STEVE MORSE'S CORNER

Liam Clancy

The name Liam Clancy speaks for itself. If there was ever an icon playing the ICONS Festival, it's him. "I'm the last one standing!'' he jokes, referring to the Clancy Brothers & Tommy Makem, who put Irish music on the map back in the '60s. This year's ICONS lineup takes a major leap in historical importance thanks to him.

Liam has performed more than 50 years and has no plans to give it up.

"This is not a job. This is a lifestyle -- and you don't stop living,'' he adds with a wry chuckle.

A feature-length film, with help from the Irish Film Board, is currently being made on his life. Director Alan Ginsenan just taped Liam in concert at New York's Bitter End with guests Shane MacGowan, Odetta and Tom Paxton. "Shane showed up in all his glory, with all his hangers on,'' he laughs. "But there was a fantastic vibe off of it. And Odetta is just an incredible person… I hope they got on film what we felt on stage.''

Liam also took the film crew to Provincetown, where he resided early on in America (he moved from Ireland in 1955). "I lived in Provincetown and I'm straight,'' he says. "I lived there in the winter where none of the shenanigans went on.''

The Clancys got so big so quickly – aided by appearances on "The Ed Sullivan Show'' – that they played a concert on Boston Common in front of 45,000 fans in the '60s. "It will forever be etched in my mind,'' he says. "For one thing, it took two hours to get from the edge of the crowd to the stage … And where do you go to have a pee under those circumstances? You crawl under the stage and you do the best you can.''

The group boasted a jolly sense of theatrics as they mixed everything from drinking songs to protest tunes. But they suffered a backlash in some quarters because of their enormous success.

"There was a big debate raging in Ireland in musical circles after the Clancy Brothers made it big in America,'' Liam says. "There was a faction that said we ruined Irish music forever. But other people said we opened doors where people didn't know doors existed. When we came along, there was a very localized and parochial cultural scene in Ireland. I suppose with the advent of the Clancy Brothers & Tommy Makem, it took it onto the world stage. It was just one of those happenings.''

Liam also befriended Bob Dylan in the Greenwich Village folk days and still hangs out with him. Dylan has called Liam "the best ballad singer I've ever heard in my life.''

"The last time I saw him was in Ireland, actually,'' says Liam. "He did a gig down in Country Waterford and we had a bit of a session then. But the last time I had a real session with him – a 6 o'clock in the morning one – was after the Madison Square Garden tribute concert to him (in 1992). We had a great old night with Johnny Cash and Willie Nelson and the boys, and we were sharing the dressing room with Stevie Wonder. Then a whole group of us ended up at Tommy Makem's Irish Pavilion. And, of course, with Dylan, we had sort of come of age together in Greenwich Village, chasing the girls and doing parties. We used to have a song that we swapped verses on (called "Aileen Aroon''). I'd leave the room and he'd try to sing a verse in my accent, and then I would do a verse a la Bob Dylan.'' (Liam sings it over the phone and it's absolutely hysterical.)

Liam remembers another night with Dylan in Dublin. "Bono of U2 threw a big party at the hotel and we stayed up until dawn. And Dylan and I got into a huddle because we had so many memories and friends and girlfriends in common. Bono was listening in to hear what Dylan and Clancy might be saying to each other. After about an hour, Bono said, 'I'm getting the (bleep) out of here because everybody you've talked about for the last hour is dead!' He was ticked off by that.''

But Liam and Bono remain mates. "I must say, he's really a friendly cuss,'' says Liam. "An old friend of mine had met him in a bar in London and

Icons Summary | By Steve Morse

CANTON – The weather cooperated, the musical acts excelled, and the ICONS Festival took another giant leap in the summer of 2007. It drew inquisitive crowds and boundary-pushing groups from the Black Crowes to the Dropkick Murphys, as well as traditional Celtic stars from Mick Moloney to Dervish.

I was transfixed by the three-day event, which took place on the lush, 50-acre grounds of the Irish Cultural Centre in Canton – only about 30 minutes from downtown Boston. I’ve covered many festivals for the Boston Globe through the years, spanning Live Aid and the last two Woodstocks, but I’ve never seen a better-run festival featuring multiple tents and stages, which made it all feel like a modern-day Bonnaroo for lovers of Celtic music and its offshoots. I was thrilled to be part of it, having written a number of “Morse’s Corner’’ pieces for this website.

“It was an amazing weekend,’’ said producer Brian O’Donovan, who also hosts a Celtic radio show on WGBH-FM. “And though we have a long ways to go in many areas, we feel that the event has taken a first step toward becoming what is destined to be one of the major music and arts events in the US.’’

He’s not just blowing smoke. This was truly a thrilling event, starting on a Friday night in mid-August with a headlining set by the Black Crowes. They arrived late after getting snarled in traffic from New York (their bus pulled in about ten minutes before showtime), but they hit the stage in a pent-up state and played a cathartic comeback set. Chris and Rich Robinson, the brothers who front the band, were in synch and refrained from too much of the jamming that has sunk some Crowes dates in the last few years. They rocked early and rocked hard, slamming into the likes of “Jealous Again’’ as fans enjoyed the Guinness on tap and made merry throughout.

