Muldoon’s Picnic is the recurring music-and-poetry event at the Irish Arts Center in New York. Occurring just about once a month throughout the past year, the Picnic is hosted by legendary Pulitzer Prize-winning Irish poet Paul Muldoon. His own rock band, Rogue Oliphant, serves as the house band who perform several of their own original tracks during the evening.
Rogue Oliphant, who released their third studio album Highlights of the Low Life digitally just last year, features an intriguing lineup of talented musicians with varied histories: Chris Harford (guitar and vocals), Ray Kubian (drums and vocals), David Mansfield (guitar), Cáit O’Riordan (bass and vocals), and Warren Zanes (guitar and vocals) are all members. Some of these names may be especially familiar to you; O’Riordan was a member of the Pogues, Mansfield was a part of Bob Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Revue in the ’70s, and Zanes is an author of music books including the successful Tom Petty biography released in 2015.
The group’s new album offers up a generous musical offering, an astounding twenty-six tracks. Given the plethora of unique talents among Rogue Oliphant’s band members and their overall leaning toward the literary, the listening experience of Highlights of the Low Life is multifaceted. The title track is a standout, with a jaunty rock sound, whose lyrics list quite comically a rigmarole of antics and past deeds, that justly qualify the character-narrator as welcome in the lowlife.
“Stupid Cupid” too is a great and gruff tune that lyrically derides the IQ of the love instigator. The group’s sound is steeped in rock ‘n’ roll, and its main aural effect is a bit rough and raw, indie, home-crafted, and intimate. And its creed is noticeably democratic with band members trading positions as lead vocalists amidst the album’s songs.
But the guiding hand of the album is Paul Muldoon’s words that weave in and out of the tracks with compelling candor and mysterious images, fully present in the modern world but equally steeped in the cultural heritage and history of Irish literature. “What Snow is For,” a track consisting of Muldoon’s spoken word alone, is a beautiful celebration of innocence inspired by snow.
Each performance of Muldoon’s Picnic at the Irish Arts Center in New York City, features a few unique guests, usually poets, writers, and other musicians, to read their work amidst Rogue Oliphant’s setlist. The November 2022 performance featured poets Manchán Magan and Dora Malech, as well as musician James Maddock.
The Arts Center recently went through a vast $60 million renovation, and the performance space features a beautiful hall with impressive acoustics. Muldoon’s Picnic makes for a good rockshow and night out—its convivial atmosphere offering a wonderful opportunity for musicians and writers to come together and celebrate their work—in conjunction with the rich literary tradition of Irish history. It’s a testament to the legacy created by Muldoon’s writing career, further celebrated and expanded upon in this musical series, encouraged to flourish even further by the company he keeps in his band Rogue Oliphant.
