Lúnasa hits the road after first album in 7 years
Irish band will play in Albuquerque with guest vocalist Tim O’Brien
Kevin Crawford is ready to get on the road and perform with Lúnasa.
And the timing is perfect, because the band recently released the album “CAS,” the band’s first album in seven years.
“It’s very exciting times,” he says during a recent interview. “It’s been a while since we’ve had some new music.”
The band, based in Ireland, formed in 1996 and released its debut, self-titled album in 1997.
In the years since those early concerts and albums catapulted the band to the forefront of traditional Irish music, the members of Lúnasa have gathered a long list of credits and honors in addition to the legion of fans around the globe, fitting achievements for a band that takes its name from the old Celtic harvest festival in
honor of the god Lugh, patron of the arts.
The band also has sold more than quarter of a million albums in the course of the its career and boasts an impressive back catalog of nine highly acclaimed and awardwinning albums.
Crawford says the seven-year break between albums was much-needed.
He says the album coincided with some personnel changes.
“Everything got more complicated because we had a roving cast of performers,” he says. “Our original fiddle player, Seán Smyth, he’s a doctor, and he decided to go into the medical world full time. We brought in a roving cast of fiddle players, and we were testing them out. We found Colin Farrell, and he mostly does work in America. Seán only gets to play with us when we’re in Ireland, and we do less than 10 shows out there.”
“CAS” also marks the band’s first album with vocals. The guest vocalists include Natalie Merchant, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Tim O’Brien, Eric Bigg and Daoirí Farrell.
“We wanted to do something different when we got back into the studio,” he says. “We’ve worked with a lot of the artists over the years and reached out to them for the album. Tim will be on the gig in Albuquerque.”