Honest Irish Folk

Niamh Parsons, whose rich, tawny voice is among the most striking on the Celtic folk scene, is no purist when it comes to traditional Irish music.

Her first two albums, released in the United States in 1995 and 1997, found the dark-haired, moon-faced Dubliner swinging between smooth, pop-flavored folk, where a chirpy soprano saxophone could dominate, and arrangements that surrounded her voice with pipes and whistles in the time-honored fashion.

Even if pop-crossover hopes surface in some of her music, there is a disarmingly pure, uncalculating and non-careerist current in Parsons’ development as a singer. And she continues to relish the simplest, most communitarian and least show-bizzy ways of enjoying a song.

Parsons, whose first name is pronounced “Neeve,” could hardly have made a more traditional album than “Blackbirds and Thorns,” due next month on the Celtic-oriented folk label Green Linnet. It’s an austerely beautiful work, given mainly to sparse arrangements--or no arrangements at all, as her voice carries the song unaccompanied. Parsons, a late musical bloomer who turns 41 later this month, said it’s the fruit of 15 years of sifting through the Irish folk tradition.

“These are songs I’ve collected for no other reason than I love the songs,” she said in a dusky, deep-voiced brogue this week from a hotel room in San Francisco. “I do like to explore other types of songs, but this [album] is all me.”

Parsons had spent the previous night partying with fellow Irish-music masters from the band Solas. Mounting separate tours to coincide with St. Patrick’s Day, the two acclaimed acts crossed paths; Parsons gets to Orange County first, appearing Saturday at the San Juan Capistrano Regional Library. The higher-profile Solas arrives Wednesday--St. Patrick’s Day--performing at the Irvine Barclay Theatre with expected guest appearances by its recent recording collaborators, Bela Fleck and Iris DeMent.

Life at the Grass-Roots Level

St. Patrick’s Day has always been a grand time to be Irish and musically talented, with gigs galore for the taking. Parsons isn’t hurting: She’s the entertainment at a White House party Wednesday, with President Clinton and Ireland’s prime minister, Bertie Ahern, expected to attend.

If there is a gold rush mentality in Celtic music these days, sparked by the “Riverdance” phenomenon and “The Titanic” film soundtrack, Parsons says life on her own grass-roots level is more about building a career slowly than prospecting for a sudden strike.

“I’m not in that top bracket of ‘Riverdance’ and the Chieftains and all that,” she said. “The smaller people, knocking around doing what they do uniquely and individually, we’re not seeing the money.”

Music didn’t become a career for Parsons until 10 years ago, when she met Dee Moore, a bassist and songwriter from Belfast. She had been singing part time in a band called Killera when Moore heard her perform and encouraged her to make the most of a beautiful voice.

They married and became musical partners, with Parsons fronting her husband’s folk-rock flavored band, the Loose Connections, and Moore doing the bulk of the songwriting. Her first album, released in Ireland in 1992, led to an ongoing side gig as singer for the traditional band Arcady.

Moore is at home minding their 7-year-old daughter while Parsons tours with a strictly traditional repertoire, backed on accordion and bouzouki by Josephine and Pat Marsh, a brother-sister team from County Clare.

Parsons’ traditional music roots go back to her girlhood, when her father, who loved to sing, taught Niamh and her older sister to harmonize. “My mother is tone-deaf, interestingly enough, but she knows every word to every song, and she’s a lovely dancer,” Parsons said.

Late Bloomer’s ‘Brilliant’ Debut

Other than singing with a folk group in church, Parsons didn’t pursue music until she was 25. The turning point was a night in a pub.

“I had to go down to Clare to be with my friend. . . . We ended up going into town, into this place that didn’t even look like a pub at all. There were 20 people there, and everybody had a song to sing. They asked me, and I sang ‘Pleasant and Delightful’ [a traditional song]. I came to the chorus, and everybody sang with me. I was hooked. It was brilliant. So I went on a search for songs.”

The fruits of that search enrich the “Blackbirds and Thrushes” album. Many of the songs are about sad parting and romantic estrangement--including a glowing reading of “The Water Is Wide,” an American folk standard that Parsons traces to Irish roots.

She also sings of the personal toll that war takes on lovers, and of the pain of the Irish emigrant experience. But songs about love’s allure and sheer beauty frame the album, and in “The Maid on the Shore,” Parsons, singing a cappella, generates rhythmic vitality and humor as she weaves a proto-feminist tale of a smart, plucky woman using her musical gifts to get the better of a shipload of beastly men.

Although her current tour is devoted to traditional songs, Parsons intends to go on straddling styles and mixing in contemporary folk. Parsons said she couldn’t predict her next move.

“I love people like Nanci Griffith and Alison Krauss, and I’d like to try singing that as well,” she said. “I need to see what the reaction is from [‘Blackbirds and Thrushes’]. I know I’ve got other songs to sing apart from traditional, and more traditional songs to sing as well.”

* Niamh Parsons sings Saturday at the San Juan Capistrano Regional Library, 31495 El Camino Real. 7 and 9 p.m. $6 ($3 for children 12 and younger). (949) 248-7469.