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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 #012 - Lost in the Music with Caitlín Nic Gabhann & Ciarán Ó Maonaigh
Welcome to a new episode of Music At Maddens Podcast with me, Lynette Fay.
This week we welcome Caitlín Nic Gabhann & Ciarán Ó Maonaigh to the podcast.
This week in the snug, Lynette is joined by husband-and-wife duo Caitlín Nic Gabhann & Ciarán Ó Maonaigh, two professional musicians with deep family roots in traditional music.
From meeting 20 years ago outside Croke Park to touring America together, they share the story of how music shaped their lives, careers, and relationship.
Caitlín talks about her concertina weeks in Meath and Donegal and building a global teaching platform, while Ciarán reflects on growing up in the heart of the Donegal fiddle tradition, overcoming challenges as a young player, and marking new chapters with his latest album Lost in the Music.
Together, they open up about the highs and hard graft of life as working musicians, balancing family with creativity, and the joy of carrying forward living traditions.
A warm, funny, and inspiring chat about love, music, and making it all work.
Enjoy!
New episodes every Monday.
Maddens Bar
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McIlroy Guitars
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Dunville’s Irish Whiskey
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Anzac Drinks
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We've fought you with this week's music at Madden's, with me and Anette Faye coming to you here from the schnug upstairs in the pub widely referred to as Belfast's home of traditional music, and you can watch on YouTube also, but thank you for listening on Spotify and Apple. Please do leave a review and subscribe so you don't miss any of our chats. And this week I have a couple in the snug. Both have very musical roots, both are from musical families, professional musicians, county Meath and Ciarán in County Donegal. To Gaelic I've got Birch Foster and Tóchil in Gaelic Professional musicians. Catrion has just finished up a two-week-long concertina tour, one in Donegal, a week in Donegal and a week in Meath. That was amazing, by the way. We'll talk about that. And Ciarán's latest album, céilte Sa Chéal, featuring Seán O Graham, is hot off the press. So, falcha Róibh, it's great to see you.
Speaker 1:It's great to be here.
Speaker 2:Thanks for yeah, this is what we do here. To make people feel special is give them a snug, a place in the snug, because you can never get one in Madden. So pulled out all the stops Can't beat a snug. So both families, so both families are musical, immersed in the music. Was you two getting together like a coming together of the clowns? Was it like do?
Speaker 1:you want to tell her where we met, so long ago, you tell.
Speaker 3:You tell the story, make it sound romantic.
Speaker 2:I'm actually struggling was it that long ago?
Speaker 3:oh yeah yeah, it was actually it was in February there, it was 20 years ago that we, since we met the night, I know, I know yeah, the back of Quinn's very romantic in Dublin, yeah yeah, just to say Croke Park, for anyone who's not familiar with it.
Speaker 2:It's been closed for a while now. I'm wondering.
Speaker 1:It's really been soon every culture, every culture, every culture from this side of the country. That's their entry point to Dublin Quinns yeah, we met there 20 years ago.
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh, on a match day no em, I've opened. I've opened. I've opened a door here. Have I?
Speaker 1:student night out middle of February, student night out. Well, student night out for castling. For me, just a random Tuesday or Wednesday night, I was still in school, annette.
Speaker 3:I was out celebrating my mocks with my friends, and you were there with some music friends and I was there with some music friends and he sidled up at the bar beside me and said something like you don't remember. So my brother-in-law is Owen O'Brien and you know him and you just said that you said something about Owen, so that was it. I don't know what else happened after that, so you've Owen to thank, then for him to say Owen.
Speaker 2:To thank Owen was the chat up line, owen O'Brien the chat up line.
Speaker 3:I know there was a good bit of talk to him and Rowing then for a bit for a year or so after that, before we finally made it official, I think. But Trish was only in school. It was like still, I was like what's this? What's going on? I'd never even been to Donegal, maybe for the Fla, the Leonard Kenny Fla. Oh yeah, I've been up at the winter school, maybe as well. Yeah, so that was it. Oh my goodness there we go.
