Celtic, world and folk band Four Shillings Short got its start in Palo Alto decades ago so it only seems fitting, as Aodh Og O’Tuama and Christy Martin prepare to say goodbye to the nomadic life and settle down overseas, that Palo Alto plays a part in the farewell celebrations.
Retiring to O’Tuama’s native Ireland has long been in the plans for the married musical duo and the time has come at last – although not immediately. On July 18, Four Shillings Short will kick off a lengthy final U.S. tour with a concert in Palo Alto, a tour that will take about two and a half years to unspool.
“Being on the road for 30 years, we just figured it was time to do one final, full U.S. tour, and then set down our roots, finally, in Ireland,” Martin said. In between legs of the American tour, they’ll continue to lead music, folklore and archaeology tours in Ireland, which they’ve been doing for the past decade. The plan is that by the time the U.S. touring wraps up in late 2028, the couple will have found a suitable spot in the Emerald Isle to call home permanently.
“By then, we hope to have located a place in Ireland that we can afford to live in,” O’Tuama said. They’re searching for a piece of land on which they can have a small home, a garden, and space enough to host musical performances and guests, bringing out-of-town friends and audiences to them, for a change.
The duo is known for its diverse mix of musical instruments and traditions from around the world, from medieval and Renaissance works to Celtic folk songs to Indian ragas (Martin specializes in the sitar), South and North American music, original compositions and more.
“We’re all over the map, really, in what we do,” O’Tuama said. “We’re our own category.”
There’s often an educational component to O’Tuama and Martin’s performances, especially when they play at libraries, schools and community centers, presenting programs such as their popular “Around the World in 30 instruments” show.
“We think of ourselves as not just musicians, but as bards and troubadours, and, you know, that whole bardic tradition of being the go-between, between the old ways, the traditional ways, the ancestors, and the present,” Martin said.
Part of their mission, she said, is “to keep traditional music and folk music in the next generation. To have an opportunity for young people and to inspire them to think about music as a pastime, as a vocation, as just something that makes life so much richer and more fulfilling.”
Palo Alto holds a special place in their hearts and history. O’Tuama co-founded Four Shillings Short in the 1980s, having come to the area from Cork, Ireland, for a music fellowship at Stanford University.
Palo Alto was also where O’Tuama and Martin’s love story began, in 1995, after meeting at a Four Shillings Short performance at St. Michael’s Alley. The two talked about music and O’Tuama told Martin he’d like to “see her socially,” she recalled fondly. He worked as the sound designer for TheatreWorks Silicon Valley for many years, in addition to working for the city of Palo Alto, and he invited Martin to a show he was working on at the Lucie Stern Theatre, titled, appropriately enough, “She Loves Me.”
O’Tuama’s courtship “was so calm and gentlemanly, it really took me by surprise. And I had already been kind of looking for another musical partner. So, then by the second week, the two of us started playing music together and joining one another’s bands,” Martin said. “Within about, I’d say, a month of meeting, we were hot in love and ready to go on the road and starting to make plans about, well, ‘What do we do now?'”
The band, which had been through a number of lineup configurations over the years, became a duo, Martin quit her day job in human resources and the rest is history. They’ve been wandering minstrels ever since.
“It’s very challenging, you know, to be the partner of a full-time artist or a theater worker or somebody who’s really working actively in the arts,” O’Tuama said. “And so the two of us, when we got together, we realized that this was ideal. If we were ever going to really live our dream, to do our music full time, this was our chance.”
Because of supportive patrons and friends, Palo Alto has always served as their U.S. hub, no matter how far they roam.
“Palo Alto will always be our home in the United States,” Martin said. “But we can’t afford to live there!” O’Tuama added with a laugh. Whenever they are back in town, though, they run into familiar faces.
“The whole Palo Alto community has been so supportive of Four Shillings Short,” Martin said. At the July 18 concert, they plan to pull songs from all 13 of their albums and, as usual, bring out a huge range of instruments.
“That’s one goal: to bring in favorite pieces; one from each album maybe, and then some of the newer stuff that we’re doing,” she said. “I think it is going to be kind of a retrospective, and with stories. It really is our farewell.”
They have at least two more records in the works currently and, once they’re settled in Ireland, Martin is considering putting together a musical memoir, drawing on the years of journals and photos the couple has accumulated during their time on the road.
“That might be the next thing we do,” she said. “… I really sit down and I recount the life of a modern-day troubadour.”
But until then, they’ve got a busy few years of touring ahead, starting with their local show this month.
“Hopefully people will just want to come in and see us perform one last time in Palo Alto,” she said, “because that’s it.”
Four Shillings Short’s final U.S. tour launch event will be held July 18, 7 p.m., Unitarian Universalist Church of Palo Alto, 505 E. Charleston St., Palo Alto; $20 suggested donation/kids free with a paying adult; 4shillingsshort.com.
