Irish American Zines - Subscription: 1 Year, 4 Zines + Bonus Calendar

For the sacred price of $120, you will get a year-long subscription to Melanie Beth Curran's zines. I release a new zine EVERY season, near the solstice or equinox. At the year's end, you will receive your limited edition Wall Calendar (theme will most likely be potatoes).

Zines are about unsung elements of Irish American life.

Each zine is meticulously hand-crafted and researched. They are art pieces, collectable items, worth their salt, extraordinarily rugged, delicious, etc.

The zines of 2024 include:

SPRING - "Do Me Justice: The Mary Wallopers, Arena and a History of Tin Pan Alley's Racist Sheet Music". Examines Irish American and Black American caricature in music and the lasting effects of this printed material.

SUMMER - "American Irish Songs" - Songbook collection culled from Melanie's life, from Library of Congress Field Recordings, and wherever else I can find songs that embody the American Irish music practice.

AUTUMN - "Bad Boys of Irish America: What They Wear, What They Do, And Why They Art Hot". This zine examines the mystique of Irish American rogue dudes, in media, film, tv, real life, etc. This will be somewhat of a manual of how to act like them (why or why not).

WINTER - "How Brigid Made The Fire: Unverified Personal Gnosis of How Brigid Came to Run My Life". Melanie writes the account of how Brigid, ancient goddess/force/catholic saint/mysterious being from Ireland came to run her life as an American in Brooklyn, New York.

Zine 1: Do Me Justice: The Mary Wallopers, Arena, and Vaudeville Clairsentience

Welcome to New York City, where the Ghost of Tin Pan Alley still lurks.

This is an NYC tale about an EVIL force that threatens performers along the Mohican Road (The Bowery / Broadway). As the demon makes the author ill, she finds a balm- A SALVATION - in the performances of Fall 2023. One by The Mary Wallopers, one by a dance group doing a musical dance show called Arena. Both groups BATTLE the old cold thing.

The author illuminates histories of Black and Irish stereotypes in American Sheet Music.

8.5in x 11in, staple bound, printed on 80lb un-coated paper with a 100lb glossy cover.

Zine is full color baby, 44 pages

Excerpt:

"Do me justice, treat me fair
And I won’t be discontented
And I won’t be laughed at anywhere
But fairly represented

Andrew sings the refrain. It’s just so strange. I’ve been creeped out since I got off the subway. That cold and icy feeling crawls up my calves now. Irving Plaza is located right around the corner, literally a stone’s throw, from the former location of Tony Pastor’s Vaudeville Theater on 14th street. The cold climbs up my thighs and to my stomach. It envelopes me like a crooked hand. In the Tin Pan Alley songs, Paddy will do anything for whisky. Barney McShane will not speak to a suitor when she offers him tea, but liquor? Absolutely. It’s all comic until you’re wailing on your children and suffering liver failure. In Vaudeville skits, Irish males were often depicted as relatively harmless drunks and fighters. Vaudeville Irish females though, well, that’s a whole other story for another day. It was not pretty. Not at all.

The Minstrel Machine wound its fingers around the vaudeville stages of Union Square and scratched up Broadway’s back. Tin Pan Alley on 28th street published sheet music versions of Vaudeville’s famous songs. Tin Pan Alley then wrote songs for vaudeville stars to perform in places like Tony Pastor’s. The songs were on a feedback loop. Film began.

Early film reels played during continuous vaudeville shows, in place of actual, physical acts. These reels were simply the physical vaudeville acts made into film. They were about two minutes long. Many reels were filmed at a rooftop studio around the corner from Tony Pastor’s on Union Square. So Stage Irishness, this thing about which Andrew sings right now, this thing which he himself spars with as an Irishman on stage, especially in America, was cemented into song, into sheet, into celluloid, right here. 14th Street, Union Square, 133 years ago.

Now the cold thing is on my shoulders. It nuzzles my neck like a cat. My body sizzles and zaps with a ricocheting prickliness.