Speaker 2:So when it reopens, then next year you'll be making the pilgrimage. Yeah, my hell.
Speaker 1:Back to the scene of the crime.
Speaker 2:So right. So then, was there any? Did you know she was one of the McGowan's from Ashburn? Did you know that he was one of the Awainys from Giddor? You know the way the family's, all everybody kind of knows each other in this scene.
Speaker 1:I was very aware of Anya and Berndet and her dad, tony, and I was aware of Cassidy as well, though I didn't know her, but I knew she played concertina because I remember I would have been friends with another person who was out that night. It was actually Anya Bird and a friend of Kathleen's. She's married to Jack Talty and Anya and Kathleen would have been good mates, but I would have been in fiddle classes from when I was about 14 that Anya would have been in and I knew that we were in the same hour. But it was going to happen eventually.
Speaker 3:He knew the crack then he used to be now.
Speaker 1:I was smitten day one.
Speaker 2:It was no accident. It was no accident, but that's a lovely story to tell the kids anyway. It's gorgeous for them. So the families now and I suppose you were saying that this week as well, with Tradfest it's all about there's loads of families around and you're seeing generations of families that we haven't seen in a long time and there's a real sense of that getting together. How important was that sense of family as you were growing up? I just imagine in your house it was always a big part of everything.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'm the youngest in my house and they all play and dance. My mum dances, so the dancing was always a big part of it as well. There'd be house dances in the house a few times a year. But my dad taught fiddle for 40-odd years in the sitting room every Monday night and taught really all the fiddle players around the county would come in for every monday night and so that was my kind of. I'd fall asleep every monday night down in the bedroom, be sent down to bed listening to them, to him teaching the the lessons and very similar for kieran, I suppose, because you're a grande.
Speaker 3:Francie taught was the fiddle teacher in the parish as well, and that was the only across the road from you and you were over and back all the time. But I kind of took to the dancing first and then the music came later. But because the others were older than me, I was always trying to like keep up, like play with them. I, if they were going playing somewhere, I want to go as well. So we're trying to trying to keep up with them, or there was always someone at home to kind of show you the next tune or the next step. So it was very lucky like that, that it was all at home. But, as I was saying to you there, that was the whole upbringing was that Our summer holidays were spent at the Flas and at the festivals.
Speaker 3:There was no such thing as Lanzarote. It didn't exist and we didn't know anything else. So it's great then when you see so many families here and people always ask us how do you get them interested or how do you keep them at it, and I always say, well, are their friends playing? Have they friends playing? And it's that kind of full thing. If they're having the crack, then they'll want to come and play again.
Speaker 3:Like Ciarán mentioned, áine, there, some of my best friends and bridesmaids at our wedding are the girls that I grew up playing with, and every friday night we'd have our session in the in the girls school in ashburn, our kiddie session, and our parents would be lined up at the front of the room playing through our tunes with us slowly, like keeping us steady, keeping us on the straight, and we were very lucky to have um a number of like musical families around us as well whose parents played, or one of the parents played, like Catherine McAvoy there, and like Jerry Bird and Huey Grogan and Tom O'Shaughnessy, and and dads, and you know so. There was a good number of families and we all. It was all about the sleepovers like.
Speaker 3:That was the the crack like we'd go to the session on a Friday night and we'd have a sleepover after you learned the music by proxy.
Speaker 2:Really, it was just like the gateway to the crack.
Speaker 3:Yeah, if I have to play, but am I getting the sleepover after? Like that's the? That's what I want.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you'll stick at it it seems like you had a real good network there. So it wasn't just your family, loads of families in the area and then that kind of support network was all just there. So that makes it just really easy.