This show took place on the ICONS stage, a new, world-class stage with state-of-the-art sound and lights. The Crowes had followed Ireland’s Saw Doctors, who revved up the crowd with their own rockin’ sound, which had been hatched in the pubs of Galway. The crowd sang along to their hits and ICONS was officially in full sway.

Saturday’s ICONS stage was highlighted by Altan (perhaps the best act of the day with a twin-fiddle, female-fronted sound that lifted off from a Celtic base into surreal climes) and country-folk luminary Nanci Griffith. She had just arrived that day from taking a red-eye flight from the Edmonton Folk Festival in western Canada, but she performed flawlessly. Likewise sensational was Dervish (led by Cathy Jordan, who tucked in a noble version of Bob Dylan’s “Boots of Spanish Leather’’ amid their jigs and reels) and Boston’s Dennis Brennan Band, which scored with fiery roots music.

Saturday also saw the many stages for traditional music come alive. Located on the other side of a couple of verdant fields used for Irish sporting events, these specially erected stages were a lure for families and other Celtic devotees, who wandered amid some alluring food tents (a local barbeque restaurant did boffo business) and some ever-present Guinness taps. The young buzz band Guggenheim Grotto was a big hit, but the emotional peak was reached during Mick Moloney’s tribute to the recently deceased Tommy Makem. Moloney poured his heart out, both verbally and musically, in honor of one of his idols.

Sunday presented a fitting climax, as the weather stayed beautiful and the music kept its high quality. The ICONS stage went in a youthful direction with the bagpipe-spiced Celtic rock band Enter the Haggis, followed by the punky, Pogues-influenced Tossers, who sang about misspent youth with clearcut honesty. And then came the Dropkick Murphys, whose phenomenal roll continued with an exhilarating effort that rocked these woodsy Canton grounds to their core. The Dropkicks merged trad-folk and contemporary rock played at dizzying speeds.

The Saw Doctors have been called Ireland’s most popular band since U2, but they appreciate the effort of this year’s ICONS Festival to move beyond strictly a Celtic base.

“It’s nice to see it diversifying. It isn’t just drawing Irish people alone,’’ says Saw Doctors guitarist Leo Moran. “It’s nice to see it moving out across the community. I think that’s always a good thing.’’

The Saw Doctors, who have scored a number of hit songs in Ireland, perform Friday, Aug. 10 at the ICONS Festival in Canton, on the same bill with the Black Crowes and Black 47.

“Festivals are all about people enjoying themselves,’’ adds Moran. “And it’s good to have variety at a festival. We’ve even played some bluegrass festivals. We’re by no means bluegrass, but we have profited from the fact that people would have been listening to bluegrass all day and it’s just nice to get a break. I think in modern times that festivals are getting less picky about their definitions. Whatever entertains people and whatever makes them enjoy themselves, I think that’s a good thing.’’

The Saw Doctors have been around for 20 years, but thanks to their remarkable, cranked-up enthusiasm on stage, they keep attracting a youthful crowd.

“We’re delighted that our fan base is as energetic as it is,’’ says Moran. “One of the great things for us is that we’re getting a lot of teenagers and younger people coming to the gigs and liking the songs and giving back their energy, too. If you have an audience that is generally aging, you’re going to lose a few points on the energy level. I don’t know why, but we’re able to replenish the audience all the time with younger people.’’

Aiding in that process is the Saw Doctors’ ability to connect thematically with that age group. Consider their recent single, “I’m Never Gonna Go on Bebo Again.’’ It’s about being pursued by an ex-lover on Bebo, which is a rival to Internet giant MySpace (and is more popular in Ireland and Scotland).

“We were just having fun with the Bebo song,’’ says Moran. “But we do have Bebo pages and we realized it’s a great way of reaching a certain amount of people very quickly. … When all the people connected with you open their home page, they can see when you’ve posted something, which is better, I think, than having MySpace or having your own website. … You get immediate contact with people. If you have a bit of news, or if you have a blog, or if you have a gig coming up or whatever, it’s good for that.

Moran also understands the philosophical implications of this high-tech revolution.

“Obviously, people are so much more vulnerable to being contacted nowadays than they would have been 10 or 15 years ago. And Anton, our bass player, was just saying that ‘Nothing is private anymore.’ Because if you get up and sing a song in a pub or wherever, somebody has a (cell) phone and the next thing you know, you’re on YouTube the following morning. It’s definitely pushing toward that type of world where everything is public.’’
Maybe one reason that the Saw Doctors stay so current is that they hail from free-spirited Galway area in the west of Ireland. (To be exact, they’re from Tuam – about 20 miles north of Galway City.)

“Galway City is changing a bit and becoming a bit more homogenized, but I think it still has that essence of being free-spirited,’’ says Moran. “There were times that I lived in Galway City and walked up the street and I couldn’t meet anyone who wasn’t an actor or a musician or a playwright, you know? It was a great center for creativity and the arts – and that was a great influence on us. We had to stand in there and become part of that. Maybe ‘compete’ is the wrong word, but there definitely was a lot of quality creativity going on around you, and you had to up your game.’’

The Saw Doctors have been able to do things their way by wri