Deb Cavanaugh

Partners in life and music doing their part to keep traditions alive

BY PHILIP SCHWARTZ Gazette Reporter

Reach Gazette reporter Philip Schwartz at 395-3111 or pschwartz@dailygazette.net.

Deb Cavanaugh and Dick Kavanaugh get passionate when the subject of traditional music arises. And in a conversation with the folk duo — billed as Cavanaugh and Kavanaugh — that subject will inevitably come up.
Over coffee and tea at a cafe near their Albany home, the couple, both life and musical partners, get into the importance of folk music, the need to keep traditions alive and how it’s all tied to our understanding of American culture and history.
“It’s important for us to know and remember our culture,” Cavanaugh says, “and it’s getting lost and increasingly becoming a corporate culture.”
Managing to avoid a self-righteous tone, both Cavanaugh and Kavanaugh talk about their mission (though they don’t expressly use that word) to help pass along the traditions of folk through their workshops and performances. And by singing old songs alongside their originals, they seem to relish being part of a kind of folksong dialogue that stretches back through history, but still touches the present.

ORGANIC GROWTH
When they first started playing as a duo, however, there wasn’t any sort of overarching commitment to traditions or preservation, Cavanaugh said. “It’s become more of a focus over the years,” she noted. “I started with just saying ‘I’d like to do some traditional stuff.’ Then as time went on, it became more deliberate.”
Cavanaugh and Kavanaugh have been life partners for 14 years, their coupling somewhat fortuitous considering the similar last names. Cavanaugh, a full-time musician who teaches and gives workshops, has been playing all her life.
“I grew up in a family where there was always singing,” the Stamford, Conn., native said. “We were always playing music. We would often, after dinner, clear the table, sit and sing. . . . I was singing harmonies when I was 3. The first time I got a paying gig, I was 15.”
By contrast, Kavanaugh, an electrician by trade, grew up in Delmar with a purist’s love of folk and acoustic blues, but didn’t start playing until his mid-30s. Similarly, his partner, though she spent her younger days concentrating on the piano and vocals, waited until age 40 to take up the stringed instruments that are so much a part of the Cavanaugh and Kavanaugh sound: mandolin, dulcimer, guitar. The stringed instruments he plays are guitar, mandolin, fiddle and banjo. Live performances can include any combination of those, in addition to Cavanaugh’s limber jack or Kavanaugh’s penny whistle.

TIMELESS SONGS
The traditional songs they play, meanwhile, center on the old-time Irish and Southern U.S. traditions. Anti-war and labor songs such as “Green Fields of France,” “Mrs. McGrath,” “Masters of War,” “Granite Mills” and “I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-to-Die Rag” are all part of the repertoire. But underneath it all is a slight, if mild, tension between Cavanaugh’s want to infuse new influences and Kavanaugh’s more purist nature. This can be a strength, however, Cavanaugh said. “That’s what makes us interesting,” she said. “Dick has that traditional focus and I want to be wild and do whatever.”
Playing traditional music, however, can be somewhat of an occupational hazard in a culture obsessed with youth and the taste of now. Even among an evolving roots-music community where younger generations of artists are bending what folk means, Cavanaugh and Kavanaugh still have the earnest, sweet sound that’s typical of their baby boomer generation and the time that generation ushered in the first folk boom. Nevertheless, Kavanaugh maintains that this music is just as relevant today, and will continue to be for the next generation.
“There’s a string of commonality to folk music where it touches everyone,” he said. “I feel like most of these traditional songs are timeless. Sing a song like ‘Green Fields of France’ and that was written about World War I. It still moves people. Not much has changed, you know. We’re still fighting wars.”
- Schnectady Daily Gazette

Local musicians celebrate new CDs
By GREG HAYMES, Staff writer

First published in print: Thursday, November 27, 2008

The long-running folk duo of Cavanaugh and Kavanaugh head up to the legendary Caffe Lena coffeehouse in Saratoga Springs on Saturday night to celebrate the release of their new disc, "Returning." Not only are Deb Cavanaugh and Dick Kavanaugh are both multitalented instrumentalists, but they both sing and contribute some heartfelt original songs to the album, which was recorded and mixed at MoonDog East in Poestenkill and the Red Sun Soundroom in Niskayuna.

After kicking off with the rousing "Barn Dance" — sure to set toes to tapping — the album features a version of the traditional "Deep Elem Blues" (which has been recorded by such diverse artists as Johnny Cash and the Grateful Dead) and 10 more original tunes in the folk and country tradition. The best of the bunch are a pair of Kavanaugh-penned instrumentals, the Celtic flavored "Young Timothy" and the uptempo banjo number "Gypsy Dog Dance."

Joining the duo at Lena's will be Dave Danks (on bass, guitar and mandolin), fiddler Ed Lowman and poet Alifair Skebe, all of whom also contributed their musical talents to the recording of "Returning."
- Times Union