Speaker 3:That's. It came together and, like the sleepovers, we'd be having a few tunes as well. So it's kind of it was very normal and natural, um, to have those, and great to have those other families whose parents were equally as into the music and obsessed with the music and wanting their kids to be into it, as my family was, so that you're not the only one. So, having that network and community of young kids coming up together and getting better together and learning the same tunes over the course of a few months together, so then you get to play them together like it's fun, like that was our idea of fun and you're going. It was like, yay, new tune.
Speaker 2:I mean you growing up then in Giddor, with generations of a family steeped in traditional music as well. Was it just in the family or was it in the network around the the area when you were growing up? A few words now from the sponsors of this podcast Music at Madden's, dunvilles. 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, dunvilles also sponsors Belfast Tradfest as well, and this Irish Whisky 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, dunville's award-winning single malt and vintage blend.
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Speaker 1:It's a funny one. It's a wee bit different to Kathleen's experience because I suppose when I was growing up at my age group I was the only young fella. The only other young fella who played and sang was Dimerick McGillivray, who was six years older. And I say that because when I came in to say like first year in secondary school, he was just exiting.
Speaker 1:So he was always that, but just beyond. So until I was for for for a lot of my uh, years growing up I was kind of like a lone ranger. So there was this thing that I did that I knew I would always do because it was in the family and I knew. I knew I'd play the fiddle. I don't know why, it was just in me and I was learning from my grandfather and I'd go and do small gigs with Francie around the place in the summer especially, and it felt like an alien in your own parish and there was times it didn't go well because I'd have a sports bag on one shoulder, a school bag on the other shoulder and a fiddle in my hand and when you're carrying three or four heavy things like that you're primed for a beating on the school bus. So it was kind of kicked up and down. So it was a wee bit of that. Until I remember there was a course in the Mard, so there was tourists in theche-Nomard. So eh, there was Torres in the Valley would go to.
Speaker 1:So four Irish musicians be it used to go to Scotland and it would be. There would be a poet, there would be a fiddle player, there might be another musician and a singer would go to Scotland and there was a reciprocal tour over here. And Alan Henderson, eh from, eh. We'd go to scotland and there was a reciprocal tour over here and alan henderson, uh from, uh malik, I think, uh near, and he's now living on the western isles. Uh great fiddle player, was on the trip that landed in gidor when I was about 15 and I wasn't getting on well at school. I'd had to opt out of a load of uh like plays and gamma, rt and sorry, pantomimes, different things, because, uh, I'm playing the fiddle, because I was just getting, I was getting bullied to bits and it was just it wasn't worth taking your fiddle and you were getting kicked up and down. And then alan henderson came in and all the school were brought in and the curse.
Speaker 1:Lamar did a wee display for half an hour of uh poetry from scotland and we were hearing Gaelic from Scotland how like it was with Irish.
Speaker 1:And then Alan Henderson asked me up to play a tune and I happened to have my fiddle for some other reason in the school that day. So it went up and we played a tune that Mairead and Frankie so my aunt, mairead Nguyen and Frankie Kennedy wrote and I barely knew the tune tune, but I hung in with him and we played it through and the place erupted and from that moment on it was like a light bulb switch. It was like some of the lads in school he's got something going on here. Someone from Scotland who'd never met him before recognised must have got a heads up. There's someone in there and that moment just switched it and I don't know. I really feel that it's great now with all the young people playing, because if there's one fella sitting on his own playing, I know he's going to get a hard time, but if there's four or five of them and, like Kathleen said, if they've got mates around, them.
Speaker 1:There's a network, but also that that their peers see them performing or do or playing or do something and that it's worthwhile. Another thing was that I was doing gigs with francy, say in the kush law or glenvee castle, uh, cultural days, whatever Days, whatever, and there'd be various gigs a week that I would do with Francine. You'd get your pocket money and the lads in the class were working in petrol stations for eight, ten hours shifts and I was getting the same money as them for doing an hour and a half or doing you know.
