Photo by Acacia Evans
We Banjo 3
We Banjo 3
For Galway, Ireland natives We Banjo 3, playing Milwaukee is a special occasion. Featuring two sets of brothers, Enda and Fergal Scahill and David and Martin Howley, the band cherishes every opportunity they get to perform in the Brew City. Their most coveted gig? Playing Milwaukee Irish Fest on the lakefront each August. They’ve played the fest all but two years.
“It feels like a pivot point in the year. It's something that we look forward to,” says Fergal during a recent interview. “We have built such lovely friendships and work relationships, both with other bands and with fans of our band and fans of Irish music in general through the years that we have been coming to Milwaukee.”
'Open the Road' by We Banjo 3
This year the band will be back, touring in support of their newly released album Open the Road. There’s extra reason to raise a loud and appreciative “sláinte!”—the performances mark the tenth anniversary of their debut at the festival. At the time, the band was touring in support of their 2012 debut album, Roots of the Banjo Tree, with Milwaukee being among their first U.S. performances.
For Fergal, who plays a mix of fiddle, guitar, and Bodhrán, it’s a big milestone as they’ve accomplished much more than they could have imagined when starting out.
“When you start out in a band of any shape or size or type, you never know how long it will actually sustain or how an audience will react to the band,” he says. “We've been very lucky that we started our journey 10 years ago at Milwaukee Irish Fest.”
“We hit it off so well that weekend. The audience really took to us, and the Milwaukee crowd were very receptive and very into what we were doing. It was a really great launchpad for this band's career. To still be coming back to Milwaukee ten years later is a great honor.”
The specialness of the event extends beyond performing on stage. Fergal and Enda will once again be teaching through the week at the Milwaukee Irish Fest Summer School.
“It’s something I've done a number of times over the years, and I know a lot of the students that will be coming in, and it's always lovely to arrive to a place where people know your first name and you know people's first names usually,” says Fergal. “Or at least you know their faces and they're always glad to see you.”
He credits their tight bond—both familial and friendship—and ability to get along well both on and off stage for the band’s longevity.
“Over the past ten years, we've all firmly slipped into our own roles within the band,” says Fergal. “Everybody has a part that they'd take care of. At the start, everyone was finding their feet, and everyone was doing everything. And as the band progressed, then we all played to our strengths. One of us will handle social media, and then another one of us will look at more management or working with management. So, we've all found our roles and it's been really interesting over 10 years to find different strengths within ourselves as we were going along.”
“And of course, the last two years of the pandemic had all its own challenges with trying to do stuff online and do online shows. The support was unbelievable for everything we did online from people all over the world, but especially from the States where the support of buying tickets for online shows and buying merch while everybody was stuck at home was really special.”
Prior to their performances this week at Irish Fest, the Shepherd Express caught up with Fergal to talk about the festival, the band’s new music and more.
What are some of your favorite memories playing Irish Fest?
One of my favorite memories was in 2015 where there was a giant electrical storm on the Sunday I think just as we were due to go on stage. Some of the audience left, but the majority of people stayed at the front of the stage. There was a number of bands that were canceled at the time because of the thunderstorm and the lightning. We all came out on stage and stood at the front of the stage, and we sung in unison “You Are My Sunshine.” Everybody sang but acoustically. We had no amplification. And the rain was absolutely pounding down, and people stood in the rain, and we all sang together, and we waited it out together. And that was really, really gorgeous.
Also, the very first year we were at Milwaukee Irish Fest, we were down in the Village Pub tent, which was way down at the end. It was a tiny little tent, which probably had a capacity of 100 people, maybe 150. And again, on the Sunday, there was rain or thunderstorm. They come at this time of year, and I would safely say there were maybe 500 people crammed into this tiny little tent. We were standing on tables and people were sitting on the stage and it was just this electric moment.
A third highlight for me was in 2017 when Barry Stapleton, one of the artistic directors of the festival, he asked us to collaborate with Scottish band Skerryvore to put together a tribute to the Beatles, including as many bands from the festival as possible. That was such an amazing show, a really magic experience. We're repeating that again this year, but the theme of this year's collaborative set is the greatest Scottish rock songs of all time.
The band members live in different parts of the world. How has that impacted the writing of recent albums, especially the new one?
In some ways, it has helped. I know we're in a very unusual moment because we're just coming out of these two years of not out touring. But the collaboration stuff while we're living in different countries has actually been very good because we have these Dropbox folders where we put stuff in. You’d come up with an idea for a tune and record it and put it into the folder, and then someone else will listen to it [and add onto it].
There's one tune on the new album called “The First Second Gentleman,” which is a tune that Martin came up with originally, the first two parts. We had been playing it at soundcheck and trying to suss it out and see how it felt. We felt there was just something missing from it. I had an idea for a third section for the tune. So, I wrote that and sent it off.
