Hello Christy,
Happy new year to you and yours and everyone here. New beginnings, the eyes of a child with all their possibilities. I slept through the midnight hour, same as most years.
Those Grehan sisters are awesome.
Recording went well. I had a couple of false starts but apart from that, got four songs down at the first take. They’re not bad. Good enough to start an account on band camp anyway. I’ll post a link later, if that’s ok .
I recorded
Musgrave
Scarborough Fair
The Parting Glass. and
Spancil Hill
I’m just listening to the Clocks wind down from the new album, for me it’s the best..it’s the first time I’ve listened to it on vinyl and how appropriate when the clock winds down 👌🏻 ..Happy new year lad 💪🏻
That was a great link with Joe Heaney how do I put up links what do I have to do also did you meet Bob Dylan at the Tramore festival if you did what did you think of him
Christy's reply
you’ll have to ask elsewhere Vincent… I can do it… but I dont know how it works..same as most things with me…
That Bob Dylan fella, I cant shake him off, he has me pestered morning noon and night calling up asking for the chords of Lisdoonvarna…I should never have given him my phone number…
Duffle coats and dufflebags, am laughing. And indeed we got around, no aeroplanes.
Christy's reply
I was so proud of my new duffle coat in 1957..I was an altar boy serving 7..am Mass one morning… an elderly man collapsed around consecration time..he was carried into the sacristy..after mass we went back into the sacristy where the poor man had drawn his last breath and was yielding up his final rattle…the church sexton, god forgive him, had rolled up my new duffle coat and used it as a pillow under that poor mans head…do you think I might be due plenary indulgences ??
Christy, best wishes to you and yours for a Prosperous 2022 as well as to all who tread these boards. Absolutely,loved Song of Granite. There is just something wonderful about Sean-nós song and dance. Thanks for all the music through all the years and hopefully see you in the not too distant future. Le grá Mary
Christy's reply
we’re all chomping at the bit to get back up the road….
here’s hoping we get the all clear before too long..
I have a few gigs lined up here in the next fortnight..all 6pm kick offs with 50% capacity but nothing further planned
John Spillane eloquently described an Ulster Fry he had recently in thon Cultúrlann….I’m still holding out for the chowder
happy 2022 to all songsters up around The Bog Meadow
Hello Christy,
This could be the link Rory was trying to post? It’s the first of four. https://youtu.be/k-j5uqw5ofY
Rory, I’ve noticed that if I put more than one link in a post it won’t do it, but one link in a post is fine. Is this useful?
Steve has bought me a microphone. He says it will pick up everything in the room? We’re going to have a go with it today. If it works I’ll get to hear what I sound like when it’s not through a smartphone. Could be scary.
Rebecca
Christy's reply
Thank you for sharing…I’ve never seen Joe addressing an audience before
Dear Christy,
I tried to post some links and failed. I should have stuck to being a luddite.
Not only did i put in a funny but irrelevant prank call link instead of Joe Heaney of 11 minutes ( entitled cartlann joe heaney) but the whole thing has got held in moderation.
Back to chalk and a blackboard…this old dog will leave others to link to new tricks.
All the best for the bells
Rory
Ps dagrab cant get on to post due to unknown technical hitch
Christy's reply
Rory…proficiency upon modern tablets/phones/gadgets brings no guarantee of better life skills….when the grid goes down better be able to sow a drill of spuds,build a wall,rear a few hens, then to have I skills
any way, Rebecca has unleashed the film of Joe strutting his stuff, I had the good fortune to meet Joe a few times way back in the 1960’s…Darach Ó Catháin too…
only recently I discovered a few of the secrets and complexities of the Sean-Nós singing style..( as a listener rather then a singer..the latter is beyond my reach at this stage…70 years too late)
Wish you and all our 4711ers the very best for 2022..that we may all cross paths again before too long
Hi Christy, I thought it was about time that I registered and shared some happy memories with you. Firstly, my father and family are from Boyle and we spent many a happy summer holiday on the farm in Corrigeenroe and, one time, my brother, cousin and myself spent a memorable afternoon in Grehan’s Bar on The Crescent, singing with Francie and Bernie. I was born in Leeds and I met you one Sunday night at “Folk on the Brig” at the Adelphi pub on Leeds bridge – I think it was in 1972. This folk club was run by Bob and Hazel Spray and you called in and sang a couple of songs. The Watersons often sang there. I have had the pleasure of seeing Planxty many times and also many of your own solo performances. I am, currently, enjoying your latest album. I saw Usher’s Island last month in London and what great musicians they are, and Andy still motoring at 80. It was great to speak to Donal and Andy afterwards. I have a suggestion that you might immediately laugh at and dismiss – I think there are two albums you could record that could become classics. One would be a tribute to The Clancy Brothers and you could add your unique style to their songs. The second may be more difficult, but, with your voice now so mellow, how about recording an album of classic Irish ballads, such as those made famous by John McCormack and Josef Locke (such as “I’ll take you home again Kathleen”, “Galway Bay”, “Rose of Tralee”) and I think it would sound great with a full orchestra. As I said, you will probably laugh at these ideas, but I would buy the albums! With the lockdown in Ireland and pubs closing at 8pm, maybe there will be a benefit – maybe families will become closer and start to sing and play music together again and realise that you do not need alcohol to have a good time. With my best wishes for 2022 and I hope I may get to meet you again, in London, 50 years since our first meeting!! John (Smith).
