I was in Doolin, County Clare, when I learned that Mary Custy had a new CD on the market. Unfortunately, the small Irish music shop in Doolin was out of stock.

Not to worry, the friendly shopkeeper said, and that quick she was on the phone -- not to a music distributor in Dublin or Galway, as I expected, but to Custy herself. She asked Custy if she could drop some CDs off at the shop within the next day -- the length of time I had remaining in Doolin before driving sadly to Shannon Airport and heading home -- and Custy promised to try. Alas, a gig in Limerick prevented her from getting there in time, and I had to order the CD from a distributor once I was back in the States.

Still, it was a nice effort, and it tells you something about Custy that she'd even consider driving a few hours out of her way just to make an eager tourist happy. More importantly for music lovers reading this, After 10:30 is an excellent album, pairing Custy's fine fiddlework with Stephen Flaherty's guitars.

This isn't an album of blasting strings and fiddle pyrotechnics, which seems to be all the rage these days. It's a gentler approach, but never boring; the arrangements of these tunes, many of which are unnamed, are clever, intricate and fascinating, a web of music which belies the fact that there are usually just two stringed instruments at work here. You'll find yourself hitting repeat to hear tracks such as "Cat in the Hopper," "The Woman of the House," "Rambling Pitchforks" and "Edward Scissorhands" (with no apparent relationship to the film) over and over again.

Custy has a deft touch, an effortless style which never falters or flops. Flaherty is equally skillful, avoiding the strum-heavy rhythm which dominate the work of many Irish guitarists; he's not just banging out chords, he's providing detailed counter-melodies and harmonies which stand on an equal footing with Custy's fiddle. His composition "After 10:30" (which gets a false start here, along with Custy's delighted laughter) is a soothing, flowing fingerstyle guitar piece which soars when Custy adds fiddle on top.

My first album by this fine Clare fiddler was her 1996 release as the Mary Custy Band and, while I enjoyed that jazzier, rockier outing, I am much more pleased with this high-caliber duet. (The duo, I should note, is joined on two tracks by Kevin Glynn on bass guitar.) Custy sets aside her fiddle for the final track, "Theme from Love Field" by Bill Payne, which features her on piano.

U.S. readers will likely have a tough time finding Mary Custy's CDs, but it's worth searching the Internet for those farsighted distributors who carry her. I can't praise this album enough.

[ by Tom Knapp ]