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Music At Maddens Podcast
Music at Maddens podcast from the snug upstairs in Belfast’s home of trad. Yarns, pints and laughs with well known faces from the trad music scene. Locals, visitors are all welcome to join in the chat - with Lynette Fay.
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Music At Maddens Podcast
Music At Maddens Podcast #011 - "Blacksmiths, Highwaymen, and Kitchen Table Tunes” with Piaras Ó Lorcáin & Bláithín Mhic Cana
Welcome to a new episode of Music At Maddens Podcast with me, Lynette Fay.
This week we welcome Piaras Ó Lorcáin & Bláithín Mhic Cana to the podcast.
This week in the snug, Lynette is joined by South Armagh’s Bláithín Mhic Cana and her former student Piaras Ó Lorcáin to share how a few songs around a kitchen table grew into a thriving cultural revival.
Bláithín talks about turning her classroom singing into home gatherings where people of all ages learn traditional songs, creating bonds that go far beyond the music.
Piaras recalls the power of singing “Séamus Mac Murchaidh” in the very shed where the outlaw was waked 300 years ago, and how his breakthrough with “Seán Gower” brought South Armagh’s tradition to international attention.
Together they show how mentorship, community, and heritage come alive when songs are passed on with heart, a conversation full of history, connection, and inspiration.
Enjoy!
New episodes every Monday.
Maddens Bar
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/maddensbarbelfast_home_of_trad/
Ri-Ra
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Website: www.ri-ra.beer
McIlroy Guitars
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mcilroyguitars/
Website: https://mcilroyguitars.co.uk/
Dunville’s Irish Whiskey
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dunvillesirishwhiskey/
Website: https://dunvilleswhiskey.com/
Anzac Drinks
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/anzacdrinks/
Well, welcome to another Music at Madden's with me, lynette Faye. So this is a podcast recorded in the schnug upstairs in Madden's Bar in Belfast, which is widely recognised as the home of traditional music in this city, and basically what we do on this podcast is we platform musicians from all over and celebrate our wonderful community and traditional music family, I suppose, and you can watch on YouTube as well. You can listen on Spotify and Apple, but you're probably doing that already if you're hearing me now, and you can leave a review and you can subscribe as well. So this week we are going to South Armagh two guests in the snug now, and this is the start of it.
Speaker 2:There's going to be another 45 minutes of this crack going Teacher and student Great story here and between them they are going a long way to putting the songs and music and history and rich heritage of South Armagh on the map. So thank you to Vlachin Vicana and Piers O'Larkill thank you, we'll see you next time bye. So we're going to do this in English, which is really weird it is you're one of these people that I don't like.
Speaker 3:Your voice never sounds right to me speaking Asperla. It's kind of weird. It's just not. It's going to go.
Speaker 1:It's going to go both ways and you'll be halfway through it, and then we'll have to be told off for speaking in Irish and you'll be, like it's just one of them things. You'll forget that you're doing it because you click in so naturally. I know it's really weird, but we're just.
Speaker 2:We're sitting here in the snug and we've your kitchen table in your house, because there's a gorgeous story about wee ones from the area basically sitting around your kitchen table and learning songs from you. I should tell everybody. If you don't know Blachain, she's a teacher in the Gael School in Cross Maclean and that is one of the strongest and best Irish language schools in the country. I'd say it's unbelievable what you have created there. So tell me about the extension. Then that was your kitchen table, yeah, so.
Speaker 3:I suppose I don't know that's a lovely compliment, because there's so many great Gaelsgalls I don't know how you would even ever compare. And I think that's what's lovely about. Like Irish language communities, I always say across across Ireland and in the six counties, like we're all very different and we're all always learning from each other. And like we always look towards when we were setting up in the early years of the Gael Sculling Cross, you're always looking towards Aireval, Farshtair, like you're always looking at West Belfast and everything that they have achieved and other places. Gael Sculling Yale was really good on resources and everywhere had their own wee strength. But we realised early on that we had a staff that was very interested in the kind of extracurricular, kind of cultural side of what we wanted to bring to the Gaelscoil. And even in the notion of the name we're not Bunscoil Fáidrigh Ní Fhe, we're Gaelscoil Fáidrigh Ní Fhe and I think the whole concept is that it's not just to deliver an education through the medium of Irish but hann na pwesi a gaelu, to gaelicise, and to offer all that life as a gael is. So that was sort of the vision that we had as a staff and I suppose my contribution to that was that I was never done singing in class. Pádraig O'Lehan's Astorus Astorine I don't know how many copies of it I burned through in those early years. Um, and yeah, that was that was what was going on outside of my life.