Christy's reply
The Adelphi on Leeds Bridge was a cracker of a club..always a joy..I used to visit from Halifax but also gigged there a few times…always after gig hooleys back at Spray’s in those heady days…
great diversity of recall in your post…only yesterday I received a video of Francie and Helen ( formerly Bernie)….I’ll try and link same
I’ve long since thought of a Clancy’s song album….thats where it all started for so many of us…singing any Clancy song brings me right back to the excitement of teenage years..all the Town were singing US & UK pop charts but a few of us were delving into the first two Clancy albums as we set sail on our voyage into the Tradition
Hello Christy,
Here’s a video of you singing reel in the flickering light in tullamore, must have been about 2014? you give a shout out to Colm and Roisin and mention his age. https://youtu.be/i6lmYVx1E_w
My favourite song. I love everything about it.
Thankyou to Ed for his evocative post. Wish I’d been there. I was busy learning the recorder and writing the names of the notes on the piano.
Hearing the stories is the next best thing to being there .
I must find this programme Hilary, festivals, good God such times, and hardship, thumbing off to festivals hardly knowing where they were. Turning up at a house, raining, dark, a wet dufflecoat, I thought I had gone wet through into my clothes; it hadnt to my relief. I can still see a red Liverpool duffle bag that I had with me. It was late and dark. I stayed with them the three days, a great festival. Mr Moore turned up not once but but twice at this festival. Sleeping with the Hari Krishnas, Lisdoon ’83.
Tramore, ninety two(?), the Power guy had a strange lineup of guests and stars, too broad or I dont know. You played a stormer of a gig, Sunday afternoon. But Power had Moving Hearts playing in an adjacent marquee at the same time. As your gig ended there was mass exodus out of your tent over to the Moving Heart marquee. I was stopped by someone, “whats happening….?” and I told him.
Those festivals from those day, they’ve a strange place in my sub-consciousness.
I’d love to have to have got and made the pilgrimage to Cambridge. Never got there.
Christy's reply
I see you are back on the night shift….
duffle coats and duffle bags….items of desire in my early teens
we were flying back in those Festival years…without aeroplanes..
I played out door at Tramore…followed by Ray Charles….
Vince Power put on a brilliant line-up… twas the reaction of the local hierarchy that was “strange”
Cambridge still on the cards…very different from vintage Cambridge..but the whole world is thus
Hi all..here ,I hope , is the link to the TV doc on “How Ireland Rocked the 70s ” it was well done, very comprehensive.I feel so lucky to have been at the first Lisdoon..nice to see a young PD ! https://www.rte.ie/player/movie/how-ireland-rocked-the-70-s/249166376397 beir bua agus beannacht..H
Christy's reply
Thanks to you Hilary, and to all the other contributors who have taken the trouble to post so many links during these lockdown times……
the site serves its purpose when so much consideration and help is given to other 4711ers….we’re all here together
Well Christy, just when it looked as if I would get my first ever CM Vicar St gig, thanks to my great mate Rory, the COVID clouds closed in, and travel to and from is not advisable. Such a sh*t situation. But, on the bright side, my nephew Andreu and his fiancee Natalie are delighted with the gift of Rory’s two tickets! And, they will significantly reduce the average age….more new young Fans stepping in, sure that is grand.
Hello Christy,
I listened to Gerry Diver’s Speech project again yesterday.
He heard the same Spanish rhythms in your voice that I heard in Yellow Furze Woman. And then he put them across so beautifully.
It took me back to when I was in Manchester all those years ago. I heard a song called the erlking and I’ve never forgotten how it knocked me sideways.
I’ll try to find a link.
Hi Christy,
Yesterday i heard a fascinating Radio4 programme about Noor-un-nissa inayat Khan on the programme ‘great lives’. A small but towering woman murdered at Dachau.
