SPILL FEATURE: CELTIC MUSIC IS SO MALLEABLE, YOU CAN DO REALLY ANYTHING WITH IT – A CONVERSATION WITH IRISH MILLIE

CELTIC MUSIC IS SO MALLEABLE, YOU CAN DO REALLY ANYTHING WITH IT

A CONVERSATION WITH IRISH MILLIE

19-year-old fiddle player Amelia Shadgett, better known by her stage name Irish Millie, is a rising star in the Canadian roots and folk scene. She has captured the attention of many with her fantastic fiddle playing, memorable sing-along tunes, captivating storytelling, and splendidly catchy blend of East Coast music with bluegrass, Celtic music, folk, indie pop, and roots. This year, Millie is up for two Canadian Folk Music Awards: Single Of The Year and Young Performer Of The Year, bringing her total nominations to seven now. Ahead of the Canadian Folk Music Awards happening in Calgary from April 9-12, I chatted with Millie about her nominations along with her 2025 EP, Between Then And Now.

“It’s an honour to be up in categories with musicians whom I have idolized for a very long time,” she says. “Definitely just very proud of the nominations themselves, and I’m really excited to go and see people and meet with people.” She is really looking forward to seeing some familiar faces. “My friend Luka Hall is coming, and we tour together a lot, and the Salt Beef Junkies, who are from Newfoundland, I get to see them again.”

Her newest EP, Between Then And Now, marks some big changes in her sound. “It’s the first record that I put out that was all vocal tracks, which is definitely super different for me,” she states. “I’m used to playing a lot of instrumental music, but it ended up working out really well. There is some indie pop on there and some rock on there, too. Just a whole bunch of different genres.” Bringing more genres into her original style of music was a fun experience for Millie, as it expanded her sound and made it more unique. “I really like how it enhances my original style when I play because Celtic music is so malleable. You can do really anything with it. By merging it with other genres, you can create new ones. I think it is really quite magical in doing that.”

Reflecting on the meaning of Between Then And Now, Millie says, “I called it that just because it is based around a transition in my life: who I was at one point, who I am now, and who I am going to be later. All of the songs kind of touch on those areas, but at separate times. It is kind of like a timeline of me learning.”

PURCHASE BETWEEN THEN AND NOW VIA BANDCAMP

For the opening track “Allison,” Millie cites indie folk group The East Pointers and fiddle player Natalie MacMaster as the main influences. “It is based off of a fiddle jig, actually, but then I ended up adding lyrics to it,” she says. “The fiddle jig is a jig that I wrote and is the kind of stuff that we will dance to on the East Coast. I wanted to make some kind of pop song that also had this Irish Celtic East Coast vibe… There was not very much Celtic influence on the record other than that, so I thought it was super necessary and added a really deepening component to it.” Additionally, Millie’s father plays guitar on this track. “I really love the part he plays on ‘Allison.’ There is a lot of plucking. It’s quite nice. He’s really great. I really enjoy playing with him.”

Meanwhile, one of Millie’s close friends inspired the lyrics to “Mystery To Me.” “It was inspired by a friend I met who changed my perspective on the world and came into my life at a time when I was having a really difficult sort of time with music and just life in general, and was at a transitional period in my life,” Millie reflects. “This person kind of raised the bar for me for all of the people who I would let into my life, the things that I would let into my life, what I would let bother me, and what I wouldn’t let bother me, and showed me there was a lot of beauty in the world past just what is on the surface.”

In the deeply personal “Wasted,” a dial tone opens and closes the song. “It starts with that dial tone and the closing off with kind of the same thing because the whole song is supposed to be like a phone call,” Millie explains. “The song is about my Mom, and it is basically just about how she would pick me up anytime I needed her if I couldn’t get home – it is just about how we all love a person who hopefully would be there for us no matter what we are doing.” Millie also shares a matching tattoo with her mother for this song, which makes it even more meaningful. For every album she has made with her father, they both got a small wrist tattoo of the album title. She also shares a matching tattoo with her brother for her song “Ghosts.” Since Millie and her mother did not want to get a matching tattoo of the word ‘wasted,’ they decided to get a tattoo of something else. “The pre-chorus talks about the dryer, the socks, and all these things, so we actually have a tattoo of a dryer, which is kind of funny.”

The closing track, “You Were There,” is nominated for Single Of The Year at the Canadian Folk Music Awards. Millie co-wrote the song with Matthew Cicciarella. “He had never written anything before, and he said he couldn’t write anything, and I’m the kind of person who always challenges people and pushes them, so I pushed him to write something with me,” she recalls. “It ended up being a really great exercise. Also, just a really great song came out of it, and this nomination was incredible for something like that. It was very meaningful.”

Later this month, on April 25th, Millie will be playing at the Ottawa Grassroots Festival. This festival, which runs from April 23-26, is packed with incredible artists and is sure to be a wonderful time.

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Photo Credits: Mary Payne