We’ve all been warned not to judge a book by its cover.  Still, is it so wrong to assume that Grey Larsen – a man who’s made nearly a dozen CDs of Celtic music, wrote a 48-page book on Irish musical instruments, took a couple of trips to Ireland and hangs out with a guy named Paddy – is Irish?

“Actually, I’m not,” says Larsen. “I might find a few drops of Irish blood in me if I were to dig back deep enough, but I have pretty mixed-up ethnic background – a typical American.

“I’m not Irish ethnically, but that’s never mattered at all,” adds the Cincinnati native.  “What mattered was the love and respect for the music.” (And after all, his Scots and Welsh roots are still indisputably Celtic.)

That love of the music proves a powerful driver for Larsen.  In the last two months alone, he’s produced two books dedicated to classic Irish instruments – “The Essential Guide to Irish Flute and Tin Whistle” and “The Essential Tin Whistle Toolbox” – and a CD of Celtic tunes, “Dark of the Moon,” with musician Paddy League.  Larsen also has two tune books coming out this year from Mel Bay Publications’ Celtic Encyclopedia series.

He developed his admiration for Gaelic culture long before he made his first trip to Ireland in 1979.  “For me, Irish music is rooted so much in Ohio,” he says.  Larsen was already musically minded as a teenager in Cincinnati, having inherited his father’s affection for classical and folk music.  He was studying piano and cello when a friend introduced him to the sounds of the Irish flute and fiddle.

“I heard it and it just grabbed my heart,” recalls Larsen, who describes the Irish flute – which is traditionally wooden and has exposed tone holes that come in direct contact with the player’s fingers, similar to a recorder – as having a “deeper, darker sound” than a standard flute.  “It was so soulful and intricate and beautiful,” he says.  “It really hooked me right there.”

He nurtured interest in the Celtic sound with fellow folk-music devotees while a student at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music in the ‘70s, and honed his skills on the traditional instruments with a weekly, 40-mile trip to a basement in Lakewood – the meeting spot of the Cleveland Irish Musicians’ Club.  The club, compromising older, Irish factory workers who’d immigrated to Cleveland to find work, gathered every week in a member’s house to play traditional Irish songs.  It was an unlikely hangout for Larsen and his long-haired, bellbottom-wearing friends from Oberlin.

“I imagine they thought, ‘Oh God!  We’re being invaded by hippies!’” he says, laughing.  “But as soon as we got on the instruments and started playing together, and they realized we actually knew some of this music and had come because we loved it and wanted to learn from them, from that moment we were all just good friends.”

Today, Larsen incorporates the Irish music learned in those session into the films he scores and the CDs he records, produces and masters.  He also continues to pass on the traditional sound, teaching others through his books and an online Irish Tune Bank: a repository of Irish recordings that includes insights, background and commentary from Larsen on how to play better.

“The thing I love about traditional Irish music is that it just draws people together because it’s so joyful,” he says.  “It’s all because it’s so joyful,” he says.  “It’s all about sharing and welcoming and having a good time.”
                                     -- Jennifer Haliburton