THREE OR FOUR SHADES OF GREEN
Donegal X-Press gets ready for its busiest time of the year
by Bret McCabe
From the City Paper - March 13, 2002
It's 11 a.m., and Jason Tinney and Brad Dunnells, the principal songwriters for Baltimore's Celtic-tinged Donegal X-Press, look a little weary. Ten hours after landing in Maryland from Ireland, they show signs of a long flight and a modest lack of sleep. The duo just returned from the seventh annual Song for Peace contest at the Everyman Theatre in Cork, where they were featured artists. The Dunnells-penned "Omagh," off DXP's 1999 sophomore release, Quinn's Diaries, won the contest last year, the first American-written tune to receive the award.

But their most hectic time of year is just beginning. St. Patrick's Day is right around the corner. "We arrived in Cork last Friday and returned last night," Tinney says. "And we had a full schedule of panels and talks and performances. And now we've got a busy week ahead of us. But it was a busy but pleasant trip."

Pleasant, but possibly a bit pensive as well. A Song for Peace contest in Ireland is self-explanatory--a song in favor of the peace process to the capital-T Troubles. Over an acoustic guitar and harmonica exchange, Dunnells' prize winner laments the Aug. 16, 1998, car bombing in Omagh, Northern Ireland, that killed 29 people and wounded more than 200, and condemns the Real IRA, the dissident Irish Republican group that took credit for the blast (in what was widely interpreted as an effort to undermine the Good Friday peace accord signed earlier that year) to "pay a heavy price for what they've done/ live by the sword and die by the gun." (Colm Murphy, a 49-year-old Real IRA member, was convicted of the bombing this past in January in Dublin.)

That's a heavy statement for a young songwriter living on this side of the Atlantic to drop on an Irish audience--a measure, perhaps, of the confidence of this 5-year-old six-piece (Tinney on vocals and harmonica, Dunnells on vocals and guitar, Laura Hein on keyboards, Lyle Hein on bass, Jeff Malcolm on drums, and Skye Sadowski on violin). Since its inception in 1997 as a combination of Towson University student musicians and dramaturges getting together for what Tinney describes as Irish vaudeville-cum-cabaret, DXP has evolved into an idiosyncratic act with a solid regional reputation. (It was voted Best Band in Baltimore by City Paper readers last year.)

What exactly DXP is, however, is hard to pin down. Sure, Tinney admits that lyrically the band frequently delves into those staples of Hibernian song, "love, loss, and dead Irish rebels," but it mixes traditional Gaelic music with contemporary country, rock, and blues song structures. As such, it's created a genre for itself. And that is not necessarily a great place to be.

"We really are sort of in purgatory, market-wise," Tinney says. "There is some Irish prejudice against us because we are Americans and we do a bit of the rock 'n' roll thing. Of course, rock 'n' roll clubs are hesitant to book us because of the Irish thing. They'll give us a call around St. Patrick's Day, but otherwise, no."

Irish-rock hybrids are among the most stereotypical of contemporary genre cocktails. "Celtic" as a musical adjective brings to mind the traditional pipes and airy melodies of the Chieftains or the Clancy Brothers, despite a 1980s boomlet of rock-reared Irish bands spiking tradition with modern spunk. Former Pogues leader Shane MacGowan, the rowdy, ruddy Irish-punk piper himself, reads like a pale parody of his former self today. Wanton live shows filled with songs about opaque Irish politics and old woes have simply replaced the old stereotypes with new ones. And romantic, up-by-the-bootstraps Irish yarns perpetrated by the likes of Frank McCourt aren't exactly helping matters any.
What raises DXP above stereotype is that it never settled for tapping into one cultural kettle. While its "Irishness" may have seemed like an act at the band's outset--Dunnells and Tinney report that their early theatrical elements included accents, costumes, and games with the audience--as DXP has gelled musically, Dunnells and Tinney have also matured as songwriters, using Irish musical motifs--melodies, harmonies, and instrumentation that are traditional staples--as one of many elements fused into a compelling whole.

DXP's latest album, 2001's Translations, reveals songwriting skills unconstrained by any particular national or genre loyalty. Whiskey-fueled rockers such as "Sportin' in the Kitchen" alternate with straight-up honky-tonk stompers ("Everywhere") and Gram Parsons-esque sun-baked electric country ("Off to California"). And with "San Patricios," DXP lassos a pulsating Latin rhythm that recalls the Southwestern plains of Calexico.
That multicolored musical morass is probably what keeps people coming back. "One nice thing about the band is that usually, once we do get our foot in the door, people do respond to us," Dunnells says. "There are other artists who have walked that line between genres and have succeeded. Steve Earle: Is he country? Is he rock? I don't know. Lucinda Williams: Is she country? Is she pop? Those are two people who I've always enjoyed, and nobody ever really knew what to do with them. But they stuck around long enough to make it."

Granted, in each of those cases the artist had to stick around for a decade or more before the music world noticed. And if that's what it takes, Dunnells and Tinney sound determined to stay the course. They've already weathered their share of rough spots.
"We played a show in New York that was at a very [Irish] republican/nationalist bar," Tinney says. "And this was right after Brad had written 'Omagh,' which was shortly after [the bombing] happened. And he introduced it and said what it was about, and people didn't like it."

"It's pretty scary to have the bar owner sit you down backstage and say, 'You do know there are a couple of ex-volunteers listening to you sing that song and are really annoyed that you have the balls to come up here to New York and say that in this bar,'" Dunnells says. "He told us just to let us know what kind of place we were in. But he let us do our third set."

Luckily, performing is one thing DXP seems to never tire of. The band has booked a solid St. Patrick's Day weekend schedule, starting with a show at Fado Irish Pub in Washington before heading back to Mobtown to hit the band's ostensible home base, Mick O'Shea's, March 17. But Tinney and Dunnells are pretty sure they know how to survive the long stretch ahead.

"We have a good plan for how to do it this year," Dunnells says. "Lite beer. A couple of corned-beef sandwiches. Carbo-load for breakfast. You know what I mean?"