Preface

      The Co. Champaign Irish Tunebook, Vol I represents the beginning of the fulfillment of fifteen
years of wishing.

      Celtic Music in Co. Champaign, Then...

      In 1977, the attention of the newly formed Celtic Society at the University of Illinois was drawn
to a local pub where Frank Blaney, crack banjoist from Belfast, held forth, backed up by his student
David Linden and by Tom Scanlan of Cork on bodhran and harmonica. After Blaney returned to Ire-
land, Scanlon, encouraged by the Celtic Society's interest, made the session a regular and open event.
It achieved its final format in the spring of 1978 after a deal of experimentation: a circle in which
each participant took a turn leading a tune, a song, or a short set. In these sessions any musical con-
tribution was welcome, from the beginning Scottish-fiddler to the Russian Folk Orchestra member
playing jigs on a domra to the Australian singer who regaled the crowd with Gordon Lightfoot songs.
      In September of 1979 the Celtic Society Tunebook was compiled and produced in order to ac-
quaint all present and prospective performers with a common store of material. Within a year the
session had acquired a name--the Irish Folk Club--and had played gigs. Under those new auspices
the Irish Folk Club Tunebook, Vol. I appeared in the summer of 1980. Alas, there would never be
a Vol. II. Tom Scanlan returned to Ireland a year later, and a year after that the session was gone.
Various professional Celtic music groups have since existed in Champaign-Urbana, but for ten years
there were no open sessions.

      ...And Now

      In the summer of 1993, Siobhan Senier and her fellow players in the group Cabair Feigh insti-
tuted an open session in Co. Champaign once again. Now in its second year, this session, which, at
the time this book goes into production, is held on the first Saturday night of each month at Phoney
Mahoney's ("Somewhat Authentic") on Mattis Avenue in Champaign, includes a solid core of ac-
complished players.
      Most of these players have the Celtic Society Tunebook and the Irish Folk Club Tunebook, Vol.
I, and the deficiencies of those books are now painfully evident. Their pages had been hand-drawn
and typed on letter-size paper that was then photocopied and reduced to final size; thus, the music
was difficult to read, especially in a pub. Of course, many of the favorite tunes of the current ses-
sion were lacking. The annotations were obsolete, erroneous in some places, and unnecessarily of-
fensive in others.
      Thus, the need for a new tunebook has long been clear. Now that, thanks to Charles B. Harmke
and Amy L. Harmke, I have equipment that would have been a miracle in 1980, this volume and, I
hope, its successors can at last be produced.

      Acknowledgments

      Special thanks to Siobhan Senier for establishing the sessions to begin with, and to the other mu-
sicians who have contributed tunes to them. Jake Schumacher and Mary Baker in particular took
time and provided hospitality to help me obtain good transcriptions and source information for nu-
merous tunes, indicated by the notation [JS].