Irish Guitarist John Doyle Comes to the Empire

Sometimes with great talent comes even greater ego, but with master guitarist John Doyle, who will be coming to the Empire Arts Center on July 6, his great talent is matched by his great generosity and warmth of spirit.

Doyle is in much demand as a session player. He has appeared on albums by bluegrass artist Tim O’Brien and jazz banjo player Alison Brown, among others, and he has contributed to the soundtracks of the films “The Brothers McMullen” and “Soldier"and also for the PBS program, “Out of Ireland.” He is a founding member of the Celtic band Solas.

But his solo work and his collaborations with traditional fiddler Liz Carroll are where he shines. Unlike a lot of technical players who seem to stay in their heads and are confined by their technique, Doyle plays with his heart, feeling the music come out of him as a child at play.

Even when his guitar follows Liz Carroll’s fiddle through intricate jigs and reels, he seems to be enjoying the chase and the challenge of finding runs that will make them both smile.

On slower tunes, Doyle’s guitar work is full and rich as he fills in the spaces between the violin notes with something original. “It’s always fun to play with Liz,” Doyle said in a recent interview. “In our last album, “In Play,” over 90 percent of the tunes were hers. In traditional music, you wouldn’t hear that. She’s one of the great writers of traditional music these days.”

Doyle himself also writes but does his share of traditional interpretation. His work with Solas, including guitar and vocals, reinvented a lot of traditional tunes, including a very unusual rendering of Woody Guthrie’s “Pastures of Plenty.”

“If we’d had known Woody Guthrie well, obviously he would have been a legend to us,” Doyle said. “But we didn’t have have the same reverence as people in the States have, to be so afraid to change things around a little bit..When we heard how many people have done versions of it, we kind of went ‘Oh, Oh.’ Maybe we wouldn’t have done it if we had known. But it works well.”

Though Doyle grew up in a musical family in Dublin, he didn’t discover the guitar until he was 11 or 12. He and a buddy used to bet with each other about who could learn a song the fastest. “I was left-handed so I had to play it upside down,” Doyle said. “It just grabbed me, and has kept me ever since, really. I’ve always wondered why. Maybe it was just some sort of freedom of expression. So, from then on, I became obsessed with it.”

He also listened to Led Zeppelin, the Grateful Dead, and Metallica growing up, as well as folk music. “But my heart was always into these old tunes and songs, always acoustic music,” he recalled. “But songs for me were always the prime moving force. That’s what I learned from my father.”

When John Doyle comes to do an exclusive performance at the Empire Arts Center in Grand Forks on July 6, he will be bringing not only the lightening fast guitar work of his beloved Irish jigs and reels, but he will also be treating the audience to his rich Irish voice as he shares traditional and original songs with them.

If You Go

Who: John Doyle
When: Sunday July 6, 7:30 pm
Where: Empire Arts Center, Grand Forks
How Much: $15,
Info: (701) 772-4090