Speaker 3:In my early 20s I was getting really into like um, I had always sang from a young age but I was getting into kind of aureole song and discovering kind of the songs that scale like from the area and then I would take them into the classroom and try them out. And this went on for so long until one particular parent had said this fella's mad for singing. He never stops, and is there any chance you would do a wee bit of him? I was already starting to teach with a local traditional music group over in Mulliband and he was coming to the classes and that was going well. But he wanted more. He was hungry. Those were asperla with a little bit of gaelic. He wanted the songs as gaelic.
Speaker 3:And I said was your call to the house? And um, that was my first ever pupil at the kitchen table. Was Pierce O'Larkin at about, I'd say by the time you were coming to the house. You were maybe about Ian Vlade and Jake about 11. But from that then somebody else was like well, actually you know she'd love to come too, and he'd love to come, and nearly to the point now where I still do a wee bit of teaching with local groups, but the kitchen table has become the most productive place to teach songs. So there's groups pop in of all ages and like it starts with the wee tots and they're like sort of from about seven till Rangishock, till about 11. And then there's a secondary school gang jump in and then from about nine o'clock on I have a few that are like now up at university or sort of sixth and seventh years, and they mightn't come every week but they just pop in when they can and we stick the kettle on and everybody gives a song um, what a relationship to have with your students.
Speaker 2:How special is that? Yeah it.
Speaker 3:well, it's special to me and I think I it's funny, I'm doing a master's at the minute and I'm I actually, as part of it, had to interview other exponents of the tradition and teachers, and I spoke to my ernie Helleher down in Musgrave and I spoke to Sheila Denver and Dhamrik McIlvreja, and the common thread, I think the key, is a relationship with your teacher. It isn't enough to just teach the songs. Here you go. That's what keeps you coming back is that there is a bond there.
Speaker 2:um, here we go here's the here's the joke coming now it's great, I was hoping I was hoping Aaron Rose was going to do that. Look, she won't cross the line to come on the camera.
Speaker 1:I called it. I called it, aaron.
Speaker 2:Rose, come on. Oh, she's the hoot. That's Erin Rose. So she is one of the family, the McMullen family Of the house, and she won't come over and put herself on camera. But we'll work on that. We'll work on that, we'll work on this as well.
Speaker 1:Why is that really fierce? Huh, I just know.
Speaker 2:So whenever so whenever you were, when Blachyne says, you know, there was this young fella and he just was hungry for the songs and your daddy went to, or your mummy went to Blachyne and said right, he wants more. What was it about these songs you were hearing in school that excited you? And what age were you at that stage?
Speaker 1:yeah, I was, I'd say. I'd say the first time we were in doing the lessons in my mantra was only six, seven, eight, so I didn't probably didn't really know what was going on, but I liked the idea of singing. Singing sort of kept me coming back. And then the stuff in irish, like all the irish songs, whatever I don't know what it was, but there were. There was something like a level to them that you were.
Speaker 1:I just remember when I was learning songs in english I had an awful trouble with diction. Just I would never get the words correct and I would, just because I was just listening to it and regurgitating what it was. I remember people saying like I can't make out what that word is that you're saying so in Irish, I think it. Just I didn't have that element of people giving out to me because they probably didn't know it as well, but we kind of I kind of kept going back to it and back to it and back to it, weirdly, because even Seamus McMurray was getting the first big song. I remember learning it, getting it in my school uniform.
Speaker 1:And Kevin Latt it was a rang-a-tree. It was a rang-a-tree classroom I was in. It's the first. It's the classroom to the extreme left as you pull up to Gael's Go Father Gnaefe, and I remember getting handed this for the first time and thinking, jeez, this is a long song. This is a really really long song, but I remember just sitting down and going through it, going through it, going through it and whatever about it. It's like the same thing, like people just connect to a song and I think I think it was just over time I just connected with the songs and obviously it's really easy to. If you can, if you can connect to a song, it's so much easier to learn. It was um and it's not just those.
Speaker 2:Those songs like seamus mcmurray um is a song about someone from your area a historical figure from your area. So when you were beginning to understand what the song was about not just the words did you find that that was helping you? Because it was deeply rooted in the place you were from.
Speaker 1:Massively, massively. Even there, brookdown Rava is written about a castle that was on the side, like where Carnally is in comparison to Brookdown Reva, like the two stories are right beside each other, like Carnally is only down the road from it. So it's like it's a weird, weird connection and like I can. I know exactly, I can picture the castle in my head because I can see exactly where it is, was supposed to be, on the hill, like it's not there anymore.
Speaker 3:But we have. I have a weird connection to Seamus McMurray in that Seamus, my husband, is an ancestor of Seamus McMurray, so his granda is Murphy, his mommy was Murphy, but his granda's house, where I would go and visit when he was living, there is where the schubble that is mentioned, the shed that McMurray was carried from Armagh after being hung to be waked in, that's still in the yard.
