Anna Colliton played percussion growing up in Chicago, where her drum teacher bought a bodhrán as a curiosity—and she had to buy one too.
“Once I got into Irish music, nothing else was as interesting as it used to be,” she told me over drinks in New York City, where she is based, back in January. “I was either playing music in the city or in the darkroom at school.” More of our conversation is below.
Now she splits her time between photo and design work for other musicians and her own music projects. These include the Bad Neighbors Rhythm Project with dancer Danielle Enblom, which you can find on Facebook and Instagram, and Boston-based band Ship in the Clouds, coming out with a new album this month. More recently, she’s also been teaching through Tune Supply, a brand new New York based, pandemic-inspired, teaching and performance platform.
Welcome to the fourth edition of Fanny Power, and thanks to everyone who responded after last month’s interview with Mig! I’ve not been well—apparently something’s going round—so I’ll keep it short and sweet. We’re safe and taking care of each other, and I hope you are too. Keep enjoying the music and I’ll be back next month.
Madeline
Ship in the Clouds - Horse Keane's, Larkin's Beehive, Tom Dowd's Favourite
Anna Colliton
The Bad Neighbors Rhythm Project with Danielle Enblom and Anna Colliton
On getting started
I played drums in school band. I played kit through high school and was part of a Latin percussion ensemble, hand drums, which I really loved. One day, my teacher told me, “I got this thing, it’s an Irish drum.” And I was like, “I love that thing.” So I got one for Christmas when I was 13 or 14. It was big, 18 inches, made in Pakistan. It is still in my mom’s attic. It sounds as bad now as it did then, but I got introduced to the local Irish music scene.
I have Irish heritage way back, among many other things, but I’m not reclaiming anything—I’m American, I’m from Chicago. It’s more that I was interested in the music.
On tradition
I was at the end of the Celtic music boom in the 1990s. Everything was changing in the bodhrán world, with top-ended playing coming in. I’m the awkward generation.
I learned an older style in Chicago from Kevin Rice, who learned quite a bit from Jonny McDonagh. So I learned what would be considered Kerry or traditional style, though I don’t love that term because we’re really only talking about the 1970s.
I started having tendonitis. Y’all can play whatever style you want and I won’t criticize, but when it comes to physical position and technique, I do not want to see anyone playing with a bent wrist, certainly for my students.
I had to stop playing for about six months, during which time I went to Milwaukee Irish Fest and saw John Joe Kelly playing with Flook. It wasn’t that I wanted to play exactly like that, but I immediately recognized that there were things I would never be able to do physically with the playing position I had. So I started introducing a lot of top end style. I mostly taught myself, so I have slightly different ornaments and arrangements. I use a very long, pretty light stick—I almost always end up using a stick I’ve made myself.
I’m about five foot two, so I’m a proponent of the small drum. I’ve been playing 12 inch drums since not too long after I started playing. It’s not unusual now, but it was at the time, the only guy who would make one was Albert Alfonso. Albert’s drums have a little spark of madness in them because they have a brass tuning ring on the inside, so they can be hard to mic, but you get a tremendous amount of sound and I keep going back to them. Shout-out to Albert!
I get people in my classes saying something’s not traditional, but I don’t see tradition as a reason to not develop the instrument. There are so many ways to be good, and people playing at a higher level aren’t going to shun a particular technique. I’m all for chops, I’m all for style, we just have to figure out a way to use them that is tasteful.
People ask me all the time who else’s bodhrán playing I like, and above a certain level of competence I don’t like to pass judgment, because it’s so subjective. I like that about it. We can look back on tradition to guide us, but there’s still room for self-expression to interpret the instrument.
On visual art
I try to think of structuring my life around the things I can’t not do. Playing music is one of those, so is taking photographs. I did a photography degree, and a multimedia journalism degree. So I started doing all the designs and posters for people, and it allows me to stay in the music world that I’m comfortable with.
If you’re any kind of backer, you’re reliant on the favor of melody players. Now, some of my best friends are melody players! But it’s nice to do something with myself, for myself. I’m into the accompanist’s life, for sure, but part of my interest in the visual arts is the fact that I can make something totally alone, in my pajamas, as a fully formed thing.