It took me back to when my youngest and i visited that awful place, no birdsong, no life ,just the words of Yellow Triangle resonating.
It is my ‘favourite’ song of yours. I don’t know if you had been, or where you came across Pastor Niemoller ,as his words are there, in the very place that he too was imprisoned.
Best regards
Rory
Christy's reply
Phyllis McGhee sent me a postcard many years ago..it contained the words of Pastor Niemollar…I had them on the wall,saw them every day in my workroom, they germinated into this simple song, it has travelled around the world…. I met Phyllis at the launch of a book of Poetry by Charlie Donnelly who died in Spain (Charlie Donnelly – the life and poems; by Joseph Donnelly, Dublin, Ireland : Dedalus, c1987)
Andy has a good lot of songs written including one about Dara park that’s how I knew he is from there I sing another one of his songs the penny’s song it’s about the penny’s chain of shops “the changing rooms are all packed out their stripping in the aisles one lad is nearly naked trying on a pair of shoes the dirty yoke “ are some lines from it all his songs are on YouTube you can hear them there. I write down the names of those places you walk through and I look them up on google maps I don’t know Newbridge at all I’m from near Ennis myself but I be able to see your route on the google maps thanks vincent
Someone once said every day is a learning day…….. well I learned a new word while watching “how we Rocked in the 70’s…. BONHOMIE; had to go to Google for the meaning….”English speakers borrowed bonhomie from French, where the word was created from bonhomme, which means “good-natured man”
Lisdoon was really something special. Lovely too to see Paddy been featured.
Best regards
Christy's reply
that was a good documentary….enjoyed revisiting all those festivals of yore…Lisdoon, Ballisodare, Carnsore, Trip to Tipp clearly recalled, Siamsa Cois Laoi too…I know I played at an early Macroom but not sure what year..also played other outdoor Festivals in Tramore, Mullingar, Ballyconneely, Loughreagh, Kilkenny, Casement Park, …others too back in the mists of time…..Marquee Festivals in Ballyshannon, Garristown, Tallaght,
Hello Christy,
Happy new year to you and yours and everyone here. New beginnings, the eyes of a child with all their possibilities. I slept through the midnight hour, same as most years.
Those Grehan sisters are awesome.
Recording went well. I had a couple of false starts but apart from that, got four songs down at the first take. They’re not bad. Good enough to start an account on band camp anyway. I’ll post a link later, if that’s ok .
I recorded
Musgrave
Scarborough Fair
The Parting Glass. and
Spancil Hill
Rebecca
I’m just listening to the Clocks wind down from the new album, for me it’s the best..it’s the first time I’ve listened to it on vinyl and how appropriate when the clock winds down 👌🏻 ..Happy new year lad 💪🏻
Happy New Year Boss – Still waiting for ya to make an appearance in Iceland. haha
Green Shield stamps definately Christy. I cant handle those indulgences.
That was a great link with Joe Heaney how do I put up links what do I have to do also did you meet Bob Dylan at the Tramore festival if you did what did you think of him
you’ll have to ask elsewhere Vincent… I can do it… but I dont know how it works..same as most things with me…
That Bob Dylan fella, I cant shake him off, he has me pestered morning noon and night calling up asking for the chords of Lisdoonvarna…I should never have given him my phone number…
Duffle coats and dufflebags, am laughing. And indeed we got around, no aeroplanes.
I was so proud of my new duffle coat in 1957..I was an altar boy serving 7..am Mass one morning… an elderly man collapsed around consecration time..he was carried into the sacristy..after mass we went back into the sacristy where the poor man had drawn his last breath and was yielding up his final rattle…the church sexton, god forgive him, had rolled up my new duffle coat and used it as a pillow under that poor mans head…do you think I might be due plenary indulgences ??
Christy, best wishes to you and yours for a Prosperous 2022 as well as to all who tread these boards. Absolutely,loved Song of Granite. There is just something wonderful about Sean-nós song and dance. Thanks for all the music through all the years and hopefully see you in the not too distant future. Le grá Mary
we’re all chomping at the bit to get back up the road….
here’s hoping we get the all clear before too long..
I have a few gigs lined up here in the next fortnight..all 6pm kick offs with 50% capacity but nothing further planned
John Spillane eloquently described an Ulster Fry he had recently in thon Cultúrlann….I’m still holding out for the chowder
happy 2022 to all songsters up around The Bog Meadow
Hello Christy,
This could be the link Rory was trying to post? It’s the first of four.
https://youtu.be/k-j5uqw5ofY
Rory, I’ve noticed that if I put more than one link in a post it won’t do it, but one link in a post is fine. Is this useful?
