Randal Bays Explained

Randal Bays (born 1950) is an American fiddler, guitarist and composer. This Irish-style fiddle and guitar player first gained international recognition through his recordings and performances with Co. Clare fiddler Martin Hayes in the early 1990s.

Early life and education

Born in Indiana in 1950, Bays relocated to the Pacific Northwest as a teenager and has made his home in Oregon and Washington since then. He began playing music at the age of eigh, and his musical life included serious study of the classical guitar, prior to taking up Irish fiddling in the 1970s. At the time, he lived in Portland, Oregon, and was strongly influenced by Co. Cavan accordion player Michael Beglan, also fiddler Kevin Burke and guitarist Mícheál Ó Domhnaill.

Career

Since then Bays has recorded and performed with many of the leading Irish traditional musicians, including James Kelly, Martin Hayes, Gearóid Ó hAllmhuráin, John Williams, Aine Meenaghan, Dáithí Sproule and James Keane. He now tours mostly as a solo performer and with various duet partners. In 2002 Bays co-founded the Friday Harbor Irish Music Camp in Washington's San Juan Islands, and served as Artistic Director until the camp's demise in 2011. He is now Program Director of the Cascadia Irish Music Week a yearly music week in Washington state.

In 1995 Bays began releasing his own albums under the Foxglove Records label, which he founded, including Out of the Woods, The Salmon's Leap, House to House with Roger Landes — voted best traditional album of 2005 by the Irish Times - Overland with Dáithí Sproule, and several more. In 2011 he released his first solo fingerstyle guitar CD, Oyster Light, which has been highly praised by such guitar luminaries as Tony McManus and Daithi Sproule.

Critical reception

Don Meade wrote in The Irish Voice (New York, Jan. 2001) that Bays is "still best known to many for his beautiful guitar accompaniment on fiddler Martin Hayes' early recordings, [but] Randal is himself a marvelous fiddler, one of the best in the country."March 2022.

The Irish Examiner deemed Bays "a rare beast, a master of both the fiddle and the guitar,"March 2022. and Fiddler Magazine said he is "among the best Irish style fiddlers of his generation."[1]

Discography

Albums

Guest appearances

References

  1. Web site: Hill . Larry . Randal Bays: An Authenticity of Spirit . usurped . https://web.archive.org/web/20050121215137/http://www.fiddle.com/issues/win9899.html#Randal%20Bays . 21 January 2005 . Fiddler Magazine.

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