Speaker 1:And when they saw that that was another thing that it flipped the switch again I flipped the switch and they just realized, oh, there's, there's, it's worthwhile, it's not just because it did come with them. There was this view of it that it was a lesser thing, that it was something from our past that we should have left behind us. And it was only when that monetary thing came in, and uh and, uh, and and, and then they could see that there's actual energy in it my goodness that's it was a bit different from catching my goodness, I did not expect to hear that answer from you.
Speaker 2:I knew that there wasn't the big network of music in Donegal because I've watched it grow over the years. Ciarán but I had no idea that that was your experience and that can't have been easy for you to say that and thank you very much and I'm sorry it happened to you. That's just awful.
Speaker 1:Well, to be honest, there's an attitude in Donegal and and then dunny gall music and in dunny gall in general, is that we're very proud of something that we have and when we have something kind of a I have to begrudge yours kind of attitudes, I had that. And then you, I had something that took me a while to click. I didn't click till I was about 14 as well. I remember going to Milton and I only had three tunes and then, very quickly, I'd been learning from when I was seven. My grandfather, I'd say, broke his heart. I wouldn't practice, I wouldn't do anything, but when it clicked that there was girls and crack.
Speaker 2:Up the road you came and you said right, prontius, get at it. Come on, let's learn. I get at it come on, let's learn.
Speaker 3:I heard that you came home from Milton with a list of tunes. I need the Tarbolton. I need no way I can't.
Speaker 1:I can't read, I can't read music and Francie could, but not really great. So I had him O'Neill's out and going through the names Sheehan's aye, aye, aye, how's that go? He'd rub over the first and write notes aye, aye and get that like.
Speaker 3:Was he loving this?
Speaker 1:oh aye basically, finally he's gone on days and days I'm going over and back. Get one nail set.
Speaker 2:Really okay, he was loving it, yeah, oh my god, but also you know, and whenever, obviously when you were in the moment of all that happening to you as a young lad. Like her, dirty teenage years are like her dirty mid-years are not easy, made so much worse by your experience.
Speaker 2:But now, when you look back and you're older, do you not look on those moments that you had, that experience you had with your grandad, and now that he's gone as well so special not everybody gets that to not just to spend time with their grandad, but for him to be passing something so precious down to you and then for you and him just to go off on your travels going to Glen Bay Castle and a cushlocha it sounds class.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was only really me as a grandchild at that stage. Ráisí Áinz Ráisí came along slightly later. I suppose I was about 14, 15 when she came along and then Nia is the other grandchild. She'd be my raids and uh, she was. She was a baby when francy died, but so I was.
Speaker 1:I was kind of like a lone ranger at that stage with him and plus my mom had uh had a brain hemorrhage when I was about three or four, so I was kind of half reared in that house was directly across the road from mom and dad's house. So I spent. I was like 50 percent reared by francie and kitty and kind of mom and dad then and I'd spent, I'd, I was I ate, it was a ferocious eater I. I went, I came home from school, I went over to kitty and francie and got the dinner and go back home and get the dinner then I'd, then I'd go back over and make a supper in kitty and francie's and then I'd come back over and make myself a midnight snack, like before. So I was between it all eating everybody out of house and home, but the rare. I was delighted. Francie was great with me between. He was massive on football and he was massive on music and we were basically in each other's pockets the whole time, like so best buddies.
Speaker 2:What a really special relationship. It's gorgeous. And then, as you say, your aunties, maria and Dan, and Eweenie and Anna sadly passed away last year. I'm very sorry for that loss. And then your daddy then as well, garo. It was all there, but the one family carrying this. And what I find really interesting is that, from an outsider's perspective as well, we went to Donegal seeking out the music, seeking out the songs, seeking all this out, and then you tell me of the experience you had from the people there.
Speaker 1:So it is crazy how and I don't mean to be down on people from gator, because it's this- happens all over.
