This Oregon-based folk duo with Minneapolis ties celebrate the traditional music of Ireland, the British Isles, Newfoundland and Appalachia on their stunning new album, Lady Mondegreen. By evoking the history, stories, landscapes, ancestry, passion and tragedy of the people from these regions, this album offers listeners a musical conduit to explore their own experiences and emotions.

Fellow Pynins, *Lady Mondegreen* album cover. Artwork by Hieronymus Bosch.

In early May, Carol and I sat down with Dani Aubert (claw-hammer banjo, bouzouki) and Ian George (guitar, mandolin) of Fellow Pynins for a virtual interview to discuss their upcoming sophomore album, Lady Mondegreen. Quickly, we discovered that we have a number of things in common: 1.) Ian is originally from Minneapolis, and the duo were based here for a couple years before moving back out to the West Coast; 2.) Currently, they live near Portland, Oregon, but have lived all over the state, including near where I lived from 2015-2018; and 3.) Their musical travels have brought them to Ireland for long stretches of time over the past 20 years, including Dublin where I lived as a student for a year back in the 90s. It’s this shared connection to the traditional music of Ireland that explains why their new album resonates with me so acutely.

Predominantly (but not exclusively) folk musicians, Aubert and George met many years ago at an informal Celtic music session, neither knowing each other or Celtic music before they walked in the door, but eager to learn and participate. Happily, they played with the group for hours before Aubert and George even spoke to each other. Over the next year, they kept running into each other through their mutual connection to folk music, creating a lasting bond.

Creatively, they first came together in a six-piece band. Years later, to make life simpler and focus on their own songs, Ian and Dani broke off as a duo. In Fellow Pynins (pronounced pine-ins), they’ve established a far more collaborative approach, creating space for each other to feel like they have a voice. While surrendering to that process is never easy for any creative collaboration (whether artists admit it or not), the foundation of their relationship is grounded in trust, and creating music is no different.

Easily, having thoroughly considered it some time ago, they confirmed their roles within the creative process: “Dani is the decisive one and I’m the ‘idea factory,’” George said. When asked what their composition styles are like, they explained that, because their relationships are so intertwined between running a house, being parents, managing their business, and creating music, they’ve become really good at compartmentalizing, able to switch back and forth efficiently between each role or task. But, because writing and composing require a private space to become vulnerable to the experience of creating, they tend to write on their own. When they’re ready to bring a piece to each other, it’s generally ready from start to finish. This is when the collaboration process begins.

Ian George & Dani Aubert of Fellow Pynins. Photo credit: Justin Gordon.

Their new album, Lady Mondegreen, is a highly collaborative project, much more so than their 2016 debut album, Hunter & the Hunted, which is entirely original songs. On that first album, one of them would write lyrics and create a melody, then they’d each play around with it. This new album is entirely traditional music, which means there was no originator to a particular piece; instead, they tapped into the people, history, stories of folklore and fairytale, ethos, landscapes, tragedy, and humor of traditional music in Ireland, the British Isles, Newfoundland, and Appalachia.

George explains that, in these songs, “tears are quick, as is biting humor; the harmonizing feels like it’s from ‘the source’”; and the feeling of a bones-deep “ancestral tie” is what anchors their sense of “palpable presence.” Performing and telling stories is such a huge part of what they do, which is why place, time, and experience are integral to song. The song “Son David” is the oldest on the new album, with the first-known written version dating back to the 1600s. Because of this deep musical history, where and when a song came from holds just as much meaning to the two as their first memories of hearing it. Transporting people through music, “staking allegiance to the old way, is at the core of what we do.”

Collectively, the songs on Lady Mondegreen are deceptively sweet to the ear, ranging lyrically from lullaby (“Bonny At Morn”) to star-crossed love (“The Galway Shawl” and “The Road and the Miles to Dundee”) to cheating hearts (“Silver Dagger” and “She’s Like the Swallow”) to redemption (“Pretty Polly”) to murder (“Son David”) to capital punishment (“Streets of Derry”).

Dani Aubert & Ian George of Fellow Pynins. Photo credit: Justin Gordon.

One of my favorite songs is the final track, “The Galway Shawl.” Here, the voice of an Irish woman, Kitty O’Mahony, who was roughly in her 70s at the time, can be heard talking and singing at the beginning, then carries the melody alongside Aubert’s perfectly matched harmony. The recording was captured in County Cork years before on their travels through Ireland. As Aubert tells it, “Ian was inquiring with a lot of people to find folks that sang traditional songs.” When Aubert turned her back for a minute, George was referred to a laundromat and promptly disappeared. While the laundromat, at the back of the building, included a mere two washing machines and dryers, the entire front of the store was more like a museum, preserving her late-husband’s hardware business, left untouched in the 20-odd years since he’d passed.