Speaker 2:Could you tell us just briefly the story of the song, because there might be people listening or watching who aren't familiar with it? Fáil comhaith go an ish o ar a hóirí an fáil críil to seo. A few words now from the sponsors of this podcast Music at Madden's. Dunville's Irish Whiskey, proudly connected to its past and enthusiastically embracing its future. The spirit of Belfast is back and it's even better than ever. And I should tell you, dunvill's also sponsors Belfast Tradfest as well, and this Irish whiskey story is one of fame, fortune, tragedy and revival. It does sound epic, doesn't it? Now restored to its rightful place amongst the world's best whiskeys, dunvill's award-winning single malt and vintage blend.
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Speaker 3:Sure. So Seamus McMurray, I sort of describe him when I'm telling the children about him. He was like a Robin Hood figure. For the gale he would have been like a highwayman and he would have robbed along the main road there going from Dublin to Armagh. That would have been all the big sort of gentry coaches would have used in that.
Speaker 3:But he was a man of the people. He was a rapper, a poet, a womaniser, by all accounts, a very popular figure in his own community, and his friends and contemporaries at the time were the big poets that were living in the area also of the Fuse. So you had Padraig Darnine and these type of people that he was really friendly with and they were writing about him. So, as I say, then eventually it caught up with him, these type of people that he was really friendly with and they were writing about him. Um, so, as I say, then eventually it caught up with him and there was great documentary actually made by maha media not that long ago jilt, if I look where it tells about how he was sold out by a woman that he crossed and uh, yeah, the red coats caught up with him and he was taken to umagh and part of the song is sort of based, they say, or this is the family lore anyway on words that he wrote down in the prison cell the night before and he sort of talks about.
Speaker 3:He talks about his life and he talks about, you know, take me back to Cairnalli and that he wants you know after he is hung. He knows he's going to be hung the next morning, but he wants to come home, um, and and to be waked in this shed, um.
Speaker 2:So a lovely cheery number for me, absolutely perfect.
Speaker 1:I said that they're gonna resonate deeply with you. Yeah, massively. Happiness is overrated.
Speaker 3:It's factually correct that's one way of looking at it. But then the connection, the genuine connection, was myself and Piers have in more recent years actually stood in that very schubble and sang that song. Now you talk about goosebumps. I get them now. Yeah, it's a weird, wonderful feeling and how do you connect with something any more than to be standing singing about this place? The man wrote it on his deathbed saying this was his last wish was to come back here. He was carried by the women of his family back that long 20-odd mile from Armagh to Cairnally and to the Skubble. And here we were, 300 years later singing this in the Skubble in the shed. So I think there's loads of conversations to be had around, like Sian knows, and the importance of traditional song, but one of them is those just undeniable connections that you have to your place and your people and that the song just does that instantly. But, yeah, a bit hot and heavy for an eight-year-old.
Speaker 2:Both of you now are, you know, widely recognised as exponents of song from your area and I always imagine this as an amazing thing because when you were growing up, particularly you Blachynyne's changed. Now, for your generation, because of the work Blachynyne and others have been doing that. There's this sense of pride that you have. You're growing up knowing that you have this rich heritage from your area, and and then you're you're taking it all with you wherever you go, so are you going seeking out songs yourself now, at this point?
Speaker 1:I could probably do it, seeking a few more out. I got a bit lazy there a little bit late, but you were busy with degrees and such.
Speaker 2:I think Pierce will give you a bye ball yeah, that's a miracle that even got over the line but, cool, gorgeous thanks it's.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that was a stretch now, but anyway, the yeah no, massively, like you're it's. The hard work was put in for us that I could just go straight away and learn a load of these songs and be proud of them and tell people like, especially when you go to, we'll say like the arctis, and you go down to the arctis and you sing a song that's from your area, that they like connemara and the gale tucks, that they have this. This line was never broken, whereas we kind of had that line sort of broken to a degree. I suppose it technically was broken, but it wasn't.
Speaker 1:It probably wasn't broken that overly long so it kind of was you were fit to tie it back into it all. So it's, it's a, it's an honor, like it really is, like that you, I just you couldn't like so lucky, like you couldn't have timed it any better.
Speaker 2:I remember you. I remember being in Killarney. It was 2016,. Wasn't it when you won? The first the. It was 2016, wasn't it, when you won the first of the big award, and I remember we were working there for BBC Blas and I remember your daddy coming over to me and saying you were on the radar already, but he came over to me and says Pierce has just won the cup and you won. Was it Corn? And trying to explain how massive this was to people, though.
Speaker 2:It was just so huge that a young lad from Cross Maclean which is not a Gaeltacht area, not an Irish speaking area, or designated- Irish speaking area on the map. It very much is, but that you won this award. You won this for singing at your age. It was just so huge, piers, and I remember all the ulti everybody from Ulster was just so proud.