Speaker 2:We've we've had loads of stories here and this is how the thing is changing. So many people on the podcast have told us about learning music as a teenager and hiding the case hiding the instrument because it wasn't cool, you know, and not making sure nobody saw it. They loved the music, but no jeepers not. They can't be seen because because, whereas now it's that badge of honour, we're seeing the kids walking about with them. It's no problem anymore is it post-colonial guilt?
Speaker 1:what is it like it's?
Speaker 3:I don't know, it's something those difficult teenage years where you just don't want to stand out. Yeah, generally, as a teenager, you just want to blend in with everyone. Don't like, don't think of me, as you don't want to be the one that's standing out and like doing anything different, because you're just, you know everything, it's all.
Speaker 1:It's a hard time, yeah, for those two years there is that there's also a tranness in the Gaelteart person, Like there's a reason the Gaelic lived in Gidore and there's articles about Gidore football. These are the ones written in the 1920s. These people speak Gaelic as if wow, look at them. There was an attitude of the back of beyonds the.
Speaker 1:Gidore ones were the back of beyonds. The Gidore ones were like yes, this is ours, kind of sticking the fingers up to them and and so there's that, and you're, and then the music is sitting in a pocket there somewhere in between and it's, it's all it's. It's a very hard thing to put your finger on what's going on there, but it's far better. Like francie and baba brendan did so much work teaching in the three parishes, uh, teaching music and uh, very short, very, very shortly after francie and baba stopped teaching, and and uh, the crown hog started off with clan joe jack and uh the work, the castle Jojack and PJ Jojack and loads of people put into the Cranog starting off and that thing is thriving now.
Speaker 1:So it's changed the thing completely.
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Speaker 2:It's only natural to want one McIlroyGuitarscouk for more details. And Baba Brennan you mentioned that is the mother of Clannad. Sometimes everybody hears about Leo and going to Leo's and Leo's accordion. And Baba there was the sacred weapon with the choirs and the harmonies and the work that she did with the pantomimes in the school as well, and I've heard members of Planet referencing those pantomimes and saying just how transformational they were in opening their mind to how music could communicate.
Speaker 2:So it's just the power of music and everybody going to seek it out but, like you know, you know you're you two coming together, then right, so you're coming from very different places, even though the music's very strong in the family, right, very different experiences socially, I suppose. Um, and then, whenever you get together and you go to donegal and then you go to Meath, what did you make of the? What did you make of the other, the other's place and space, and you know where they they were brought up.
Speaker 3:Well, because you said you hadn't been to Donegal much, not much I had, like I suppose I had been up at the winter school, at the Frankie Kennedy winter school, but we didn't know other then and I was just up with a gang of friends for a couple of nights. Um those were the days.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I know the old stunt and the old the Austin, yeah, she was begging, yeah, new year's eve party, oh my goodness, rock and roll yeah, I tell you. I wonder if anybody would be brave enough to tell stories about those nights on this.
Speaker 3:I remember just going up for those and it's obviously, you know, new Year's Eve, so the weather is wild, the wind is blowing you sideways and just the landscape there and I hadn't really like I've been.
Speaker 3:I grew up a lot going to Clare, so familiar with the landscape and the music down there. But it is obviously like the slogan for Duny Gal was here. It's different and you feel that when you go up and we didn't really play together for a good few years, we were kind of just going out and then we play a few sessions. But you were going with fiddle and I went off a river dance, we were kind of doing our own separate thing. And you know, obviously Ciarán is brilliant and I love sitting in next to him, I love the energy that he brings to a session, like just strong and energy and life and just you know, great crack. But then when you brought me down to Glencoll and Killed the fiddle week there for the first time, um, it was a whole other experience in the tunes that they are, that you get down around there.
Speaker 3:I didn't know any of them and, like I, I grew up in this in the world of Irish music and Ireland. Going to all the flats. I can pick up a tune easily and it's it's all very natural and grand and I sit in a session by the third time round. I'm more or less kind of nearly have the tune kind of thing. Not, not, couldn't make, couldn't know where the starting ends were.
