Steeped in tradition — with a unique twist — Reverie Road is a magnificent display of creative forces that pays homage — sometimes ebulliently, sometimes sorrowfully — to Celtic and French sounds of yesteryear.
On March 20, the band, composed of Katie Grennan and Winifred Horan on fiddle, John Williams on accordion, and Utsav Lal on piano, will appear at Caffè Lena.
Blending the sounds of multiple genres, while continuing to push the boundaries of convention is no easy task, but Reverie Road rises to the challenge time and time again.
For more information on the show, as well as to purchase tickets for the event, go to www.caffelena.org. Tickets are $28 for general admission, $25 for members and $14 for students and children.
I had a chance to sit down with Katie prior to the show. What follows is our discussion.
Question: Tell us a bit about Reverie Road and how it came to be.
Answer: Reverie Road started out as a collaboration between two musical duos. John Williams and I were married and collaborating, musically together for a while. Winifred Horan and Utsav Lal are out on the east coast — they’re based in New York — and have been collaborating for a while as well.
Win and Utsav met at the New York Conservatory back in 2017 or so. They started working together, and during the pandemic, Win and I — because we’re both fiddle players — connected quite a bit, and worked together on some online workshops. [We] really enjoyed working together.
John and Win have a history together because they started the band Solas together back in the mid 1990’s.
So, it just made sense between the four of us back when things started opening up in 2022. We decided to get together and record some tracks to see where it went.
Things took off from there; we finished the album in 2023 and officially launched it in 2024. We’ve been hitting the road and touring together ever since.
Question: You just released a single in December. Tell us about it.
Answer: That was a track we originally recorded along with the rest of the album but it didn’t make its way onto the [record].
We kept it on the backburner, and towards the end of the year we figured we’d do work on that, and release it into the world. It’s called “heart of the heartland,” originally composed by Peter Ostroushko.
Question: How do you decide what songs to play, and do you write any of your own music?
Answer: We have done both. We compose some of our own tunes, but we’ve also curated a lot of music from both the Irish tradition as well as other relevant genres, such as: Scottish music; French music – some French waltzes that are really beautiful.
Our music runs the gamut of being rooted in the Irish idiom, as well as music we’ve been inspired to write in our own group.
Question: What can folks expect to see at your show at Caffe Lena on March 20?
Answer: They can expect a very high energy performance, and a bit of banter, too! It’s Saint Patrick Day season, so they’ll get that Irish wit throughout the show.
We also play slower pieces that are cinematic. You’re going to want to dance; you’re going to want to cry, maybe, at some point. We try to play quite a range of music and make it a really good time for everyone that chooses to come out.
Question: How do you typically curate your setlists?
Answer: That’s a good question. We come up with it at the start of the tour, and we don’t deviate too much from that.
We actually got together and met up at Rockaway, New York — where Win lives — and came up with new pieces that we wrote as well as arranging tunes we’ve wanted to play for a while.
While we’re at Caffe Lena, that’ll be one of the first times we’ve ever played those arrangements live.
Question: Your band has such a unique blend of Celtic music with a ton of other aspects. Can you elaborate on that?
Answer: The addition of Utsav Lal, our pianist… he’s an incredible musician. He’s very rooted in Indian traditional music. He’s a Raga pianist. He has a really interesting background in that he grew up playing classical music, he plays jazz, and in his formative years he was in Ireland. He went to grad school in Scotland. He has a really unique background and mix of sounds that he’s able to produce on his keyboard and it adds so much.
We’ve definitely tried to push the boundaries a little bit. The mix of music we play … sometimes we’ll arrange sets where one tune is 300 years old, and the next is brand new because one of us composed it.
Question: How does it feel when you’re reinventing music that is that old?
Answer: It’s really special. We play a few pieces in particular that were composed by Turlough O’Carolan, who was the blind harpist from Ireland in the late 1600’s. The pieces have been played thousands of times over the last three or four hundred years.
We have our arrangements, but all of us like to improvise a little bit; every single show is going to sound a little different than the night before. I think that’s really fun and it’s great to have that spontaneity that we’re able to infuse in the music.
Question: Everyone that performs this style of music gets something different out of the tradition. What do you personally get out of it?
Answer: Oh, my gosh, I feel so many things. I’ve been playing and dancing to this type of music since I was a young child.
I love playing the melodies [by] themselves, but to be able to play them alongside such amazing collaborators and musicians that I look up to so much, and have that synergy with, it’s just an incredible feeling. I absolutely love playing with this group and all of us have a great stage energy about us.
Both Winifred Horan and I were champion Irish dancers, so we have that understanding of how this music can be used and can be listened to from a dancer’s perspective.
Question: Dancing is a whole other artform than music.
Answer: It is. We’re not just playing Irish dance music, though. We’re playing slow melodies; we’re playing airs, so we cover quite an expansive breath of different tempos within our set. Wet hit on a lot of different emotions that can hopefully be elicited from the pieces we picked.
French waltzes aren’t always a thing you’re going to hear when you’re going to a Celtic or Irish event…
Question: Right, but you have to have something special that’ll make people want to see you. I’ve never heard of that kind of blend before.
Answer: Well, thank you! We’ve all individually recorded these French waltzes that we have an affinity for. We’re not a French cafe band, but to have that sound we gravitate towards, it makes it natural to include that in our set.
Question: Anything else you’d like to elaborate on?
Answer: We’re looking forward to playing the legendary Caffe Lena for the first time as a group; it’s kicking off our spring tour. We have a big year ahead of us.
We’ve got some new material we’re looking forward to getting out in front of listeners. And, it’s Saint Patrick’s Day week, so there’ll be some dancing, there’ll be some great music, and lots of high energy moments throughout the show. We can’t wait!
