Chicago native musician celebrates her Irish heritage

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Kathleen Keane

Updated: August 12, 2011 4:38PM

“In terms of my career, I’ve always made my living being the side person in someone else’s band or project,” said Kathleen Keane, of Norridge. “Only recently have I had the courage to be on center stage and front myself. The response has been great, every show is selling out. It’s going well.”

Keane, 39, has had a successful and exciting career in Irish music, and is widely acknowledged as a superb multi-instrumentalist (tin whistle, flute, fiddle, button accordion), dancer, singer, and composer, as well as being a true Irish beauty.

She has also seen success as an actress and is emerging as a vocalist of renown. She was a member of the acclaimed Celtic rock band, The Drovers, and toured for three years with Celtic band, Gaelic Storm. While with Gaelic Storm, Keane made multiple TV appearances on episodes of “Providence” and also “The Roseanne Barr Show.”

Movie music

Keane appears in the movies, “The Road to Perdition” and “Backdraft,” performing on tin whistle, and her whistle and fiddle music was included on the soundtrack to “Cinderella Man.” With her new trad-influenced band, Tantrum, Keane performs occasionally with other busy and successful artists — Jimmy Moore, Dennis Cahill, Jackie Moran, Declan Fahy, and Patrick Quinn.

But Keane’s desire to be a solo artist goes back to 1999, when she released her first solo album. She had just joined Gaelic Storm and was about to tour, so had no time to even do a CD release party.

With her recent self-produced and critically acclaimed solo album, “Where the Wind Meets the Water,” Keane has been able to actively promote and perform in support of her recording. She not only had a proper CD release event — a packed house at Mayne Stage in Chicago — but will perform a second such event at Mayne Stage in September.

Keane’s stand-out title track, co-written with Al Day, is delivered with her fine vocals, like a fresh Celtic breeze sailing over melody and soulful instrumentation. Other tracks include delightful renditions of traditional and original material with song, reels, airs, jigs and hornpipes.

A surprising and exceptional piece on the new album is Keane’s full-versed rendition of the Irish classic, “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling.”

Old favorite

“A lot of people are surprised that it’s on the album,” said Keane. “But I was singing in a show and a director asked that we sing it, and half of the musicians turned up their nose at it; but I think the lyric, the music, and the sentiment are great, and the verses are unusually beautiful. When Bing Crosby recorded it, he only did the chorus, and this is the version that is mostly performed, with the verses dropped. This song will (soon be) 100 years old, and there’s something to it, a reason why it has lasted so long.”

Keane is a Chicago native who grew up with music and performance.

“I think for me, like a lot of first generation Irish Americans living in Chicago, we start dancing and it leads to music lessons,” she said. “I was only 5 years old when I started taking Irish dancing lessons, and an older dancer, Mary Mayer, taught me tin whistle and flute. Then, when I was 10 years old, I wanted to study with Liz Carroll. I knew her from the Irish music scene, because myself, my sister, and some other childhood friends, including John Williams, were all member of this Irish cultural organization (CCE), so we grew up in this community. But Liz didn’t teach tin whistle or flute, she taught fiddle and accordion. So I decided to take fiddle, not necessarily because I was interested in the instrument, but because I wanted to study with her.”

Later, when Keane’s mother suggested she learn the button accordion, Carroll said she would only teach one instrument at a time.

Said Keane, laughing: “Learning the button accordion was my way out of fiddle lessons!”

But more learning was clearly a good idea for an Irish musician.

“I had the advantage of starting so young and growing up in a music community where it’s common to learn more than one instrument,” she said. “I did go to college, got my bachelor’s, but knew I would do music for a living from the time I was 18. I knew that there was more work if you were a multi-instrumentalist, that the more things you could do, the more work you would get. I can cover many roles.”

Stuart Rosenberg of Evanston’s S.P.A.C.E, who is a Skokie resident, recorded and mixed “Where the Wind Meets the Water,” and he thinks highly of Keane’s musicianship.

“Working in the studio with her on this recording was a thoroughly enjoyable challenge,” he said. “Her original instrumental compositions blend the earthy musk of dance music with an elegant sense of balance and arrangement. Her original songs are rich with vivid poetic imagery, sung in a voice that carries love and longing with real tenderness and beauty.”

For more information about Keane, visit www.kathleenkeane.com.