Speaker 3:When I was sitting into the sessions in glencombe and I was like where have I landed? And I know that's not really the repertoire that you play in hudies or the tunes you played it well when we get well most of the time anyway. But when we were down there I just thought this was absolutely brilliant that there's this community and repertoire of music that you get in this one pocket of the country and you don't really hear these tunes anywhere else around the country. And still we're going there next week. Still, when we go back now over the years then we'd go back to that every year.
Speaker 3:Uh, got to know the tunes but they're not like the normal tunes that I would have grown up with from my dad and my own concertina people. Um, they're kind of more unpredictable. They have turns and twists in them that you don't see coming um and they. They sound a little bit and feel a little bit different than what I would have grown up, which would be like claire music and my dad's music and music for set dance, and then that's what I'm sensing that you found there was an excitement than that for you really, I thought it was really exotic, it's like being from Donegal.
Speaker 1:just exotic, Do you?
Speaker 3:know when something sounds so new and fresh, it's kind of familiar but still really new and exotic and like, after that I started playing more of those tunes and then, like you know, going up, bringing them home and they'd be different to the kind of tunes you're playing at home, but it was fun to come into that then as well. Yeah, yeah, learn about that tradition up there. Tunes you're playing at home, but it was fun to come into that then as well. And yeah, yeah, learn, learn about that tradition up there.
Speaker 2:Um, and then for you, kieran, then going into a meave, and I suppose, as uh cushing's daddy's a well-known fiddle player as well, then you're landing in, just maybe keeping the fiddle behind you for a wee while. All all right, tony, hi jim, what was that?
Speaker 1:but at the same time I knew a lot of the tunes. Uh, I I spent a lot of time working on on tunes that weren't from donegal, like there's a repertoire and then donegal and but I'd, I'd, so I fit, falling in with cassidy's family felt very natural, because there's loads of it's just constant music. So it was. Now, I'm no dancer, I don't even have two left feet.
Speaker 1:I've been trying my hardest that's where I found it hard with the dancing. I'm not engaging there at all because I just can't, and I know it, so that's okay. But I can sit and play for dancers all day, like, I love that, like, and uh, there's a great vibe and cassie's family would have been. Uh, they're really unique in that way because they they have this house dance at the start of every year and it was for years and years. It was. It was the first cayley house of the year. So on the first saturday of of the year, um, I think for about 29, 30 years, there was, uh, they had the cayley house and rte, uh radio one came out and broadcast it. But apart from that, it was a house dance and it was a proper house dance where all the furniture was taken out of the house Firms, brought in 40 to 50 musicians.
Speaker 1:Literally around the house, in mind the dresser, yeah, yeah 40 musicians minimum, two sets minimum, going on in the house at any given time and it would last till five, six in the morning, and twice in the middle of that tea would be brought out and no drinking. So it was a bit different to what I was used to.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Because I was very much brought up in a house. Party plus pub environment and alcohol would have been around a lot. So I wasn't used to this thing. Where it was, it just wasn't there and that's fine too, but it was just different. But I knew the music and I knew to get stuck in the music and music's like it doesn't matter where you go in the world. It dissolves differences in language, whatever, and how people think, whatever. You have a common language with the music and it's just magic and I felt really at home with them. They were and they couldn't be more welcoming.
Speaker 2:They're great people imagine to be growing up in a house like that, but that's normal of a saturday night once a month. You know that this is like just everybody come in and you're on national radio as well, like the kaylee house and and then you go into school on Monday.
Speaker 3:Oh, do you get up to 10? No, not much. No, just keep it down, because people don't get it. They don't understand but mum and dad built the house in the early 70s with the intention of having house dances, so it's actually laid out like so when people hear 40 to 50 musicians in two sets, they think it's not like. It's just that it's one long room and they line up the musicians and you have a hall in the house. It's kind of like a big.
Speaker 1:They had open plan. Before there was such a thing as open plan yeah, yeah, that's just phenomenal.