Dear wee little Francis, this is the one he called the train robber. This is the tarantula of music, crushing spirits with its dark and heaving limbs, making monsters of men, gripping pens and twisting tongues to make cash, milking people for their quirks and habits, slurping the gum water out of spittoons and pissing lemon juice over fields of green, just waiting in the wings to take its final snarling bite. It creeps up my skull, my eyes clamp against the tears, so many bodies around me blurry now, I am certain I will fall ill in the coming days. Grey milk and castor oil baron gatorade. I will stave off that thing which burnt down Japan Lithium Auto, I will repel the destructive force of this creature, which whooshing made its way across Arena’s facade, for I have shaken this man’s hand.

It happened at Bartley Dunnes. I approached Andrew at his laptop. I approached with the gingerness of journalists. I approached with calm confidence, moving into position, right on cue, and shook his hand.

“Hi. I’m Melanie and I’m here writing about Mary Wallopersism. Please, can you tell me, what is your goal?”

“To save Irish culture without becoming a false prophet.”

That was his only utterance. I could tell by the way he gripped my hand that something else manned his spirit. His body was lost under the influence of pints, but his words exacted crisping clarity.

For this is the way truth turns to language. This is the way the honest feeling forms in sound. First, it hears the call of the other, the one who presents the void. Then it parts the lips and pushes forth into waves of dependable substance."

Zine 1: "Do Me Justice"

Welcome to New York City, where the Ghost of Tin Pan Alley still lurks.

This is an NYC tale about an EVIL force that threatens performers along the Mohican Road (The Bowery / Broadway). As the demon makes the author ill, she finds a balm- A SALVATION - in the performances of Fall 2023. One by The Mary Wallopers, one by a dance group doing a musical dance show called Arena. Both groups BATTLE the old cold thing.

The author illuminates histories of Black and Irish stereotypes in American Sheet Music.

8.5in x 11in, staple bound, printed on 80lb un-coated paper with a 100lb glossy cover.

Zine is full color baby, 44 pages

Trust me, you will love it.

This in an elite zine.

Limited Edition First Run of 51 Prints.

Original Working Title: The Mary Wallopers & Arena & Vaudeville Clairsentience in NYC

Preview of Zine 1: The Mary Wallopers and Arena and Vaudeville Clairsentience

HYPOTHESIS:

The mind which understands basic things about American Vaudeville geography in New York City will have a haunting, meaning-filled, and evocative experience watching performances, in the present, there. Vaudeville awareness leads to nuanced takes.

PRE-ORDER ZINE 1: The Mary Wallopers and Arena and Vaudeville Clairsentience

Pre-Order My Zine!

ZINE 1: The Mary Wallopers & Arena & Vaudeville Clairsentience in NYC

This zine will blow your mind, feel good to touch, and rest wonderfully in your hands.

It concerns Irish American and Black American performance in NYC, specifically two shows I saw in fall of 2023.

Show One: The Mary Wallopers and Sam Shackelton at Irving Plaza.

Show Two: “Arena”, by Artist Derek Fordjour, Choreographer Sidra Bell, and Composer Hannah Mayree performed at Petzel Gallery.

Seemed like the Vaudeville was alive in well, but in a way that felt very surprising and releasing. The possibilities for a collective de-colonial explosion seem high. Are the forgotten vaudeville thoroughfares - The Bowery, 14th St./Union Square and Tin Pan Alley - actually still running shit?

FIND OUT!

Keepers of The Past - Winter Newsletter - 2022

Growing up, there was a kid's show on public TV called Zoom, not be confused with today's popular virtual meeting platform. One episode had a segment I remember to this day. Two children are challenged to look up the definition of a word. One must use a computer and the internet, while the other must use a little book called the dictionary. The race is on. The child using the computer is still dialing up the modem after booting up the machine by the time the child with the dictionary has found the definition. The message? That the old fashioned way is still more efficient. The “Old Fashioned Way” has only just been conceived of as being out-of-date. This is the dawn of the world-wide-web’s presence in homes.

"We're all plugged into one world now" - Zoom theme song
 

The segment makes clear a divergence. In the coming millennium, there will be two ways. The digital, and the analog. As a child, I understood this segment of Zoom as a rallying cry. Which side are you on? The year 2000 had scarcely hit, and I chose analog.