Speaker 1:It was a massive moment, but she was only a youngster yeah, it's like talk to a 12 year old now and a 13 year old. They don't have a clue what's going on really like. So I kind of just took it me straight and I just remember, like, as you say, all the Ulster, like that there is a connection, whatever about it with ourselves and what you're what you're talking about, like just the whole Donegal connection.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's on dope, it's massive, like so I couldn't like. They're the people that are going to sing in Corny Raida, like tomorrow, like the biggest competition at that festival, and they're like they're coming over and congratulating me. I must have done something right. But it was that situation whereby I did enjoy competitions because it meant it's a weird thing, they're a great thing and a horrific thing at the same time, because if it goes wrong, it really is a. It's a really sore feeling and it's one of them things, but you you get over it and you build on it. But it is a great way to reach a high level, to push yourself to do those things, to perform and really get good, good standard in your singing and good songs. So therefore, when you're, when you're at that age, that kind of grew up with that.
Speaker 2:Where do you think that determination came from to get things right like that? I?
Speaker 1:thought I was going to be a great footballer and all these things. I thought maybe it's true.
Speaker 2:Well, you're from Crossmouth, and that's kind of obvious, isn't it?
Speaker 1:If Crossmouth men can win them, surely Piers Larkin could win a few. I didn't rightly, but the old football football sort of faded away, so I had to make up for it with a couple of All-Ireland singing ones, so that was just it kind of left me.
Speaker 2:Can you remember that moment in 2016? Absolutely, you can see your face there whenever I was telling that.
Speaker 3:But it's funny too, you know, because, pierce, kind of like, obviously, your memory, you were so much younger, like, but like you're like I don't know. You know, it just kind of happened and I didn't really understand like, yeah, nothing, just kind of happened with this fella. Let me tell you, like from no age you were just mad for songs and mad for another verse and mad for and like. So that was how it all started and I remember just I couldn't believe it. When he won that cup, I was like, as you say, how do you explain the significance of this? Or I felt like us as an Irish language community will never go back. It felt like something changed that day and like I had never taken part in an Eric Diss. Let me tell you and I did after that, you know that was because of his win a million percent, padraig told me in Antwerp.
Speaker 1:Dad remembers I remember I had gone to get on Bunan Bhaith or something of Padraig.
Speaker 2:Is this Padraig in New York?
Speaker 1:Yeah, Padraig in New York. I'm sorry, and I remember. I remember Dad speaking to her and Padraig goes you should answer there at this. And then there she went, lots of feet. I remember speaking to you and you were like oh yeah, definitely, definitely, but also slightly terrified on your behalf.
Speaker 3:You know, like I was like he's gonna go down to Clarnie and do this and you know. But you're good experience and that so it was. It did feel like a really watershed moment and it was amazing.
Speaker 3:But what I also remember, that when you're saying about the people that came up to you and spoke to you after that, probably at that stage, pod green would have always been encouraging us and you know, in the background or sort of giving you e suggestions, but at that point I was your main source, let's say so. He was coming to me on a weekly basis and you came back just brimming with names and songs and people you'd made. You'd made a friendship with diane nicanon and she was going to give you her version of a song and you'd talk to this person and I just knew, yeah, he's on his way he's got the bug now.
Speaker 2:That's it. Yeah, it's all opening up for him and part of the new line mentioned. I'm so glad that it happened organically in the conversation, but I suppose it always was going to, wasn't it? Um, you speak of drawing from a well and you're drawing from such a rich well, but a well that basically only for her work, the songs that you're singing may not have survived and may not have been handed down.
Speaker 2:Now I want to say a few words about our very kind sponsors, rí Rra, irish Lager, nis Ríra. If you haven't heard about it, it kind of sums up the unpredictable devilment that Irish people are so very good at, particularly here in Maddens in the heart of Belfast. So Ríra celebrates the best bits of being Irish by creating reasons to talk, to meet, to grá, to bant, to hear, to be heard, to be le chéile just that little more often. So music at Maddins dig it and dig in tóise Agus an ish. Scúpla fachal a cháirete for eight teams and over, and please drink responsibly. Cúpla fachal an ish fuit ar a chori an fad créilta siá music at Madd eight teams and over, and please drink responsibly. To want one michaelroyguitarscouk for more details absolutely wouldn't have.
Speaker 3:You know, and it's what she has achieved is mind blowing as well. You know that, and it all happened really really quickly, like I was speaking to her as part of those interviews as well, you know, and like within three or four years she had put together a body of work of, like that huge hidden ulster and recorded 41 of the songs I think it was two cds out, um, and everything. You know, it's one thing to be an academic, you know, to, to, to find that information and to collate it in a way that would be, for, say, an academic journal. But she went 10 steps further. She made it accessible to the community that she wanted to the community that it belonged to, essentially to to the people of oriel. And you know, and she always said that was why she wrote the book as barely, she wanted that people could access these stories again. Um, and then you know, you sort of thought a hidden ulster went so far, and then she brings out oriel Arts, the website, where there is what a resource, oh my goodness.