By the time Aubert found them, George was already recording the woman singing traditional songs while the laundry machines hummed their accompaniment. She lamented that she couldn’t remember all the lyrics to the songs, so she asked them to come back the next day. As luck would have it, she called her neighbor Kitty that evening and asked if she wanted to sing for "the American's" too. When Aubert and George returned the next day, the woman at the Laundromat sang for them and then sent them over to Kitty's house. First, Kitty introduced them to her husband, offered them tea and pie, and then sat them down in her sitting room where they recorded her singing for hours, nonstop. “Kitty wasn’t a pub singer or performer,'' Aubert explained. “She learned each song growing up, when singing was the only entertainment her family had.”

While nothing came of the recordings for many years, eventually Aubert and George pulled out “The Galway Shawl,” which is the story of a troubadour welcomed into the home of a woman from Galway wearing a shawl, playing what feels like the Greatest Hits of traditional Irish music (“The Foggy Dew,” “The Black Bird,” “The Stack of Barley,” and “Rodney’s Glory”) before he sadly leaves the woman behind to travel on to Donegal.

Once Aubert and George decided to include it in their new album, the choice to play the recording alongside Aubert’s vocals “unfolded organically.” Aubert explained how she wrote Kitty an eight-page letter explaining that they wanted to use the recording but requested her permission first. Tracking the woman down to send the letter wasn’t as difficult as she expected—Aubert simply described Kitty over the phone to someone in the village, and they immediately knew who she was referring to. Aubert was incredibly nervous as she awaited Kitty’s reply, but her swift reply exclaimed, “Of course! Use it however you want!” In the coming weeks, Aubert and George will be performing in Kitty’s village, so they’ll be able to thank her publicly as well as personally.

Besides “The Galway Shawl,” “Pretty Polly” is one of their favorites to perform because of the story and how it feels to perform it. An Appalachian song, the brutal nature of the traditional lyrics makes for an uncomfortable listening experience: A not-very-gentlemanlike man named Willy lures Pretty Polly away for “pleasure” in the guise of marrying her, but when she demurs, he reveals his true intentions. Suffice it to say, things do not bode well for poor Polly. But in the hands of Fellow Pynins, the lyrics of Woody Guthires’ "Pastures of Plenty," set to the tune of “Pretty Polly,” were blended with the original story to shift the message to one of dignity and respect, where Willy no longer wants to kill Polly and run off to sea after committing such cruel acts. Instead, he decides to care for the baby, respect Polly by marrying her, and work the land together, happily ever after. Musically, it gently tumbles over the story as if lightly glancing off rocks in a mountain stream. For my part, that is a wholly welcome 180 to the original versions, especially these days.

While honoring the history of each song, Aubert and George subtly make them their own without strain or disservice. Contributions on the album from superb session musicians and friends of theirs from Minneapolis, Brooklyn, Boston, Ireland and London (Tree Palmedo on trumpet, John Cushing on trombone, Eladio Rojas on drums, Eugene Feygelson on violin, Ted Olsen on bass, and Maura Shawn Scanlin on violin) support but never overpower the intimate musical conversation between Aubert and George.

There’s one notable instrumental exception—“Son David” introduces horns and just a touch of experimental jazz that opens up a bright and languid yet somber song about, well…murder. No one can ever accuse the Gaelic people—of which I claim lineage—of “toxic positivity.” Seeing how the world right now feels more and more dystopian by the day, this album full of bittersweet musical stories is just what many of us need to allow ourselves to sit with and understand our own stories and emotions through those of others who came before us. Time, language, and culture may shift and change, but the human experience rarely does.

Carol, who saw Fellow Pynins perform at Icehouse the last night before lockdown in March 2020, will luckily be able to connect with them at the Folk Alliance International Conference in Kansas City, Missouri, this week. Then they’re off on a weeklong tour through California and Oregon as they prepare for a summer tour in the UK and Ireland, which has already secured 30 gigs. Hopefully they’ll find their way back to the Twin Cities again soon (hint-hint, Dani and Ian), but until then, be sure to check out and purchase Lady Mondegreen when it drops this Friday, May 20!

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The website & graphic designer, webmaster, writer, and editor for Adventures in Americana, Jaclyn enjoys a wide range of music—and Americana is just one of many favorites. While her main hustle is grant writing, her true passion lies in screenwriting and filmmaking.

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