In late 2021, I’m watching a youtube video of a lecture by a catholic priest explaining the structure of ancient Celtic society in what is now called Ireland. I am curious about the metaphysical beliefs held by my ancient ancestors. Father Seán Ó’Laorie PhD explains the functions performed by three factions of the Celtic world in pre-Christian times. First, there are the Druids. These are the theologians, priests, healers, the keepers of The Now. Then there are the Ovates. These are the seers, the visionaries and prophets. Keepers of The Future. They were prophets whose job was not to foretell the future, but, Father Seán Ó’Laorie says in his soothing Irish lilt, to forestall it. To stop us from making stupid mistakes.

fabulous cape by MaidensPlayground, available on Etsy, should you want to become a druid or prophetess.

“The Prophet,” says he, “is a group that’s frightly needed on our planet right now.” Okay, he seems like a nice guy. His head is in the right place, and he’s received his doctorate in mystical Celtic stuff. I’m doing what I always do these late pandemic days. Lay in bed, soothing myself to sleep by watching sometimes educational youtube videos. I do this in a pretty removed state. But when the Father begins to speak of the third category of Celtic Society, of the Bards, I listen.

“The Bard,” he says, “was the person who made time travelers and mystics of the listeners.”

Excuse me?

“The bards are the keepers of The Past. That was their portfolio. They were historians, and they were genealogists, all in the oral tradition. There were no written records.”

Father Seán Ó’Laorie is an aging thin man with stubble and silvery hair down to his shoulders. It’s been a long time since I willingly listened to a catholic priest, but for him I’ll make this exception.

William Blake's painting he made of his cute little bard poem.

The bards, he continues, “...were also poets, minstrels, storytellers and performing artists. As far as the music was concerned, they had to be able to produce three kinds…”

I let these words seep in. It has been a hard couple of years for us. During a highly contagious pandemic wherein asymptomatic people spread the novel, and ever-mutating coronavirus during periods of breathing the same vapor - in and out, kissing and talking in close proximity - the concert halls, the country dances, the listening rooms, the warm taverns - these have all closed either forever or in awkward chunks of time. To add insult to injury, the category of individuals who could be considered today’s Bards are not recognized in our current society much, pandemic or not. We, The Bards, must scrape by, no matter what, at least in American Society. And in these long years of pestilence we have been backed into periods of forced silence. It doesn’t mean our music has died.

A friend of mine tells me that yes, she may be touring with an illustrious artist one month, but the next, she’s getting cake thrown at her playing a childhood birthday party in a backyard. She’s well into her career but her aging parents still hold out hope that she will no longer be a musician. She tells me, Melanie, someone’s got to do it. Someone’s got to sing the songs. And I feel part of a necessary but scorned populous.

Newspaper clipping from 2015 Topanga Banjo-Fiddle Contest, when I was "of Los Angeles"

But wait- how can I be so sure that I belong to The Bardic Class? Do I even qualify? To find out, I return to the video. The three categories of music a bard must be able make, in the words of Father Seán:

1. Music that can sooth the savage breast. Also lullabies that can let a child go to sleep.

2. Nostalgic music. That which would be able to make you weep for the past, or for people who are gone. To create tears for the past.

3. Music that made you feel happy, and makes you laugh.

On this most random of nights, here in my bed in Brooklyn, New York, watching youtube, tears form in my eyes. It’s not so much that I am seeing how my own songwriting fits into these categories. It is that I can call to mind countless other musicians from my time on this earth who also meet these bardic qualifications.

And I know them. Over my near fifteen years playing old songs I have shared intimate musical spaces with so many of them. And I know how they suffer. Penniless, laughed at, addicted to substances, or famous by stroke of luck and talent, and traveling, lodged into the public eye, a public for whom an artist’s downfall is a source of entertainment -

“The Bard,” repeats Father Seán, “was the keeper of The Past.”

The Past, The Past, why do you seduce me so?

I am not the only one either. My generation, the millennials, were the butt of jokes from the first instance of our making personal lifestyle decisions.

From The Hard Times Article, Folk Punk Band Announces Break-Up...

The complaint from older generations was that the millennials were hopelessly nostalgic. We didn't have our own culture. We recycled that of the past and fetishised it. We did a great job at fueling a resurgence of old time music, folk music, and old American traditional music. The richness of this creative culture can be seen analog at old time fiddle festivals, and virtually on youtube channels such as Gems on VHS and Western AF.

