The natural beauty of the Catskills Region stirs my heart each time I wend my way along its country roads which for many of Irish descent remind them of the lush emerald landscapes they left behind in the Old Country.
Once you are there in the Irish Catskills surrounding East Durham, you easily find yourself falling under the spell and company of people who sing its praises all year long and have worked hard over the years to keep the time-worn area propped up as time and fashion have passed it by.
Among the cheerleaders are five gents who share the title of Mr. Catskills, in my opinion, four of whom are musicians in Jimmy Kelly, Senior, Peter McKiernan, Billy McComiskey and Mike McHale and Donal Gallagher, business owner of the Guaranteed Irish Gift Shop.
But there is really one lady who has earned the title of Miss (Ms. isn't a designation in vogue in the historic hamlet) Catskills as the primary booster of the Irish Catskills and that would be Kitty Kelly, a one-woman cultural chamber of commerce for the area. To aid her efforts, she has just released her first solo CD appropriately titled Catskills Fever.
In my five-year tenure as the artistic director of the Catskills Irish Arts Week, I have had the pleasure of working with Kitty in and outside the program, and watched with admiration her tireless efforts boosting the allure of the Irish resort area that served as a getaway destination for so many Irish people and families over the decades.
Now a college professor at St. Rose's College in Albany with a business resume in sales, she has carved out an entertainment part of her life in recent years that has brought her down from the mountains headlining shows at Eisenhower Park on Long Island and pubs like Rory Dolan's and the Shannon Rose.
Raised between Albany and the East Durham area, her family on both sides played a part in much of the history written there at the Irish establishments like the Shamrock House and the Brookside Pub, and her mission is to keep that tradition alive as long as possible.
Any performer on the road today has to have "product" to sell like CDs to take care of the traveling expenses that aren't really covered in performance fees, so Kitty realized that she had to find the time and resources to make her own CD with many of the fine musicians who have worked with her over the years.
She turned to cousin Jimmy Kelly, Junior, a musician also, to record and produce her first effort, and it emerged just before Memorial Day where she launched it in fine fashion at the East Durham Memorial Festival run by Tommy McGoldrick.
The CD contains 16 tracks, and a host of musicians conscripted to work on it like Joanie Madden, John Nolan, Eamonn O'Rourke, Jerry O'Sullivan, Buddy Connolly, Gabe Donahue, Hughie Friel, John O'Hare, Brendan O'Sullivan, Bill Spillane, Mike Clarke and, of course, her family connections, Ralph (father), Colin (brother) and Jimmy Kelly, Senior (uncle) and Junior (cousin).
Very much like Kitty's live act, the album contains many of the popular standards for Irish balladeers, particularly if you like your tales told in dancing tempo as the Irish like to dance to even the most lurid or sentimental lyrics.
Celtic favorites like "Come By the Hills," "Destination Donegal," "Cliffs of Doneen," "Will You Go Lassie Go," "Galway Shawl," "Homes of Donegal," "Shanagolden," "Johnny, Lovely Johnny" and Johnny McEvoy's lovely plaintive song "Long Before Your Time" dominate the recording.
But Kitty also displays a well-rounded feel for the contemporary songs like Lucinda Williams' "Passionate Kisses" covered so well by Mary Chapin Carpenter, and the timeless "All of Me" by Gerard Marks and Seymour Simon, and Cy Coban's "Nobody's Child."
In a nod to her family's tradition in the music scene in the mountains there's a bonus track from Dad Ralph on accordion and Uncle Jimmy on drums that plays homage to the small wooden pub called the Brookside secreted alongside a flowing stream off of Route 145 that was built by Granddad Ralph as an oasis for Irish trad musicians where manys the night flowed into the daylight.
It is the title track, "Catskills Fever," that grabs me as what could be the anthem of the Irish Catskills as we know it in East Durham. Written by Carl Corcoran in 2006, who is now living in Ireland and hosting his own Lyric FM radio show, it depicts the essence of the mountain escape for so many devotees of the area. "Music fills your days and dancing fills your nights, stories from the other side, tradition burnin' bright. And if you ask where I'm bound, I'm headed for the mountains to East Durham town," go the lyrics.
The inspired layering of Corcoran's melody around the reel "The Mountain Road" played by the trad crew of Madden, Nolan, O'Sullivan, O'Rourke and Donahue certainly set the scene for one of the last of the Irish enclaves where live music has a refuge.
If Kitty has her way, it won't be the last days of the Irish empire there in East Durham either as this celebration of family, music and good times keep rolling along.
For more information visit Kitty's website at www.kittykelly.org or call 518-965-3641 to find out how to order the CD where it can be readily obtained at the Guaranteed Irish Shop on Route 145 in East Durham.