Honoring a box player who broke the barriers

NANUET -- For decades, John Nolan has played his accordion in traditional Irish music venues across the region with little fanfare, happy to be part of the background, secure in his own talent while flashier musicians have come and gone.
   Now Nolan's expertise on the "button box" has been recognized by the premier international Irish cultural and arts organization, Comhaltas Ceoltoiri Eireann. Nolan, a Nanuet resident, has just been inducted into the Mid-Atlantic Region's Comhaltas (pronounced coal-tus) Hall of Fame as the first American-born adult to win the All-Ireland button accordion championship, a feat he accomplished in 1982.
   The unprecedented selection of an American to win one of Ireland's highest music honors was comparable to having an obscure community theater walk-on win a Tony Award as Broadway's best actor. Both button and piano accordions have long been at the heart of Irish country music and dance, and playing the button box well was held to be a strictly native Irish prerogative.
   The induction, held Feb. 21 in Mineola, Long Island, was a long-overdue honor, Nolan's friends and peers said.
   "John Nolan is simply one of the greatest button accordion players that America has ever produced," said Brian Conway, an assistant district attorney for Westchester County and one of the country's premier Irish fiddlers. He's played with Nolan for nearly 30 years and features Nolan on his newest CD, "Consider the Source."
   Earle Hitchner, the traditional music columnist for New York City's Irish Echo newspaper and a freelance music writer for The Wall Street Journal, said Nolan's induction "confirms what every Irish music fan in New York already knows: He is one of the best instrumentalists we have."
   Nolan, 52, who has lived in Nanuet since 1992, was bemused by the honor, which was as unexpected as it was overdue. Although he's well-known, he's seldom called out of the area to accompany other artists, hasn't been asked to teach at Irish music camps, is rarely asked to be a featured artist at a festival and his 2000 solo CD, "A Rake of Reels," was only a moderate commercial success.
   "They had nominated me," he recalled. "It came to the vote and I was not chosen and people were apologizing. Believe me, I don't expect to win. All of the sudden, one of the people who was chosen declined and then they called me. I was trying to gracefully get out of it." Instead, he was convinced that the selection was sincere and deserved, he said, and accepted the nomination.
   "The people I've been meeting since, I get the same response: 'I'm so happy for you, it's long overdue, you should have been there years ago,' " he said.
   John Whelan of Connecticut, a longtime friend and accordion player who won All-Ireland as a teen several times, said the honor isn't just a title. It's an acknowledgment of a musician's craft and that musician's place in the genre.
   "John is a beautiful player, with great rhythms and phrasing, a great energy in his playing," Whelan said. "It's a great honor to have that recognized over all the world."
   Nolan was born in Brooklyn, the second of three children, to a house filled with Irish music and accordion music in particular. His grandparents had emigrated from southern Ireland - Cork, Kerry, Limerick and Killarney, he said - but his parents were American-born.
   "Dad played button accordion as well; that's where I first got interested, watching him," Nolan said. "We were always at house parties in those days; we didn't have these great festivals. Everybody would get together, and my father would be playing and people would be singing. We were an accordion-biased family."
   Unlike schoolwork, learning the accordion was an easy study, Nolan said.
   "It made sense to me. I was able to figure out stuff. First the ceili band numbers, that's what I heard the most of. I loved it. I don't know if I realized it then."
   Ceili (pronounced kay-lee) music is fast dance music.
   Like many other young American musicians of Irish heritage, he visited Ireland and competed several times in the All-Ireland contests as a teen.
   His first competition there in 1974 was a wash, he said. He didn't win anything - "I didn't expect to" - but he had a good time. The competitions are only a part of what goes on during the week.
   "There was such an explosion of music. It's just - music would attack every sense of your being. It goes on, a solid four days of music, sessions everywhere."
   Sessions are impromptu jams where musicians of all ages and instruments sit around at a venue, usually a pub, and just play music for hours, tune after tune.
   Nolan attempted the All-Ireland twice as an adult. His first try, around 1980, ended unsuccessfully. Even his mentor fared poorly that year.
   "The guy who I had really learned most of my technique from was Billy McComisky, and he played and he was brilliant and they didn't even place him," Nolan said of his first All-Ireland experience as an adult. "I felt there were politics involved, and I didn't think they would ever give out a coveted award like senior All-Ireland to an American."
   When he was 25, friends with whom he played regularly decided they'd attend the All-Ireland as a group, Nolan said. He was talked into going along, and they entered every competition there was, from ceili band to individual instruments. Nolan was entered in six competitions, all on the same day.
   His win that day in two-button accordion solo opened doors for other American musicians, but Nolan has not competed in All-Ireland since then, he said. The burden of making history detracts from the pure joy of playing.
   "Every time since then, that's how you are introduced," he explained. "You have to be flawless."
For the past quarter-century, his life has been one of steady music-making, in New York City's boroughs, in the suburbs and in upstate New York, and in places across the country where Irish music is played.
Nolan, who describes himself as "good with his hands" - the accordion is a good isometric device, he explained - was a manager with a telephone company for 12 years until about 2000 when he left to become a full-time musician.
   These days, music again is his second career. He is a repair coordinator for a Northvale, N.J., company. But he also plays, teaches accordion, composes music and repairs accordions, a job he took up several decades ago as a way to get the sound he wanted out of his own box.
   He and his wife, Mary Lenane Nolan, and his two children, daughter Maura, 15, and son Brendan, 12, live in a rambling home with plenty of space for his repair work, his lessons and his own instruments.
   "To a certain extent, I've dedicated my life to Irish music. It's a wonderful thing," Nolan said. "The thing that kills us these days is people don't know how to dance anymore. We used to play a lot of dances. There really isn't a big call for these tunes. You don't really have an audience for it. It makes it a bit harder for people who want to keep it a little more traditional."
   Although he's a strong proponent of traditional methods and tunes, he's also called on to play more contemporary and even rock 'n' roll pieces. But it's the waltzes, hornpipes and reels that give him the most joy and the chance to show today's listeners what the traditional Irish button accordion can do.