ALBUM REVIEW: FIDDLERS GREEN – ‘3 Cheers For 30 Years’ (2020)

30 years after the band was founded Fiddler’s Green have released a collection of the most well known traditional Irish Folk songs! And all in the ingenious Fiddler’s Green sound: honest and direct, playful and brutal, dreamy and drunk.

Two of the Celtic-Punk scenes giant bands celebrate their 30th anniversary this year. One is The Mahones from Canada whose non-stop touring has garnered them fans around the world while the other is the biggest and probably the most popular band in Europe – Fiddlers Green. Since their formation in 1990 Fiddlers Green have released an incredible fifteen studio albums and just in case that wasn’t enough their have also been a further six live albums plus EP’s and DVD’s galore earning them the reputation as one of the busiest acts in Rock music let alone Celtic-Punk! Already during 2020 they have released the Acoustic Pub Crawl II – Live in Hamburg album back in March. 2020 was set to be a busy gigging year for them too with an extensive ‘unplugged’ tour playing an acoustic set in intimate settings across Germany. Sadly as we know Covid has caused the cancellation of live music so the band has kept busy instead writing new material and recording. On Acoustic Pub Crawl II Fiddlers Green picked sixteen of their favourite tracks from across their extensive back catalogue played as if they were in front of a roaring fire in a cosy wee Irish pub. The tour has been put back to 2021 so keep a well peeled eye out for that.

So here’s one band that haven’t let the ‘clampdown’ keep them down and they celebrated their anniversary with a live stream last week live on both Facebook and You Tube. The set was recorded at The Dubliner pub in Bayreuth in northern Bavaria, Germany. Interspersed with songs from 3 Cheers For 30 Years while Alexander Prinz, aka ‘The Dark Knight of Parables’ interviews the guys from the band with stories from their three decades together. They welcomed many friends and guests to the stage as they played live old and new Fiddlers Green classics.

The event and album release was financed through the Crowdfunding web-site and supported by their legions of fans ensuring that Fiddlers Green stay true to their DIY roots and out of the clutch of greedy businessmen! Their are still some amazing merchandise packages available if you fancy grabbing one.

The album itself is everything you could expect from Fiddlers Green. A polished, well played, exciting romp through the national music archives of Ireland as played by a band with a Celtic soul. Irish music, especially Celtic-Punk, is very popular in Germany and if this was a court of law then the evidence presented would be this album! The eleven songs here have all been played to absolute death of course and are well known to everyone who has ever set foot in an Irish pub or walked past a busker but as ever the achievement is to breathe new life into ancient songs and keep them alive. This is something Fiddlers Green have no problem achieving. The list of songs are all new to the Fiddlers Green set-list and swings from Dubliners faves like ‘The Wild Rover’, ‘All For Me Grog’ and ‘Seven Drunken Nights’ to ones that The Dubliners recorded but became better known through others like ‘Whiskey In The Jar’. Several songs have been become mainstays of the Celtic-Punk scene for decades now like ‘Wild Mountain Thyme’, ‘The Drunken Sailor’ and ‘Molly Malone’ while their is even room for the ‘newest old song’ in the Irish pub singers repertoire ‘Galway Girl’. The album ends with a spirited version of ‘Greensleeves’ and while their are no massive revelations here it is nevertheless another great album from the Bhoys as these old songs take on new life in the hands of these fabulous musicians.

3 Cheers For 30 Years sees against all the odds Fiddlers Green’s year end in style and shows the rest of the Celtic-Punk scene how to handle and interpret an old song and turn it into a modern ‘speedfolk’ classics.

Buy 3 Cheers For 30 Years CD – FromTheBand Download – Here

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