Ciarรกn Nagle and Tara Novak, founders of Ishna, a contemporary Irish folk band, say a series of “meant-to-be moments” led to the band to record their first album in a historic barn on Windy Row in Peterborough last summer.
The album, “Slรญ Amach,” is available on CD at Toadstool Books, and through all digital platforms.
“People always ask us, ‘Why are you in Peterborough? They ask why we’re not in L.A. or in New York. And we say, ‘Why shouldn’t we be in Peterborough? This is the absolute perfect place for us to be,'” Novak said.
Novak, a fiddle player, singer, and composer who toured with Riverdance and has worked extensively on Broadway, and her husband, Ciarรกn Nagle, known worldwide as a founder and lead of the “Three Irish Tenors,” formed Ishna in Boston in 2015.
Credit: COURTESY
The name of the album, “Sli Amach,” comes from the Irish word for “way out,” a reference to the fact that Nagle and Novak are still playing Irish music after leaving Ireland. The album art, which incorporates an ancient Celtic spiral symbol, was created by designer Steve Averill, a friend of Nagle’s who is famous for naming the band U2.
Along with Novak and Nagle, Ishna is comprised of Dan Meyers, Irish whistle, flute, uilleann pipes, and bodhrรกn; David McGrory, piano, accordion, and viola; Bjรถrn Wennวs, guitar, chitarra battente; and Brian OโNeill, bodhrรกn, cajรณn, riq, and additional percussion.
Novak and Nagle met in 2005, when Nagle came to the U.S. on tour with the Three Irish Tenors. Nagle recalls the moment he set eyes on Novak for the very first time.
“I was walking to the back of the bus to sit in my customary seat, and there was this woman sitting there, with this red hair and these beautiful blue eyes, and she was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen in my life,” he recalls.
Nagle walked back to the front of the bus and told his staff:
“That woman sitting in my seat in the back with the red hair and the blue eyes is my future wife. And of course they said, ‘Yeah, sure, right!'” Nagle said. “But she was, and she is.”
Novak moved to Ireland to be with Nagle in 2007. In 2012, after the Irish economy tanked, the couple moved back to Boston.
“At that point in our lives, we were both wondering what was next for us professionally. We realized we really wanted to hone in on: what is Irish music? What’s really Irish?” Novak said. “So we founded Ishna.”
Novak says when the couple was first married, she used to tease Nagle about what the Irish language sounded like to her ear.
“I always said it sounded like a lot of ‘ishna-ishna-ishna’,” she said. “It was always a joke between us. ‘Ishna’ is also close to the Irish word, ‘Uisneach,’ which is considered to be the sacred center of Ireland.”
Novak and Nagle soon began to invite other musicians to join them in Ishna.
“Bit by bit, we invited people to come and join us. The funny thing is, we did not meet any of them at Irish shows; none of them had played Irish music before,” Nagle said.
Novak began to write music for Ishna inspired by traditional Irish music, but with a contemporary take.
“Everyone in the group has a very high-level music background, from classical to jazz to early music, so when we get into the arrangements, there is a lot of knowledge and a lot of practical experience in the room, and we all just kind of geek out,” Nagle said. “So when people ask us why it has taken Ishna 10 years to record an album, it’s because we’ve been on that journey of finding out, collaboratively, what our sound is, and what we want to say and express in our music.”
Novak first came to Peterborough to play a concert at the Town House with Symphony New Hampshire in 2020.
“I remember calling Ciarรกn from the bridge next to the Town House and saying, ‘This town is so cute, I wish you were here,” she said.
Two years later, the couple came up to hike Mount Monadnock and ended up at Post and Beam Brewery.
“We started talking to Erika, the owner, and the only two other people in the bar were Ra Eldredge and John Trautwein, and they were like, ‘You should move here!'” Novak said. “Then Ra gave us Jo’s (Joanna Eldredge Morrissey, Eldredge’s sister) number, and we just got connected right away.”
On their next visit, Novak and Nagle then went to look at a few houses, “just out of curiosity.”
“We weren’t really planning to move, or buy a house. But when we got to the first house, and we stepped into the kitchen, we both just said: this is it. The realtor was like, ‘Don’t you want to even see the rest of the house?’ And we said, ‘Nope–this is our house,’ ” Nagle said.
After moving to Peterborough, Nagle and Novak connected with Mike Chadinha of the Peterborough Concert series, and Ishna started to play an annual Christmas concert.
“This was year six of the Christmas concert, and we’re very lucky to be a part of it. This year was our best show yet,” Nagle said. “That’s all thanks to Mike Chadinha, who took a chance on us.”
Nagle and Novak say having the opportunity to perform monthly at Cooper’s Hill Public House in Peterborough has had an enormous influence on their evolution as a band.
“It was during COVID, and Kyle (Sullivan, co-owner of Cooper’s) reached out to me and said, ‘Hey, I really want to try to get people to gather again,” Novak said. “That was transformative for our band. Whoever in the band was available would come up and stay with us, and it changed us from being bandleaders who are paying their hired help to being family and friends. Then we could try new tunes, we could evolve together, and we could really build the camaraderie of the band, which is very rare these days.”
Nagle said performing live in the community keeps Ishna close to the origins of Irish music.
“We always want to keep connected to the roots of Irish music, which is very much by the people, for the people, and we always want to have that community connection,” Nagle said.
In the summer of 2024, the group started to talk seriously about recording an album.
“We all came to a point where we felt, ‘now we have something to say, and we’re ready to record,'” Novak said. “And nobody wanted to do it the way it’s typically done now, which is every band member playing alone in a sound booth. We knew we wanted to all play together in the same room.”
Nagle says recording alone in a sound booth, which every member of the band has done many times, is “mind-numbingly, creatively crushing,” as well as stressful.
“We didn’t want to do it that way. I said, ‘Absolutely no way.’ The magic of Ishna is live on stage. We are a great live band, and it’s very hard for bands who are great live bands to make a recording which reflects that,” Nagle said. “What we played in the barn is what’s on the album.”
The couple initially considered recording the album in their home, but realized the traffic on Union Street would interfere with sound quality.
“So then we said, let’s check out Jo’s barn,” Nagle said. “We asked Jo if we could show it to Robert (L. Smith), our producer from New York, and she said, ‘Of course!’ And then Robert walked around Jo’s barn with his all equipment and he was just entranced, and he said it was absolutely perfect.”
Morrissey, whose family used to regularly host events and performances in the barn at “Cold Comfort Farm,” was thrilled to have music in the barn again following COVID. She told the band they were welcome to use the grand piano in the barn, but that the instrument needed a lot of work.
“Bill Faller, the piano tuner, came and said he was very familiar with this particular piano, and he completely took the whole thing apart and put it back together. We could not have recorded this album without Bill,” Nagle said. “That’s just one example of how this is an album that this entire community made. It all just happened organically.”
Novak and Nagle say the whole experience of recording their album at Morrissey’s barn at Cold Comfort Farm seemed meant to be.
“Of all the work I have done in my life– touring the world, working with all kinds of incredible people–this is the work I am most proud of,” Nagle said. “The purpose of this album was simply to put out our very best work.”
Novak says everyone in the band feels the same way.
“We put this album out primarily because we had something to say, not because we had an expectation of making money; maybe it will lead to it being able to perform more,” Novak said. “Everyone in the band says this is their best work. Everyone actually listens to the album for enjoyment, and that is something artists never do. It’s pretty amazing.”
For information about Ishna, visit ishnamusic.com.