In these bards I see us. A bunch of kids who grew up having to navigate that divide between the old and the new. We were well-suited for the ancient role of bard, those who carry the past into present, who move mountains with melody, who make time travelers of listeners. We were well-suited, having lost childhoods of hard-back books to adulthoods of digital information passing rapidly by in the endless scroll. Do not scorn us, for we can take you back and forth across the river, and set you down easy in your longing and laughter with the gentle pressure of a song.

an selfie, January 3rd, 2022

News From Life in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn:

San Benedito Beach is my second full-length album. It was released on October 23rd at an amazing sidewalk community concert meltdown called People's Beach Day. You can purchase and hear the album on Bandcamp.

I am offering Music Lessons, virtually and in-person. One of my students says this is the first time she's had fun playing music. That means a lot to me, and I'd love to work with you on banjo, guitar, fiddle and / or singing. 

I had one of the most wonderful concert experiences of my life on the Maine Island of North Haven. I was accompanied by fiddler and friend from the Pike Place Market busking days, Annie Ford. Check out the Crabtree Sessions Songwriter Series for an amazing living-history documentation of some of the greatest songwriters working today. I feel so honored to have been part of the roster. 
 

Recommendations:

vernon subutex
My tolerance for reading got zapped deep pandemic. It was reawakened by this insane delicious book series about an intertwined cadre of post-compact disc parisian rock and porn stars, degenerates, journalists, etc. The series by Virginie Despentes solidifies hunches I've had about French culture while living there. The books gives a lens on the rise of the alt-right in the country that is also cool-y antifascist radial. She writes, "They [banks/religions/multinationals] have managed to get a citizen with no heritage to give up all their rights in exchange for access to nostalgia for empire." among many other badass sentences.

winter yoga nidra
I love this pracitioner Ally Boothroyd's yoga nidra videos. If you haven't tried it, it's basically conscious sleep and relaxation. I know this time is really stressful, and a half-hour long guided spiritual nap is a gift for the nervous system. I love this particular winter solstice yoga nidra as it reminds me that right now is a time for deep rest. Outside, everybody is resting. Buds, animals, you name it. So should we.

joan didion
Joan Didion passed away. She was a hero to me. A guide. As a writer who writes about culture, about people in groups, her work has been the template for me for many years. I feel grateful to have lived in an overlap of her era. She is very special. I recommend starting with her essay collection The White Album. Rest in Peace Angel. bell hooks also passed. I haven't read enough of her work, so I am recommending her to myself.

maid
This is a TV series on Netflix about poverty and the domestic abuse cycle set in the Pacific Northwest. It is also a magical realism story of a young woman's realistic hope of embracing her dream as a writer. It hit close to home. Close to home. It's takes place in pretend Port Townsend and pretend Whidbey Island. They may be actually using the BC ferries, but I know all those characters from my actual life. The barefoot bandit episode is especially harrowing. But like in a good, beautiful redemptive way? I binged it.

how black women reclaimed country and americana music in 2021
Black Women are the queens of country music. No surprise. But Country Music the entity, the business model, the culture, is just starting to catch up. Check out these marvelous artists.

the mary wallopers
I love love love this band. Just watch n' listen.

ireland beyond colonialism podcast

I've only listened to the first episode of this, but it was pretty an engaging conversation. In episode one, a settler descended permaculture kid from Washington State attempts to return to the land of his indigenous ancestors in Scotland, so as to not cause more colonialism in Skagit Valley. His experiences are... complicated... It's an interesting glimpse into the life of someone who is attempting to belong in a world where people like me, like him, like most Americans, have to learn to live less brutally, and soon.

what's duskin doing?
My partner duskin has a great newsletter. He is an ecological philosopher, a writer, an artist, an activist, a great cook, lots of other things, and his thoughts and ideas are beautifully organized into these missives. They are a treat to receive.



Take care to all of you
may you be healthy and well-rested
sending love and light in these darkest days

-Melanie


PS
This newsletter comes seasonally, four times a year. Feel free to sign up and share it with anyone you think will enjoy it!