Tomorrow’s the 88th birthday of Frank Maher, a fantastic musician on vocals, harmonica, and button accordion. To many people Frank Maher is known for playing the “four stop” button accordion, a single row accordion with four voices per note. Among his repertoire are old dance tunes from The Battery, which is a neighborhood of dwellings clinging to the cliffs of St. John’s Harbour in Newfoundland, as well as many Irish tunes, some from early recordings by John Kimmel and Joe Derrane. In this set of jigs, the sound of Frank’s accordion blends tightly with the sound of Christina Smith’s fiddle playing, with Jean Hewson’s guitar and Rick West’s bodhran driving things along harmonically and rhymically. I’m in there on a flat top mandolin trying to surf along on that rollicking pace - it was a lot of fun!
