up the other two women and they were like, “yes, let’s do it.” And then we found a guitarist. We actually had Dave Curley for the first one. And then we had my husband Eric on bass, and so we would record a tune, like one, one melody player would record a tune, send it to the guitar player, who’d lay down the guitar track, and then it’d be shipped out to the next two fiddle players, who’d either play the melody line, or maybe harmonize, or maybe not play and come in later. When all that was done, it would get sent to the bass, and then we’d have an entire song, or tune recorded and we did that for what turned out to be and like a whole album worth of music and we put three different concerts on for different festivals. It was amazing.
Caitlin Kilgannon: That’s fabulous. What a great as you say side gift from COVID, learning all of that technology and how to put it together. That’s beautiful. Shall we hear a little bit of The Bow Tides?
Jessie Burns: Love to. Yeah.
Caitlin Kilgannon: All right. Take a look over here at this screen.
[The Bow Tides play The Power of Three]
Okay, there we had The Bow Tides with The Power of Three. And I had a question for Jesse when I was looking on their website and I saw that they were described as bringing a sophistication to Irish trad music. And I, when we were listening to that tune, I was asking her, what exactly does that mean? Here she is to tell us a bit about it.
Jessie Burns: It’s a very nice thing to be told about your music. It’s not something we came up with ourselves. We did a little TV spot with a really charming Irish TV presenter whose name I wish I could remember and I can’t, but that was his soundbite that he came up with for our band and we loved it. So I think where he was going with that was that kind of difference between the kind of traditional way of playing where you’d have your melody line with everyone playing that same melody line, and then the backers, beneath you doing the rhythm. And because we’ve got the three violins, we really wanted to put them to good use and create textual variation that we don’t normally hear in traditional Irish music in quite the same way. You might have noticed in that set, there’d be people with the tune and we recorded that live all together. That’s how it sounds live. So some people were playing the tune and then one person would be maybe doing drones underneath and we can also have the double bass can have the bow or be plucked. So we’ve got this great opportunity to have, not an orchestral arrangement. It’s not like that, but it’s got a sense of layering that we love to explore. It’s really a creative process that way.
Caitlin Kilgannon: It’s beautiful. It’s very sophisticated. Brings a sophistication. I think I’ll have to go down to Swallow Hill to check you guys out. Yeah, would you we’re going to hear another tune from The Bow Tides Sailing On CD and it’s called The Wee Boy’s Lament for His Pet Dragon, but I wanted to remind everyone that The Bow Tides will be playing at Swallow Hill on Friday evening, February 7th. Get your tickets now, because it’s not a huge venue, so I would say go for it. Their performances are very limited. They don’t play around a whole lot. One last thing before we put the music back on, Jessie, tell us a little bit about who else is in the band.
Jessie Burns: Yeah, thank you. There’s myself on fiddle, and then other local, my husband Eric Tureen, who plays bass, and then we’re moving over to Chicago, there’s two more in Chicago, Katie Grennan he’s a wonderful trad player and is a fixture in the Chicago trad scene, another fiddle player there, and then we have Jeff Lindblad on guitar. He also plays uilleann pipes and flute beautifully. And we’re hoping to bring those instruments into some new arrangements soon. And then finally, up in Boston, Massachusetts, we’ve got Ellery Klein, also on fiddle.
Caitlin Kilgannon: Beautiful. Thank you so much. Okay, let’s hear. Are you going to be here for a minute? Or shall we say okay, great. We’ll go ahead and hear The Wee Boy’s Lament for His Pet Dragon. And this is one that you wrote?
Jessie Burns: No, this isn’t this is the first one here, The Wee Boy’s Lament for His Pet Dragon, Pete Strickler, our dear friend, local Pete Strickler introduced me to this tune and I fell mad in love with it, and it’s got the best name, The Wee Boy’s Lament for His Pet Dragon, it doesn’t get better than that. And then we go into two pipe tunes, actually the Clumsy Lover and then the High Drive, which are great wheels, and we love playing this set, it’s very fun.