Steve has bought me a microphone. He says it will pick up everything in the room? We’re going to have a go with it today. If it works I’ll get to hear what I sound like when it’s not through a smartphone. Could be scary.
Rebecca
Thank you for sharing…I’ve never seen Joe addressing an audience before
Dear Christy,
I tried to post some links and failed. I should have stuck to being a luddite.
Not only did i put in a funny but irrelevant prank call link instead of Joe Heaney of 11 minutes ( entitled cartlann joe heaney) but the whole thing has got held in moderation.
Back to chalk and a blackboard…this old dog will leave others to link to new tricks.
All the best for the bells
Rory
Ps dagrab cant get on to post due to unknown technical hitch
Rory…proficiency upon modern tablets/phones/gadgets brings no guarantee of better life skills….when the grid goes down better be able to sow a drill of spuds,build a wall,rear a few hens, then to have I skills
any way, Rebecca has unleashed the film of Joe strutting his stuff, I had the good fortune to meet Joe a few times way back in the 1960’s…Darach Ó Catháin too…
only recently I discovered a few of the secrets and complexities of the Sean-Nós singing style..( as a listener rather then a singer..the latter is beyond my reach at this stage…70 years too late)
Wish you and all our 4711ers the very best for 2022..that we may all cross paths again before too long
Hi Christy, I thought it was about time that I registered and shared some happy memories with you. Firstly, my father and family are from Boyle and we spent many a happy summer holiday on the farm in Corrigeenroe and, one time, my brother, cousin and myself spent a memorable afternoon in Grehan’s Bar on The Crescent, singing with Francie and Bernie. I was born in Leeds and I met you one Sunday night at “Folk on the Brig” at the Adelphi pub on Leeds bridge – I think it was in 1972. This folk club was run by Bob and Hazel Spray and you called in and sang a couple of songs. The Watersons often sang there. I have had the pleasure of seeing Planxty many times and also many of your own solo performances. I am, currently, enjoying your latest album. I saw Usher’s Island last month in London and what great musicians they are, and Andy still motoring at 80. It was great to speak to Donal and Andy afterwards. I have a suggestion that you might immediately laugh at and dismiss – I think there are two albums you could record that could become classics. One would be a tribute to The Clancy Brothers and you could add your unique style to their songs. The second may be more difficult, but, with your voice now so mellow, how about recording an album of classic Irish ballads, such as those made famous by John McCormack and Josef Locke (such as “I’ll take you home again Kathleen”, “Galway Bay”, “Rose of Tralee”) and I think it would sound great with a full orchestra. As I said, you will probably laugh at these ideas, but I would buy the albums! With the lockdown in Ireland and pubs closing at 8pm, maybe there will be a benefit – maybe families will become closer and start to sing and play music together again and realise that you do not need alcohol to have a good time. With my best wishes for 2022 and I hope I may get to meet you again, in London, 50 years since our first meeting!! John (Smith).
The Adelphi on Leeds Bridge was a cracker of a club..always a joy..I used to visit from Halifax but also gigged there a few times…always after gig hooleys back at Spray’s in those heady days…
great diversity of recall in your post…only yesterday I received a video of Francie and Helen ( formerly Bernie)….I’ll try and link same
I’ve long since thought of a Clancy’s song album….thats where it all started for so many of us…singing any Clancy song brings me right back to the excitement of teenage years..all the Town were singing US & UK pop charts but a few of us were delving into the first two Clancy albums as we set sail on our voyage into the Tradition
good to hear from you John..happy 2022
https://youtu.be/Xgy6Qn2M17w
Thanks Rebecca, wish you were here.
Ah, those were the days.
Hello Christy,
Here’s a video of you singing reel in the flickering light in tullamore, must have been about 2014? you give a shout out to Colm and Roisin and mention his age.
https://youtu.be/i6lmYVx1E_w
My favourite song. I love everything about it.
Thankyou to Ed for his evocative post. Wish I’d been there. I was busy learning the recorder and writing the names of the notes on the piano.
Hearing the stories is the next best thing to being there .
Rebecca
thank you
I must find this programme Hilary, festivals, good God such times, and hardship, thumbing off to festivals hardly knowing where they were. Turning up at a house, raining, dark, a wet dufflecoat, I thought I had gone wet through into my clothes; it hadnt to my relief. I can still see a red Liverpool duffle bag that I had with me. It was late and dark. I stayed with them the three days, a great festival. Mr Moore turned up not once but but twice at this festival. Sleeping with the Hari Krishnas, Lisdoon ’83.
