Dervish: No rush for “The Thrush in the Storm”

BY DON THRASHER

CONTRIBUTING WRITER

Irish group Dervish has covered a lot of stylistic ground since forming in Sligo County in 1989.

The group — performing in a Cityfolk concert in Centennial Hall at Stivers School for the Arts in Dayton on Friday, March 22 — has recorded contemporary songs and dabbled with pushing the boundaries of Celtic music. However its enchanting new album, “The Thrush in the Storm,” is a return to Dervish’s traditional roots with jaunty instrumental dance tunes and powerful vocal numbers.

“We’ve tried all sort of different things over the years,” singer Cathy Jordan said. “We’ve done collaborations and more newly composed material, but we didn’t make so much a conscious decision this time. It happened organically. All the material we seemed to be gathering was of a more traditional nature so we kept with that theme and we’re very happy with it. It’s something we do really well. I think the world needed another very traditional album and we’ve provided it.

“It’s good to have new material that you work up from scratch and have new arrangements,” she continued. “It’s really exciting to play them on stage. You can really feel the energy building around the band when they’re playing new material. That’s what’s great about this tour is we have that album.”

“The Thrush in the Storm” is the Celtic group’s first new studio album since 2007’s “Travelling Show.”

“We made noise for our 21st anniversary in 2010 with our double live CD/DVD ‘From Stage to Stage’ so we weren’t totally sitting on our laurels,” Jordan said. “We’ve been working on the new album a while between touring and everything else. We’ve been more or less working on identifying a solid block of time to dedicate to it.”

Jordan also credited the delay to the fact that Dervish is self-sufficient and doesn’t have to rush an album out just to meet some arbitrary record label timeline.

“It’s great being our own record company as so far as you never bring out the album until you’re ready,” Jordan said. “But it’s a bad thing in that you never bring out the album until you’re ready. It’s good you’re not under pressure to put out something you’re not happy with but it’s bad in so far as you tend to procrastinate more than you should when there are no deadlines.

“Really, truly, the album should’ve been out last year but we didn’t get it together,” Jordan added. “We’re all vowing not to leave it as long again before we have another one.”

Contact contributing arts and music writer Don Thrasher at donaldthrasher8@aol.com.