Album art for Shannon Quinn’s Watchmaker, by Anna Colliton Visuals
On the bodhrán’s reputation
I was involved with the Academy of Irish Music in Chicago, and those of us who had been playing for three years were teaching the kids who were just starting. So I’ve been teaching for a long time. I really enjoy it and I think it’s important. I weather a lot of jokes—“Oh, teaching bodhrán, you’re doing damage control”—which honestly drives me nuts. Everybody has a right to enjoy music in whatever capacity they have. You don’t have to be a professional, you still have the right to learn something that you enjoy doing.
The bad reputation—"The bodhrán is a primitive instrument, you can’t have bodhráns in a session,”—I learned all that later, but it wasn’t going to change my opinion. I came at it from a percussion perspective, thinking this is a fascinating, versatile instrument that you can do so much with. Twenty years later, I still think that.
Everybody else in the world is fascinated by it. If you go to a world music or percussion festival, everyone says, “That is the coolest thing I have ever seen.” And it is the coolest thing I’ve ever seen.
I’ve put a lot of time into it and I was deeply invested in the music. Certainly, when I was younger I took pains not to show off. You play a supporting role and you can be as good as you want to be, but it’s always a supporting role. I just wanted to be better and I spent time getting better, developing skills and watching everything, listening to everything.
When I moved to New York, for years I would go to the 11th St. Bar every Sunday night for the session there, so I’ve played a ton with Tony DeMarco. He has an intricate, flowery way of playing, he embellishes a lot. With someone who plays like that, you have to figure out what your role is. Where can I sync up with this person so that it sounds good, and where can I get my licks and my chops in, but not get in the way? Everybody wants to be fancy. A lot of my playing tries to answer the question, “What is the appropriate way to be fancy?”
On show business
I had a full-time gig in Florida at one of the Disney parks for three years. I went down to fill in for someone and did a year with the Paul McKenna band from Scotland, then they got tired of the heat and the alligators. So my husband and I were about to get married, and we got a band together to replace them. It was five days a week, fifteen-minute shows seven times a day.
I was very out of the community I’m used to functioning within, in a way that made me have to reassess a lot of things. You can have an entire career without thinking of traditional music as show business. But in this capacity, it was show business—not a tour or a gig, but a full-time job, which is not how I ever thought about music.
It forces you to reassess what you’re doing and why. Often you play partially for yourself and partially for your band mates, but much less so for the audience. You hope that you have an educated audience, but you aren’t playing to complete strangers who have never heard this kind of music before.
When we came back to New York, we had been sequestered in the swamps of Orlando for three years, and I felt very strongly that I wanted to do something that was just exactly what I wanted. So I had to sit down and think about what that was.
On Bad Neighbors
Danielle Enblom is a professional dancer from the twin cities, and she and I are putting together the Bad Neighbors Rhythm Project, an hour-long show that is from a rhythm standpoint first.
It’s fascinating to work with dancers, who do the same thing you and I do, but in different places and for different reasons. Rhythmically, it’s the same patterns, but in a normal gig situation I’m looking at the fiddle player and the dancer is looking at the fiddle player. We never look at each other. She and I are trying to really deconstruct what we’re doing and put it together.
We debuted it in Minneapolis and had a great turnout, so we’re finishing it off now. It’s a really interesting rhythm experiment and I’m super excited about it.
The Bad Neighbors Rhythm Project with Danielle Enblom and Anna Colliton
On playing while female
I don’t think I’ve experienced overt sexism, except in small ways. When you’re working in a male dominated industry there are subtle ways these things play out, and not because anyone’s intending to be discriminatory. Many bands are a bunch of friends that do the same thing, and a different gender changes the dynamic. So often it’s easier for people to hire their pals, and those are guys. [As a woman] you get less experience, less stage time, you know less about sound systems, you meet fewer people, you’re seen less. I think women teaching less is to do with women not performing as much.
Nine times out of ten when you see a female bodhrán player actually on stage, they’re also the singer. That doesn’t mean you can’t be a good bodhrán player—Cathy Jordan is a good bodhrán player. But it can become an accessory—what you do when you’re not singing. The number of times I’ve been asked, do I sing? You don’t want to hear me sing! Do I need to sing? I’ve been asked that time and again.
Generally speaking, people have been very kind and giving in the music world, but when you’re a younger woman, you will meet creeps, and it’s easy to question the motives of someone who hires you. It doesn’t mean that’s why they hired you, but it’s something men being hired by men probably don’t have to worry about.
When I was playing with in Florida, I would talk to audience members after the show and say my husband was in the band. They would say “Oh, that’s how you got into this music?” No! You think I picked this up because my husband is a fiddle player, but that’s not what happened.