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Lammas existed between the late 80s and the early zeroes, and is currently defunct (but never say never). It was co-led by DP (guitars, occasional bodhran) and Tim Garland (reeds, piano), and operated as everything from a duo to a sextet. It began life as a trio with the infant Talvin Singh (tabla, hair) but in the nineties the membership was fairly consistent: Mark Fletcher (drums); Christine Tobin (vocals); and later Karen Street (accordion, reeds) and Steafan Hannigan (bodhran, folk tubing, excuses). Latterly we worked as a trio with Steve Hamilton (piano). Over the years various guests performed or recorded with the group, including Kenny Wheeler, Jason Rebello, Steve Arguelles and Nick France. We played a kind of Euro-jazz, inflected with the Celtic folk music of the British Isles; which doesn’t sound a very radical idea these days, but it was in 1989, trust me. I was heavily influenced – brainwashed, possibly – by Ken Hyder and his drive to incorporate the Scottish folk tradition into free improvisation. However, like Tim, I was keen to do so in a more ECM-style, through-composed way.
Lammas always had a much broader agenda, however - and in time the music became less and less easily classifiable, with Tobes singing in Spanish as much as English and Irish Gaelic, and the writing increasingly reflecting Tim’s and my own interest in ‘straight’ composition (I recall at least two gigs with a string ensemble). Alas, this also made us harder to book, and between my literary commitments and Tim’s stellar career-path it was difficult to even call a rehearsal. Sea Changes was the swansong, allegedly ‘a duo album’, but featuring all the usual suspects too.
Lammas toured large chunks of the planet, brought delight and bewilderment to audiences in roughly equal measure (often within the space of a couple of bars), and recorded five albums, with DP and Tim sharing the writing credits. The albums are all now pretty much impossible to get hold of, so I’ll post some tracks up here for now, until we can get a proper compilation together.
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