Brendan Taaffe: Biography




Biography

I grew up in Minnesota, in what I imagine to have been a modestly average childhood: throwing rocks on the railroad tracks with my dog, hanging out with buddies, skipping school to go to the Art Institute. My earliest musical influence was my father: a schoolteacher by trade, he had come to the U.S. from Ireland in the early 60’s and, like many emigrants, gained a much greater appreciation for his home once he had left. We grew up with all the Irish music he could find, as well as a healthy dose of Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie. I did have some music lessons as a child—piano, trombone in fourth grade, violin for a few years—but was a lackluster student. I got my first guitar when I was 16 and my brother owed me money. He was broke, so he gave me his guitar instead.

I left Minnesota for Deep Springs College, a wonderful and unique education in the desert of California. After two years in the desert, I took a job at Spring Lake Ranch, a therapeutic community/ farm in Cuttingsville, Vermont. That was a fateful move in many ways, and I’ve been based in the green mountains since. It was at the Ranch that a friend took me to my first contra dance, in Bristol, and the music there was like coming home. I had been surrounded by Irish music growing up, but teenage years had taken me other directions—I had a ball at that dance, and was inspired to start in on the fiddle, lucky enough to have stuck with my lackluster studies earlier in life long enough for there to be a dusty instrument in a closet back home.

For most of my twenties, farming was the central passion in my life. I traveled to Sri Lanka and India to observe organic farm practices, pulled weeds on small holdings in Ireland, worked on a CSA in Wisconsin, and eventually moved back to Vermont—which I had been missing all along—to start my own diversified market operation, Laughing Rock Gardens. But all the while I was obsessed with the fiddle—playing with friends, poring over old recordings and soaking up what I could. I started playing for dances, which I’ve grown to love, discovered other traditions of fiddle music and unearthed my guitar, changing my style to be able to play behind fiddle tunes.

In recent years, I’ve given myself over full time to playing music, and have been lucky enough to play and work with some great folks. I’ve gotten to play for concerts and at a lot of different dance halls, including the Guiding Star Grange, Montpelier, and Tinmouth, my home dance. In 2005, I completed a Master’s degree in traditional Irish music at the Irish World Music Centre, part of the University of Limerick, on Ireland’s west coast. Studying there, I had the opportunity to work with a pile of fantastic fiddlers, including Tommy Peoples, Martin Hayes, Kevin Burke, Caoimhin O Raghallaigh, Siobhan Peoples and Matt Cranitch. I also played in a lot of sessions at the Horse and Hound, and traveled the country giving workshops in American harmony singing. Since then, I have toured with Northern Harmony and am now running Turtle Dove, a singing camp for adults, in addition to playing fiddle and guitar for dances and concerts.