Speaker 2:it's just incredible, and it's oriolartscom, I think it is, and it's online for anybody to to look at O-R-I-E-L Arts oh, side point, the lyrics for Sean Gower are there just before.
Speaker 1:That's one of them ones. Oh, I can't find the lyrics. I can't find the lyrics. It's on there. It's a class and that's a song you brought to the project you were involved with with.
Speaker 2:TJ Cahir yeah. Which is that's a hit. I think was that your first hit.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was Like that won a folk award.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Like that won a folk award.
Speaker 2:So Blán a Háighe.
Speaker 1:Yeah, one of them surreal moments and we obviously, like we got nominated for stuff and we didn't know what, like obviously you were thinking, oh, maybe you could go away with a load of stuff, but that was the one that we actually won something and uh, we kind of couldn't get over it. Like, um, especially, I remember even going down and it was sheila denver actually turned around and says I'd love to try this, and and I says, yeah, 100% Rocked up to. That's a long story in its own right.
Speaker 3:Everything's a long story with Piers.
Speaker 1:Got into the car on the Sunday morning to drive down to Galway to record and studio-gooing for Blán na Háighe. And got as far as the other side of Carrick and the car just turned around and was like it came up. It literally said it's a B5, and if you've engine trouble on a B5, it says stop on the front. So I had to stop. The car just stopped working. I was like delightful, so I had to get a lift back, had to get the lend of me granny and granddad's car, had to drive it down to Galway. Everyone thought I had gone to the All-Ireland and just told them that I had broke down the car because our, not the All-Ireland, our mile was playing Galway and it went to. It went to extra time that year and they were kicking the point. It was class but anyway besides the point. So everyone thought I rocked up. I had absolutely a nightmare of a day.
Speaker 1:Pierce, would you like to sing Sean Gow? I said oh no, I cannot remember the words, I don't even think. I looked at it. It was a disaster and I went away and started learning and I goes. I clicked on like that resource is so good. I clicked on the video, started listening to it and I was like, oh, I can do this, this is I can do this, this is cool. And then obviously did the wee quick reading on it, as it's the blacksmith song, so we were trying to follow the thump of the hammer and all that just explain to us what the song's about very briefly.
Speaker 1:Piers. It's kind of a makey-uppy song from what's written about it, and it was more so for the people sitting on at wakes and as part of that tradition they had to be kept awake so they would make up songs to sing whilst they were sitting up until the early hours. And this one was written from the perspective of a blacksmith and, uh, or about a blacksmith, and it was just. It just kind of worked really well and then you had all these really really talented people that put it together and we just kind of just married up really well and done ridiculously well. But like even I remember going to Wexford at the All-Ireland. Somebody came up to me and goes oh, that song you sing, sean Gower, no Irish. I had no Irish.
Speaker 1:He was singing it back to me with no Irish. I was like this is kind of crazy.
Speaker 2:And also the connection there about you know right? So Seamus McMurray, he's one thing, because you're talking about a historical figure and telling his story, but Sean Gower is a different type of song there, because you're tapping into socially what happened in your community a number of hundred years ago. And again, that connection is so rich because this is what your people did, this is what happened in your area. You know, you're. Like it was collected and crossed Exactly, so all your relations, without doubt, would have done this and would have sung that song Like what a connection to have.
Speaker 3:And you know I think we all know that we lost the language. You know that that was taken from us when we lost an awful lot of our traditions, and you know things like our seasonal, you know festivals and the likes of. You know our keening, how we lamented our dead, all of these things, and I think it's amazing that we can, as you said, not just tap into the songs and the social history, but into the way of life and these practices, and I hope we can reclaim a bit of it again. You know, and the songs, it's all there for us to see. You know, you can read it and say, oh, so they must have done this and this was obviously an important uh point in the calendar year and and so, yeah, there's just, there's just so much to be reclaimed through the song tradition.
Speaker 2:Isn't that exactly what's happening here? Isn't that exactly what is happening at the moment in the folk? Tradition and traditional music and the language are having just such a moment Massively, yeah, and you know whenever. So you're benefiting from all the spade work, rubber, spodge.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah that's been done before Massive Do you feel that, yeah, oh, massively, oh massively, like it is especially there, like there's this is like you'd be talking about there's this year alone, like I was in France singing songs I'm going to, we're going to with Blatant La Hague, we're going to Lorient only for Blatant La Hague, like it puts. It's crazy, like the platform that I've, I've been afforded because of the tradition and the songs and everything through that, like I was like ridiculously lucky and so grateful for it. Now, albeit I could do it, repaying some of the gratitude a wee bit more, but it's like I really I can't get over it and I should explain.
