They call themselves “The Consequences,” but this exciting young Irish trad group could have called themselves “The Champions.” Because they all are.
Lexie Boatright is a multiple All-Ireland award winning harpist and concertina player. Jake James is a two-time All-Ireland fiddle champion. Cara Wildman is an All-Ireland champion bodhran player. And pianist and accordion player Ryan Ward is the current reigning Senior All-Ireland Accompaniment Champion.
They come from all over: Lexi from the Washington, DC, area, Cara from Texas, Ryan from Bergen County, NJ, and Jake from Queens, NY. But once they’re in the same room—which doesn’t happen often– they make beautiful music together. No, beautiful doesn’t quite do it justice. It’s lively, joyful, happy, energetic and full of zest. It’s get-up-and-dance music.
“Our hope is that you can’t not dance,” says Lexi with a laugh. “We hope it’s irresistible.”
Everyone is invited to dance, clap, stomp, and bounce in the seats when The Consequences take the stage in the Fireside Room at the Commodore John Barry Arts and Cultural Center (The Irish Center) on Friday, May 19. You can buy tickets in advance at www.philadelphiaceiligroup.org.
The idea for the far-flung group, which is on its second east coast tour, came to Lexi after she spoke to a friend, Chicago-based Irish traditional singer and songwriter Eileen Estes. Estes contacted her and asked her to fly out from Virginia to join her for a few gigs. While there are plenty of Irish performers in the Chicago area, Estes told her she didn’t want to be limited to just whoever was available nearby. She wanted someone “I love being with and love playing with.”
‘She put this idea in my mind. Okay, what if I didn’t just think of people close to me to make a band with. What if I asked people I love hanging out with who would get on a plane and come hang out but also play really good music,” says Lexi, who, with Ryan Ward, took some time out from preparing for their current tour for a Zoom interview.
One of the first people she thought of was Cara Wildman, who she met when the two were teaching at O’Flaherty’s Irish Music Retreat in Richardson, TX. Wildman, who has a master’s in Irish Traditional Music Performance from the University of Limerick, has toured with Joanie Madden (Cherish The Ladies) and Oisin MacDiarmada (Irish Christmas in America) among others.
“We got along and played good music together and since then we’ve been texting back and forth. I thought, Cara could be in the band. And she would do it. She would fly to be with me. We would fly just to be on vacation together. We love to hang out.”
When Lexi did the gigs with Eileen Estes, they were joined by Jake James, who along with being a fiddle champ, is a dancer and plays the bodhran. He’s performed with Philly-based Runa and Green Fields of America, the group founded by the late Mick Moloney. “I knew Jake from going to fleadhs and other things for years, but we never sat down and played just the two of us,” says Lexi. “When we did, it clicked so well. It was really, really fun to play with him.”
That was two down. Last year, she discovered Ryan at the Fleadh in Parsippanny, NJ, where she was with some of her students. She’s the executive director of the Baltimore-Washington Academy of Irish Culture where she mentors the award-winning BWAIC student Ceili Band and Grupa Cheoil.
“I was in the hall with one of my piano students and we could hear the piano accompaniment from outside the room,” she recalls. “I took her in and told her, ‘You just sit in this room and listen to this. I want you hearing this right now, it’s so good.’”
Suddenly there was a quartet. (Expect to see their first album, When You Weren’t Looking, drop in July 2023.)
What made it all possible is what allowed millions of Americans—and people around the world—to continue to keep it all going during pandemic lockdowns. Technology.
“The way technology is, we got used to not being right in the same room with each other and yet still be able to create and collaborate, utilizing all those skills we developed over the years to arrange tunes, compose tunes, and share tunes with each other,” says Lexi.
Everything from tunes to set lists to financial spreadsheets are on Google Docs, an online program that allows users to create, edit and share files. Some documents live on Drop Box, which offers cloud storage and file synchronization which makes sharing easy.
“We talk very very frequently in a group chat that’s probably too active at this point,” says Ryan. He and Lexi use a program called Canva to create essentials like posters and Lexi has picked up two photo editing programs, Lightroom and Photoshop. “I also use Chat GPT,” she says sheepishly. No, AI is not writing any original songs and lyrics for The Consequences. But it is giving her first drafts of letters and emails she has to send to prospective venues. “The worst thing to have to write is something hyping yourself,” she says.
As for rehearsing, all four members of the group have relied on their music school experiences (“We all went to music school,” says Ryan. “I’m still in music school, experiencing the trauma as we speak.”) to solve that problem.
“In music school, we’ve all been handed parts and told you need to practice on your own,” says Lexi. When music students do get together, rehearsal time is short so it has to be “efficient, because in music school, you have no time,” she says. “We all practice really well Individually. We go to Drop Box, grab a tune and learn it, then have an active chat about it.”
But don’t let the techno process throw you. The whole point of The Consequences has always been to get together with friends, make great music , and have a good time. Fortunately, those “friends” include the audience. “We’re really just trying to have fun and we want the audience to have fun,” says Lexi. “After a gig we all just sit together and go over the tunes, chat, and laugh. We enjoy being together. The gig is just the first part of that evening that everyone gets to participate in.”
She recalls a recent house concert the group did in Baltimore where those audience members who played an instrument joined the group for a session afterwards. There was laughter, music, and dancing, though not necessarily the kind of dancing you’ve come to expect at an Irish event.
“On our last tour we learned to do The Wobble,” she confesses. It’s a viral line dance choreographed to a 2011 hit by rapper V.I.C. that the group learned on the Internet. “If you go to our website you can see it in one of our videos. We were doing it in our pajamas,” says Lexi, laughing. You can see a snippet of The Wobble pajama party on the first video here.
If you think it sounds like a concert with The Consequences is more like a party, you’d be right. “It’s really fun to be all together, with your audience, sharing music, sharing stories, laughing and having a good time,” she says. “That’s why you get into Irish music. To be part of having the craic together and to be part of a community. That’s the draw. It’s social music, so if the audience can feel like they’re part of that social thing, it’s always the best.”
