Summit Tour upbeat> French, Irish give a rollicking show

Whether you say “jig” or “gigue,” the Franco-Irish Summit Tour at the Maine Center for the Arts Friday was a rollicking, frolicking, kicking night of music. The combination of Quebec’s La Bottine Souriante and Ireland’s Patrick Street brought together the traditional music of two of Maine’s predominant cultural populations and offered a concert that was exhaustingly upbeat.

The outstanding qualities of the show were the speed of the music and the proficiency of the musicians. Patrick Street dominated the first half of the show, although La Bottine musicians sat in on sets. Clearly, Patrick Street is made up of virtuoso players — Kevin Burke on fiddle, Andy Irvine on guitar, harmonica and mandolin, Jackie Daly on button accordian, and Jed Foley on rhythm guitar.

Unfortunately, there wasn’t much variation in the style of music, so after the first few jigs and reels, the sounds seemed to blend together. The musicians were still lively and vital but the redundancy stole from their act.

During the second half of the concert, La Bottine Souriante (literally “the smiling boot”) injected the audience with another dose of fast-paced music, this time in the more glitzy style of Quebecois. Several of the songs were in the “chanson a repondre” or call and response style, and all of the music of this nine-piece fusion band had the backup of New Orleans brass sounds.

When these guys took off in a song, it was joie de vivre to the max. With fiddles, bass, piano, horns, accordion, mandolin, snare drum and vocals, the music was loud and boisterous, like a garage band when parents are out for the evening.

Certainly, the most fascinating performer of La Bottine was Michel Bordeleau, who played mandolin, snare drum, fiddle and his feet. From his chair situated on a special board, Bordeleau kept the beat clipping along with his tap dancing feet. In fact, in the program, his feet were listed as one of his instruments. And rightly so. The guy never stopped moving his feet. No matter what was going on onstage, Bordeleau was moving in a clippity-clop. He was a strange figure to observe, but his contribution was integral to the music and the high time his fellow musicians were having.

Lots of good-natured joking went on from time to time among the musicians, whose homelands share a Celtic history dating back to pre-Christian times. Burke, the fiddler and primary spokesman for Patrick Street, called one song “Bag of Spuds” or, for some, “Le Sac de Patates.”

A whirling night of music, the Franco-Irish Tour was popular with the audience but went on too long in too much the same way.