That is something that has grown over the 10 years as well, where it's been a process trying to be okay with that sort of thing, where I'll bring something to the table and then someone else will say, “Actually, I want to cut this section out and put in this section.” That's a growing experience when it's okay to have somebody cut up the work that you've done and say, "Look, we can improve it. I think we can improve it by doing it this way." And then often, the result is better than the original idea. “The First Second Gentleman,” the first draft of that was brilliant, and then when we added in the third part, it just gave it that extra little bit of magic that was needed.
Where is everyone living currently?
It’s changed slightly over the pandemic because David has moved back to Ireland. He was living in Nashville. When Martin’s not on tour with We Banjo 3, he's touring with a Broadway show. His wife Kiana is also in that show. So, he's still in America, and now David and myself and Enda are living in Ireland. So, we're still on different continents, but there are more of us on the one continent now.
That must be interesting having that dynamic.
Yeah, it certainly is. I think the collaboration stuff really can work when you have space from one another, when you're trying to collaborate. On Open the Road, David did the lion's share of the writing for the songs, and he also produced the album.
But all through the couple of years when we were properly separated, Dave was constantly updating. And some of the tracks that are on the album were recorded remotely during lockdown. While Dave was in Nashville, he was sharing a house with bass player Scott Mulvahill who's featured on every track on the album. I think he did an amazing job on how it came together in the end and it's something that we're all very proud of.
Why did you feel that Open the Road was a fitting title for this collection of songs?
The title Open the Road is actually the name of a tune on the album which I wrote early in 2020, and it's a tune that had been knocking around and we had been toying with different ideas on it … We felt that that title kind of represented what the album was and the time that we were coming from, that the road was opening up in front of us and that we were ready to step out and do it again. It just seemed to fit the theme of the album and how it came together.
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Sonically, what was the band's goals making this album?
We decided at the start of the recording process that we were throwing the rulebook out and that each track could do whatever it wanted. So, we didn't really have an overall sonic idea or set goal with it. We just allowed each track to take us where we felt it wanted to go, if that doesn't sound too strange. But I think it worked out really well because sometimes, if you're stuck in an idea that it has to be Irish, too Irish, or if it can't have drums because we don't have drums on stage ... if you apply all these rules, then you can just wind up closing down your creativity. But for this one we just said, “you know what, let's just see what happens. Throw it all at it and see what happens.” I think it came together very well with that attitude.
It has a nice mix of influences with Irish and American influences. Was that the goal?
Yeah, I think it has a nice mix of that. And we have some really special guests on the album. We have Abigail Washburn who sings and plays clawhammer on a song called “Garden Song.” We have the drummer Steve Ferrone who is drumming on the track called “Alive I\in You.” We have Mike Shimmin who drums on another. Mike is an amazing drummer from Michigan. And we have some horn players from the UK and from Ireland. The parts for the horns were written by a school friend of mine, Matthew Burl.
So, there's little bits and pieces of everything. And we have some keys and some organs by a good friend of mine Ryan Molloy. And, of course, we have the great dobro player, Andy Hall is playing on “Hummingbird.” So, it's that mixture of everything and everything and anything really that's on the album.
Was there anything else you did that was different from previous albums?
I think what was slightly different from this album is that we had recorded a good few demos and guide tracks before getting into the studio. On the last number of albums, we would've arrived at studio at zero with having nothing recorded, and then build it all through the course of that session. Because of all the time we'd had at home, we had a lot of guide tracks already built and David had a lot of the pre-production work done before we got to the studio. So that certainly made it a lot more streamlined for the whole process.
With each album, it seems like the band has felt more at ease with the freedom to not have to stick to certain sounds.
Freedom is a good word. It's just not trying to keep yourself too tightly into an idea, of a genre, and just allow the music to be music … There's a video of David playing a pineapple on one of the tracks. He's hitting the pineapple with some drumsticks. It was just one of those moments in the studio and it made it on the track and that's just the way things happen sometimes.
What was the biggest surprise making this album?
I think just our openness to change. We had one track that was recorded in studio in February. And then we went out on tour in March, and about three weeks into tour, we had been playing the track live, and then we thought, “you know what, we actually need to have another cut of this for the album.” So, we were in Michigan in Ann Arbor playing at The Ark, and I called a friend of mine and I said, “Can we get into your studio for the day?” So, we went into the studio while on tour for the day and rerecorded the track live in the room. We did three takes of it and that take then was what made it onto the album.
So having that looseness and the willingness to allow things to change was certainly very helpful for the album. It was different from previous albums where we were always on a very tight timeline. Having a little bit extra time to get the album together was really helpful.
What's next for the band? Any future goals?
We have gigs booked into next year and we’re doing a tour in Ireland in November. Our first tour in Ireland in a long time, so that'll be nice. And we're actually doing it as a fan tour. So, we're bringing over two busloads of American fans of the band to travel with us around Ireland, and we'll show them Ireland through our eyes, and we get to visit all the famous tourist spots. So that's something that we look forward to. We've done that a number of times before and it's a very enjoyable experience
I think any information is on our website, but I'm fairly sure this year's one has sold out. It's limited space. This was supposed to happen in April of 2020, so it has been knocked down by two and a half years. I think most people who had planned to come are still coming this year.