Speaker 2:Blán Oígá was a concept for a TV series on TG Keachar which came together bringing just extremely talented young people from all Irish speakers from right across the island of Ireland together, and then it was experimental, and then you had two musical kind of tutors, mentors, leaders in Sheeta, denver and Colin McEnumera. And to be honest, it's just magic has been created out of that project. So whoever came up with it, fair play, because it's just been incredible.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's so good.
Speaker 2:But Blachy, something I wanted to ask you about was I saw you recently in the Empire in Belfast and you were there with your band Tempest, because Blachy is now breaking out to be the rock star in her own right. But you were there and very proudly talking about the song tradition from Oriel and South Armagh and putting your place on the map and bringing the crowd with you and the stories and all the rest of it. So there's a couple of questions here. The first one is growing up as a gael gore from that area where you had to go you hadn't sought it, sought it out yet and the the tradition was to go to dunny gall, look to dunny gall for, for the irish particularly, and for the songs, what, what does it mean for you now to have tapped into this resource that you have on your doorstep and not only that, though it's so it's so well respected and, you know, identified as as such.
Speaker 3:Now, yeah, I mean, as anyone that was in the empire the other night will attest to, I can't stop talking about it. I don't know how to. I don't know how to just stand on a stage and just spout out a song. I have to tell the backstory and I have to tell where it was collected from and I have to tell how I became lucky enough to get that song. I feel like the whole.
Speaker 1:There's nothing wrong with that? It's all. Well, it's all intertwined.
Speaker 3:I don off. When I when I first became interested in the language and in Irish language song, it was Donegal. I spent my summers in Teelan and that give me a serious footing into the world of singing and because there was an amazing community up there that were, I went to the college of Surrey and college of Evie, britannia, and there were particular characters and living in Teelan at that time, kitty Shani Kinnegan and Pat McGill Aspick particularly, who encouraged us no end and that was my first experience of that. So that really sparked my interest in traditional singing as Gaelic. But it wasn't until I went to university then in Coleraine and I remember we had Jeremy O'Divlin and yeah Lake and I had an altar had just come out the year that I had started at university.
Speaker 3:So I was friendly with Padraig and son at home but I wasn't passing much remarks to the fact that I knew his mummy had took out a pick. Well, don't know much about it, jeremy plonked it in front of you, you did, I pretty much pretty much away. You go with that now and we had a module on, you know, 18th century ulster poets and sure everything was a reference to where I was from and these places that I knew and these people that I had heard of, and I had a mother whose idea of like a sunday of fun was to take us to graveyards and look at these headstones. So I had been to all these places. So that was all. That was all really important, and I do think it's important to mention as well. While there wasn't an Irish language singing scene growing up, there was a fabulous traditional scene in South Armagh that I was very lucky to have bore witness to, if not be involved in it, from a young age, and my mum was a great singer and her brother Matt, and they are cousins of the Nellies in Fork Hill, who are great singers as well, and we grew up um singing in Fork Hill was really strong weekend and we would
Speaker 3:have been plunked under a table with a packet of bacon fries to listen to all these singers for three nights on the track. And you thought it was great, you know, and, um, it was, it was a great introduction to it. So, um, it is really, really lovely to see the level of as you put it sort of there, the level of respect and, um, yeah, urge that's being given to to the, the songs of the region, and to the singing. Um, and like pierce is saying there, oh, I think it's time I paid back. He is paying back in dividends because so many people know about, um, you know, know about podrigan's work and then, like podrigan once referred to me as a, as a dry head. You know that I'm kind of able to sort of pass that on to these and that would be a huge honor if I could do that in any way.
Speaker 3:I'm happy, and so to see these songs on a national and international platform is massive and I think, like a lot of traditional music and singing this is sort of my take at the minute is if you're just authentic, if you're just true to who you are and if you're just singing the songs that really do speak to you and that really are part of who you are, be it because they're what you grew up with, or because they're what you're, what speak to your soul, or whatever way you want to put it, if you just stick with that not what you think an audience wants to hear or what's in at the minute or whatever you can't go too far wrong.
Speaker 3:And I think maybe, like we are getting a wee bit of, we're getting lovely coverage at the minute, both with Tempest, with the songs that I'm singing from our area, and with what myself and Rory and Pierce are doing. The feedback has been lovely, but I don't think we're doing anything overly complicated. We're just. We're just singing what we always, as South Armagh people, we're going to sing.
