Maeve Toner: Dublin’s queen of quirky and wonderful songs with the autoharp

By Nadine Stah White for Autoharp Quarterly magazine and Autoharp Notes newsletter [reprinted on the BIB May 2013]

Autoharpers are thin on the ground in Ireland, and you might expect an Irish autoharper to be playing traditional Irish harp and fiddle tunes... but this time, you’d be wrong. Maeve Toner was born and raised in an atmosphere of American music. She has developed her own masterful way with old-time songs accompanied on the autoharp. Her style is not only thoroughly old-timey, but also completely distinctive – as so often happens when a good musician plays autoharp in almost complete isolation.

Maeve told me how she acquired her first autoharp: 'I spotted an autoharp in a music shop window when I was working as an au pair in Paris. I was homesick, and it looked like an old friend: I had to have it!' This snap decision in 1973, was the start of a very special and long-lasting relationship between Maeve Toner and the autoharp. Given her upbringing, it’s perhaps not surprising that Maeve would be drawn to an instrument which has been so strongly linked to old-time American music and song. Forty years later, her autoharping is a confident and mature expression of that life-long enjoyment of old-time country music.

The Toner household was filled with music from the other side of the Atlantic. 'Music was never considered a "subject" to study, we just DID it. My dad played ukulele and harmonica and sang some great songs, and my two older brothers both began playing guitars when I was only a baby. Sadly, my dad died when I was quite young, so my musical memories of him are very precious to me. I remember him sitting with his ukelele, singing quirky songs such as "Back in Nagasaki" ("where the fellas chew tabakky") "Riding on a camel in the desert" and "If I could shimmy like my sister Kate". He and I had endless fun listening to Jimmy Durante’s songs, and he was a fan of Louis Armstrong too - that’s probably what attracted him to an album which Jimmy Rodgers recorded with a five-piece jazz outfit.'

Her brothers Niall and Colm both became involved in old-time and bluegrass music, and in 1968 they were founder members of the Lee Valley String Band, a group from County Cork which is still going strong today. When big brother Niall took teenager Maeve along to one of this band’s early rehearsals, she had a thought-provoking encounter with another band member. 'I shyly admitted that I knew a few chords on the guitar. His reply shook me at the time: "Everybody knows a few chords on the guitar! Unless you think you have the makings of a guitar virtuoso, find a different instrument!" That’s what I remember about my first meeting with Chris Twomey, who just happened to be playing (you’ve guessed it) an autoharp. The autoharp doesn’t look or sound like anything else in the world. I had only ever seen a picture of one on a Carter Family album and Chris Twomey’s playing made it even more fascinating as he plays left-handed.'(See Twomey performing with Lee Valley String Band in an unusual style even for a left-hander.)

Maeve’s only other encounter with an experienced autoharper was in the early 1970s, when she was still a new player and got in touch with Tom Paley in London. A founding member of the New Lost City Ramblers, multi-instrumentalist Paley sometimes plays autoharp. He advised Maeve to ‘get fingerpicks, and get used to wearing and using them. They will increase your volume, and also help you avoid getting blood on the autoharp.' She followed this advice, and now routinely uses heavy-duty metal fingerpicks, while occasionally playing bare-fingered when quiet playing is appropriate.

With no autoharp mentors to hand, Maeve mostly had to work things out for herself. 'Although I had access to a few recordings of autoharp playing, I had no idea what kind of techniques they were using, I didn’t even know that Kilby Snow was playing left-handed upside-down, and listening to his recordings used to make me want to throw my autoharp on the fire! So, really I had to figure it out all on my own. I think this has given me my own style and flavour, and probably some bad habits too!'

Maeve’s music has been greatly influenced by recordings. 'It’s difficult to know who "influenced" me most, but over the years I have had great pleasure from listening to the Carter Family, Doc Watson, Kenny Hall, the Red Clay Ramblers, the Skirt-Lifters, New Lost City Ramblers, the Harmony Sisters, Hazel Dickens and Alice Gerrard, Kate and Anna McGarrigle, the Highwoods String Band, Jeff Warner, Norman Blake, Robert Crumb, John Hartford, Ry Cooder, Mike Seeger, to name but a few, in no particular order.' And she has also enjoyed listening to Evo Bluestein (these days she uses a well-played Evoharp, strictly chromatic, which suits her playing and singing style very well).

And of course there has always been the huge influence of live music. 'Bluegrass and old Timey music has always had a bunch of dedicated players and listeners in Dublin and the same can be said for County Cork. The old-timey scene in Dublin is surprisingly vibrant at the moment, with a lot of younger, and astonishingly competent players around. A quick look at the Bluegrass in Ireland Facebook page will give you a feel of what’s going on, and the hugely successful Bluegrass Ireland Blog Archives are still available to anyone interested.' For a glimpse of Maeve’s past performance in these archives, you can go to photos and an account of Doc Watson’s 1981 concert in Dublin, with Maeve in support.

With a great penchant for the quirky and unusual, Maeve’s repertoire includes many gems often overlooked by other players. 'There are just so many good songs out there. My own personal definition of a good song is that it should either make you laugh or cry, or give you goose pimples!'

Maeve’s autoharp isolation ended in 2012 when she joined the Cyberpluckers online newsgroup. Discovering that a Scottish Autoharp Weekend (ScAW) was happening within reasonable travel distance from her home in Dublin, she joined us last August. And once the UK autoharpers saw this impressive autoharper in action, it was obvious that we needed to hear MORE of her music! So Maeve will be coming back to this year’s ScAW as a featured performer and workshop leader.

And for folks who live farther afield, there are plenty of wonderful songs on Maeve’s newly-released CD Just for the record, where she is accompanied by two longstanding friends and fine old-time musicians, Bill Whelan on banjo and Ben Keogh on guitar and sweet harmony vocals. Engaging choruses with lines like ‘Come, take a trip in my airship!’ and ‘Where did you get that hat?’ will pursue you for days after listening to the CD. If you want to contact Maeve directly, you can e-mail her.