Tramore, ninety two(?), the Power guy had a strange lineup of guests and stars, too broad or I dont know. You played a stormer of a gig, Sunday afternoon. But Power had Moving Hearts playing in an adjacent marquee at the same time. As your gig ended there was mass exodus out of your tent over to the Moving Heart marquee. I was stopped by someone, “whats happening….?” and I told him.
Those festivals from those day, they’ve a strange place in my sub-consciousness.
I’d love to have to have got and made the pilgrimage to Cambridge. Never got there.
I see you are back on the night shift….
duffle coats and duffle bags….items of desire in my early teens
we were flying back in those Festival years…without aeroplanes..
I played out door at Tramore…followed by Ray Charles….
Vince Power put on a brilliant line-up… twas the reaction of the local hierarchy that was “strange”
Cambridge still on the cards…very different from vintage Cambridge..but the whole world is thus
Hi all..here ,I hope , is the link to the TV doc on “How Ireland Rocked the 70s ” it was well done, very comprehensive.I feel so lucky to have been at the first Lisdoon..nice to see a young PD ! https://www.rte.ie/player/movie/how-ireland-rocked-the-70-s/249166376397 beir bua agus beannacht..H
Thanks to you Hilary, and to all the other contributors who have taken the trouble to post so many links during these lockdown times……
the site serves its purpose when so much consideration and help is given to other 4711ers….we’re all here together
Well Christy, just when it looked as if I would get my first ever CM Vicar St gig, thanks to my great mate Rory, the COVID clouds closed in, and travel to and from is not advisable. Such a sh*t situation. But, on the bright side, my nephew Andreu and his fiancee Natalie are delighted with the gift of Rory’s two tickets! And, they will significantly reduce the average age….more new young Fans stepping in, sure that is grand.
beimíd arais arís
Here’s The Erlking with an animation that seems to match it
https://youtu.be/JS91p-vmSf0
dark
Hello Christy,
I listened to Gerry Diver’s Speech project again yesterday.
He heard the same Spanish rhythms in your voice that I heard in Yellow Furze Woman. And then he put them across so beautifully.
The track that had the most impact on me yesterday was Famine.
https://youtu.be/rIOzto-gMwE
It took me back to when I was in Manchester all those years ago. I heard a song called the erlking and I’ve never forgotten how it knocked me sideways.
I’ll try to find a link.
Rebecca
Thank You
Hi Christy,
Yesterday i heard a fascinating Radio4 programme about Noor-un-nissa inayat Khan on the programme ‘great lives’. A small but towering woman murdered at Dachau.
It took me back to when my youngest and i visited that awful place, no birdsong, no life ,just the words of Yellow Triangle resonating.
It is my ‘favourite’ song of yours. I don’t know if you had been, or where you came across Pastor Niemoller ,as his words are there, in the very place that he too was imprisoned.
Best regards
Rory
Phyllis McGhee sent me a postcard many years ago..it contained the words of Pastor Niemollar…I had them on the wall,saw them every day in my workroom, they germinated into this simple song, it has travelled around the world…. I met Phyllis at the launch of a book of Poetry by Charlie Donnelly who died in Spain (Charlie Donnelly – the life and poems; by Joseph Donnelly, Dublin, Ireland : Dedalus, c1987)
Andy has a good lot of songs written including one about Dara park that’s how I knew he is from there I sing another one of his songs the penny’s song it’s about the penny’s chain of shops “the changing rooms are all packed out their stripping in the aisles one lad is nearly naked trying on a pair of shoes the dirty yoke “ are some lines from it all his songs are on YouTube you can hear them there. I write down the names of those places you walk through and I look them up on google maps I don’t know Newbridge at all I’m from near Ennis myself but I be able to see your route on the google maps thanks vincent
Its a long long way from Clare to here
Someone once said every day is a learning day…….. well I learned a new word while watching “how we Rocked in the 70’s…. BONHOMIE; had to go to Google for the meaning….”English speakers borrowed bonhomie from French, where the word was created from bonhomme, which means “good-natured man”
Lisdoon was really something special. Lovely too to see Paddy been featured.
Best regards
that was a good documentary….enjoyed revisiting all those festivals of yore…Lisdoon, Ballisodare, Carnsore, Trip to Tipp clearly recalled, Siamsa Cois Laoi too…I know I played at an early Macroom but not sure what year..also played other outdoor Festivals in Tramore, Mullingar, Ballyconneely, Loughreagh, Kilkenny, Casement Park, …others too back in the mists of time…..Marquee Festivals in Ballyshannon, Garristown, Tallaght,