Speaker 1:Fair, Totally fair. It's like it is one of them things I remember. Flas was a big thing, but the weird thing about Flas my favourite bit wasn't actually competitions were competitions, but you'd go to the singing session it was oh, we're going to sing a session.
Speaker 1:Where's the singing session tonight? There was always like three all ireland weekend, any of them ulsters, and everyone would come up and they'll be saying, oh, we used to go to the singing session in forkill, like on the singing weekend in forkill, and I was like I was never about, but like it was so famous like people from Waxford all over the country would be telling me about it and I was like I was never there, never, I wasn't about and it was like I did miss out. There is like there's people names are mentioned all the time to me and I, when you singers will know them, but it mightn't be, they mightn't be mainstream people, like even there, like John Campbell's stuff. John Campbell has a great album on Spotify there and it's the Daily Men from Cross McGlynn, but it seems like they're all pretty much local songs and it's just there. And then you have McQuinn, like the, like the store of stuff he had.
Speaker 1:They were, they were also singers, they might not have been singing in irish but they had this ridiculous style and like it was such a, it's so unique. When you listen to it it's like I don't know how you, how you, would explain it, but it's very plain, but really really authentic. It's not like this, it's not like you go down to way down south and it's ornamentated really, really, really, really intricately. It's really just about. It's about the story.
Speaker 1:They're telling the story conveying the story, and it's not this, how well you can sing it, it's more of keep this song going keep this song going.
Speaker 2:You mentioned something at the very start of the conversation today and it was really interesting when you said about you finding that safe place in Irish songs. That wasn't there in English for you because you were worried about diction and being misunderstood. And I remember a couple of years ago I can't remember which fly it was, but you were away, it was Ulster fly and you'd won the All-Ireland Irish singing the year before and you were away to participate in the that's what it was. We were doing a radio broadcast the Friday night and you were saving the voice because you were competing the next day in English and it seemed to me that it was kind of important to you to take part because there was something in you that needed to prove I can sing in English too.
Speaker 1:Is that something that?
Speaker 2:you feel?
Speaker 1:I always. I still do have that, like I um.
Speaker 2:Because there are two different. There's two different voices aren't there Entirely yeah.
Speaker 1:And I only realized that in the last. Like I, I don't know anything. Like I truly don't know anything. Like I don't know anything, I truly don't know anything. What I'll know in 4 or 5 years will still be nothing. I'm constantly learning. Learning the singing was always a funny one with me, in Irish and in English, because the competition wouldn't have been as strong in Irish, so I would have seen it as I'll put in for the Irish again, because a lot of the times I was going into the Maybe your comfort zone.
Speaker 1:No, it was just. It was just Nobody was in it. A lot of the time there was like a very poor turnout. Ulster would be a wee bit different. There'd be three or four in Ulster but Armagh, like you could almost guarantee it was just going to be me. Like there's a handful of times where there was other competitors, but most of the time it was on my own. And then Ulster even some of the years I was in Ulster there was nobody there. So the competition end of things was in the English singing side. Now it was always a tough competition. Like the English singing the standard is ridiculously high. And even All Ireland, like I remember I don't know people be talking about going to sessions and stuff like that. There I was still at the all Ireland, like I'd say I hardly missed a senior men's competition.
Speaker 2:But I'd say now do you think, though now you know, with your repertoire and gigging so much um, that you've found a comfort within the English singing. Though have you found it?
Speaker 1:I've kind of come out with my wee catch phrases. I've never sang a bad song, I've only sang it badly. And that it's not to say. It's not to say that I'm not going to make a dog's dinner of the song, or I'm not. I mightn't be singing it that overly well, but at the backbone of all the songs they're all class like they are strong, strong songs. Or there's a sentiment, or there's a reason I'm singing it you're choosing well yeah, like.
Speaker 1:It's not like, oh, I'll sing this one. It's more like there's something there I like that. I don't know what. I might know what it is just yet, but I know I like it.
Speaker 3:There's some good reasoning behind it that's exactly kind of that thing that I was sort of trying to say. You know it's if you have an authentic reason. If you're not like, if you're not, god forbid picking a song because it's a fly winner. You know, not a fan of that philosophy, but if it's because something in that song is speaking to me, then, I think pick, go for it.
Speaker 3:You know that's a song for you, if something in it is speaking to you and I just want to track back when you're saying about um, you know it's understandable. They know to kind of sort of feel like you missed out on those big characters and that um, they probably I actually know for a fact. I'm sure they wish that they could have met you and see how safe the tradition is. But I was very lucky to be probably the last generation to really get to meet some of those characters and Mickle Quinn was an incredible man in many respects but the encouraging way that he had about him for us as young ones.
