Irish Millie is 19 and she comes from Peterborough, and that’s all she has to say about that as she settles into a sunset show at Waring House, the popular Picton Ontario inn.
Although there is a jazz festival incursion happening downtown, the venue, a dinner/bar/roadhouse near the roundabout, is full of roots fiddle aficionados and fans of the internationally burgeoning artist who is on the verge of a new degree of fame with an album of new original tunes due at the end of August.
She has set up her floor pedal array, and adjusted it with the tip of her bow, and tuned her fiddle silently as her accompanist for the evening, the accomplished Brazilian guitarist and singer Gustavo Florentino da Cunha, has set up the PA speaker tower and gone over a few of the complicated passages on his guitar.
She mentions that she has played in Picton before, but always with her dad on guitar. As the performance begins, her solo fiddle infiltrates the dining room din with a subtle and playful rococo curvature.
Eyes and ears are drawn to her spotlit form and caught in the flares of her peach-and-rhubarb aura, embellished by a flowery summer dress and a simple golden chain and earrings, and as the acute momentum of the music takes hold, the heel of her right black boot comes stomping down on a device that generates a catalyzing dancehall thump, to which the room will be pulsing for the rest of the evening.
Gustavo offers surging flourishes of rhythm as Millie calls out key
changes, racing through medleys of jigs and reels “some of which I don’t even know the names of,” touching down on a Leahy tune and an original ballad, all with virtuosic expertise.
She spangles the proceedings with toe taps on another electronic box that brings a tambourine backbeat into occasional play, and provides plenty of room for Gustavo’s heartfelt vocals, sharing some of his own repertoire, to which Millie contributes an empathetic harmony blend.
Through intense muscular effort and elbow grease, and a natural
creative synchronicity between the two artists, they persevered with three sets of emotionally immediate love songs, breakneck instrumentals, and even a sea shanty from Gustavo, all of which contributed a levitating effect to the already inspirational August
twilight dazzle.
Only a few waitresses actually capitulated to the rhythm, dancing a few steps as they crossed the room with their trays. But as Irish Millie morphs into the next level of her musical calling, she will only become more widely appreciated and take on bigger venues
and career opportunities. I’m already wishing I would’ve danced.
