For years Richie Buckley seemed content to be the sax man in someone else's band. His extraordinary talent seemed matched by a curious reticence and an apparent unwillingness to put himself forward as a "name" in his own right. As part of the Irish music scene for years, Buckley has long been in demand as a session man, touring for many years with the Van Morrison band and making countless appearances on other people's records. But this time it's different. His new album, Your Love is Here, is Richie Buckley's band - playing Richie Buckley music.
"It's been welling up for years that I really should make an album of my own tunes. I was always kind of afraid to make an album like this and in a way I didn't think I was up to it. I was maybe afraid of the criticism. But I'd got into writing music and I had some tunes at home and eventually it all fell together. I was doing a couple of gigs with Lew Soloff and was also working with Robin Aspland who was playing with Van's band - so we got together. Ronan Guilfoyle helped me with a couple of arrangements. There was one rehearsal and then we went into the studio for two days and that was it. But it's different bringing out an album under your own name. It's grand hiding behind another band, but this is different. I was happy with it, but when people said they liked it, there was a real sigh of relief."
In the company of people like Soloff, Buckley flourishes as a player. He luxuriates in those breathy Ben Webster tones required for maximum ballad soul and he's also extremely fast and furious when this is called for. But for Buckley (for whom pyrotechnics are easy), it's the sound that really matters. And while he could have made a record like this years ago, it's only now that he feels right about it.
Only in the past few years has he felt that he has finally achieved a sound of his own.
"I've noticed that my sound is different, and that's great. Finally I have my own thing and I'm glad that it's a sound people like. But it takes a musician years and years to be happy with his sound and I still work on it because I know it's a part of my playing which is appreciated. There's no use having all the technique in the world and having no sound. You can practise technique, but sound and style are the most important things."
It was, of course, in the blood. Richie's late father Dick was a saxophonist, so too is brother Michael, and cousin Hugh plays guitar. It's a family line-up which has been at the heart of Dublin jazz for many years and it's fitting that Your Love is Here is dedicated to Dick. Richie fondly recalls standing in the hallway and asking his father who was the greatest saxophone player in the world. The answer he got was Charlie Parker, and rather than let Richie break any more reeds, his father set about teaching him the basics - the two of them playing You'd Be So Nice to Come Home To with the 10-year-old Richie taking the melody and Dick improvising on top.
"He was a great teacher all along and I used to travel with him when I was only a kid. So really I've been on the road since I was about four! He tried to get me to read music, but I was too interested in improvising and later on, that went against me a little bit. When I used to try to read a piece of music, I'd pick it up so quickly by ear that I'd remember it straight away. My ear was developing so fast and the next time around, I wouldn't really be reading it at all. I still can't read as well as some of the other guys around. But I wasn't thinking of being a professional musician at that stage. I became a mechanic."
But, looking back, it seems to have been inevitable that Buckley would be a jazzer in the end. From a very young age, his father had been taking him to Noel Kelehan's gigs at the Killiney Court where he also met people like John Wadham and Dave Fleming. He used to spend time listening to records in Louis Stewart's house, and Keith Donald was another who spotted his talent and helped him out in the early days. What really changed things however was when he met the Guilfoyle brothers - musicians of his own age who were equally delighted to find him.
They formed a jazz rock group called Spectrascope and Buckley soon became an ex-mechanic and devoted himself completely to his sax.
"There was really about six years of studying and practising. But the reason I gave up the job was simply that the garage I was in just folded up. So for a while I was just on the dole or maybe doing the odd gig in America with a showband - with Rob Strong and people like that - and it was always great craic.
"I remember I nearly met Count Basie in Las Vegas, but the night before I was supposed to meet him we all had to get out of town fast. I remember that well. Someone was in trouble with the local Mafia, so we had to head to Kansas City. We had been told to get out in no uncertain terms. But you see, my ambition was just to be able to play like all the great saxophone players I had heard - it was not really the travelling or the touring. [It was] Only years later when I was with Van, I got to do some real travelling."
Buckley played for about six years with Morrison and, after a break of another six years, returned for a few more. He was the undoubted star of the band with, it seemed, more responsibility than most to respond to Morrison's onstage twists and turns.
HE WAS probably the most effective musician Morrison ever had on board - capable of pushing him beyond a mere workout into something often quite breathtaking. And despite the clear pressures of being on stage with someone who makes creative decisions on the hoof, Buckley loved working in a highly-charged atmosphere, governed completely by the famous Van Morrison repertoire of hand signals.
"Actually it's tougher on the drummer. But I never took my eyes off Van because it's all eyes and ears with him and I loved that way of working. I enjoyed working out arrangements too and he always liked to see people putting their ideas in. He wanted you to contribute and you'd have to be very quick - like make up an arrangement on the spot! Also you'd need to know his repertoire of a couple of hundred tunes. I had a different idea of what rhythm and blues and rock and roll was before I met him. In fact, I didn't really know what it was until I worked with Van. He showed me what the roots of it were and where he was coming from, and that was very interesting for me. He dumped me in the deep end and it was a sink-or-swim kind of thing - so I had to swim. He liked my playing and I think he liked my enthusiasm for playing."
Buckley has worked with many of the major names in music - from Christy Moore to Elmer Bernstein, from Barry Manilow to Bob Dylan. In recent years he has taken to playing traditional music with the likes of Sharon Shannon and is always much in demand as an exotic addition to any live performance. He has also scored several documentary films and John Boorman's movie, The General. But that said, there are many who feel that Richie Buckley, like Louis Stewart, would have been much better off had he been born, or at least lived, in the States. But for Buckley himself, it's a clear-cut case of no regrets.
"It's a small pond but I love living in Ireland. My family is here and my whole life is here. Music is not just one little part of my life, it's my whole life and it involves living in Ireland and being Irish and having my friends and my family. It's all rolled into one and what you hear from me is all that - that plus all the music I've ever listened to in my life."
Your Love is Here is on Hummingbird Records