Speaker 3:Eric Garrett got a job collecting glasses in Hanlon's Mullaband at 13 years of age and he did it every Friday and Saturday night and that is how he became a singer and when they copped on that he could sing. Mickle Ned used to give him two pound every night to sing for a song and he was never done, pulling you to one side If you went in. You were always asked to sing and you were always took to one side to say about the job that you did. And you should look up at this song and have you ever heard this one and call up to? You know they were jerry o'hanlon and mullivan was the same podrigan, patricia flynn, and the generosity with which they shared their knowledge and the way that they encouraged um was incredible, and I don't think they could have dreamt that your likes would have come about or that the tradition would be as healthy as it is in the area you know Do you see now, then, because Pierce is going on to be, you know, a tech talk rock star superstar on Instagram District.
Speaker 2:Magazine top seven traditional top net one to watch yeah so how does that ripple down to the kitchen table now and the classroom?
Speaker 3:well, the classroom. I mean, oh, laurel and Gershom goes on as the kids are working and every single child sings along to Pierce while they're colouring their work.
Speaker 1:I have to laugh because I please video, that there are videos, I swear they, they idolize them, you know, and they aspire to kind of see.
Speaker 3:I'm like I'm thinking to say the likes of we, she even eager to be now, who's kind of on a similar trajectory. She's a couple of all ireland flower under our belt now at the irish and arctis and those type of things, and I think he, he instilled a belief. You know that this is something, and look at the opportunities he's getting and, um, you know that that that it's just it's a very exciting world that's.
Speaker 3:I don't think I could have told them about how exciting it was whereas they see him on black nahoyga and on tiktok and it's cool and it's relevant, and they just think there's nobody like this boy.
Speaker 1:Little do they know I'm like so uncool, like the most uncool person ever.
Speaker 2:Come here. I could talk to you all day, but I know you have a gig to do here. I've heard about that, I know, but this is fascinating. I just want to know, pierce, what's the last song you learned? How do you go about learning songs?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I've had a weird like 12 months. It's learning songs I. The most recent is willie lennox. It's a scotch song and it's not. It's more of a folky style song and mickey fern turned around and was like put it on. We were actually sitting at a barbecue and he goes, put that on speaker and I just listened to it and I was like, oh, there's something in that there. And then I don't know whether I says maybe I could sing that nice or I could do a nice version of it or something like that and that kind of come to mind. So Willie Lennox is kind of the one and I've only sang it out like twice, but I'll get there eventually.
Speaker 3:I love. You know Farahan talks about when you learn a new song and it's like taking a puppy out for a walk and you know, you think you have it, you think you have it tamed and you think it's ready for the outside world and next thing you take it out and it's going mad all over the place, and there's no other way to train the puppy than to take it out for the walk and give it the experience.
Speaker 3:Songs are like that too. You need to sing them out. You're singing them a good year before it's turned into the dog.
Speaker 1:You need it to be, to say, a full year singing before you have a song really really down that you're 100 sure about. So like 12 months you could learn the words off you could learn the melody off, no problem. But this to really sit with a song and be comfortable with it.
Speaker 2:It's a full, like 12 months does the same apply to a song you've written blind, because you have been writing your own songs recently and they're gorgeous, co-gorgeous, it does the same thing applies, you know and you don't.
Speaker 3:It probably even worse because you don't know if it's any good. Not only do you have to sing it out and say, am I doing a good job? Is it even a good song? So things that I would have started off maybe thinking that one I'll never make the light of day usually. I have a couple of good soundboards in Pierce here and Air Garrett and that's and Aisling Negrimean and I'll probably send it to them or send them a version. You think about that. And I suppose we talked about the older people encouraging. I got a I'm doing a Breach Nelly song later on for the gig and I got at two o'clock in the morning.
Speaker 3:As you know, you get the voice notes from Piers Lynette two o'clock in the morning. Here I'm listening to that recording on repeat. Hey, that's gonna be pure money. Hey, and that that so okay pure money means class for anybody
Speaker 1:it's South Armagh for class it's coming down the Glen Shane and I was listening to it on a speaker and I was like this is so good, so good, it's ridiculously good that's what needs to happen.
Speaker 3:When you write a song, you send it to a couple of trustworthy ears and then you try it out. And but, like that, georgia Lock Ross. Then you try it out and, uh, but like that, georgia lock ross, like I, I didn't know, like when, when I got together with the band brendan and said and you're writing about your own?
Speaker 3:I said, well, here's one. But I don't think, I don't know if he's gonna like it and instantly like aaron o'hagan. If you know aaron, like he's the, he's the quiet man, but so you know, when he says something, it's I really pay attention. It's. If he says something I'm like, oh well, I've ironed it and he was like I like that. I was like, oh, do you now? So, yeah, good people round you, but yes, it still takes. It still takes a good 12 months, but when you're right as well, oh my gosh it's just been fabulous to talk to the two of you today.
Speaker 2:I could listen to you for ages fabulous.