Speaker 3:See my mom's aunt. My mom's parents came from west clare. They were set dancers and her father, micheál Murphy, and her mother, bridget Pierce Biddy Pierce, moved to Dublin and raised my mum and her siblings in Dublin. He was the farmer at Capa Hospital, so he looked after the farm and the growth that fed the hospital, and with the job came a house in the grounds of Capa Hospital and that's where they were reared. But his sister was Josie and she was a spinster and, by all accounts, a formidable woman. She was an egg inspector for the Department of Agriculture, an egg inspector, all these jobs that don't exist anymore.
Speaker 3:These jobs are amazing. Yeah, but she was, and all the musicians around Dublin of the 60s and the different clubs knew Josie Murphy and nobody was left sitting. Everyone was up dancing and my granddad was like that as well. He always oh, come on, get up, get up, get up. Like I'd say now, if he knew you, if you were around, you wouldn't be left sitting, get up, get up, get up. But Josie in her house had the house dances for all the clear people living in Dublin regularly and they used to take the door off the hinges and they'd all congregate in the sitting room and one said they'd line not line up but they'd be congregating around having their drink, a waiting room there, so there'd be a gang in there waiting for their chance to get dancing, to get into the kitchen and the two musicians sitting up on the table yeah, got their set danced.
Speaker 3:They'd go out the back door and the next gang would come in and get to dance their set and it would be this revolving all night that's around the house and made the dresser and then at the end of the night they'd bring back in the furniture at five and they'd be going.
Speaker 3:They'd go down to six o'clock. Mass like this is the 60s, so that was the tradition of my mom's aunt and her side of the family in dub for all the Clare, so Clare gang. So whenever Josie got a bit old to keep that going, mom and dad took it over and I just love that.
Speaker 2:That was your normal. You know you grew up with this tradition. That's been handed down and it was just so normal in in your house. But you recognize you were cute enough to recognize going into school on a Monday morning, not so cute to mention they on Saturday night.
Speaker 3:Well, that's why you like seek out the people who also have a bit of the crazy in their backgrounds and at their weekends like, oh you get it.
Speaker 2:Is it just the?
Speaker 3:glint in the eye. Yeah, yeah, brilliant, you're my normal, as you're a normal, that's probably where we, when we met, we knew, I knew.
Speaker 1:I knew because you're always at that age, you always, you always had your eye out. You're looking for right. Obviously you want this gorgeous woman as a star. But then you're looking for who's going to, who's going to be happy to let me sit in a corner for 12 hours and play tunes two or three times a week, Like tunes two or three times a week.
Speaker 2:Like and think that that's normal, like you're the one for me it's pretty low bar once you're happy for me to sit in the corner and also play for 12 hours but you know what I have to say, though, the two of you aren't as slow as you walk easy, so there might be the glinting the eye and the craziness, but you're both professional musicians and you're somehow. You're making this work for you as well, and we're going to talk about that in a minute but first of all, let's take a break on music at madden's, and we'll have a message now from our sponsors.
Speaker 2:So catherine mcgowan and kieran and weenie with us this week on music at madden's, and I want to sadly so Katling McGowan and Ciarán O'Wealy with us this week on Music at Madden's. And I want to talk about the business of music with you because it occurs to me that you're very entrepreneurial and it's just looking at the ways you've found to make it work, because it's not an easy gig. It's not easy to be a traditional musician. It's not an easy gig. It's not easy to be a traditional musician. It's not easy to earn a living from it. But between classes, lessons, embracing online and now, kathleen, as I mentioned your week visits for concertino weeks in Donegal and May, it just struck me that this is do you feel that you have to be constantly coming up with the ideas to keep it fresh? Is that what you feel you have to do to make it work?
Speaker 3:well, yeah, it's not an easy path to decide that you're going to be a traditional musician for your job and I wouldn't have been encouraged. But what are you going to do? So I did, we went through college and we did get qualifications. We did that. But then there's this pull and draw that you can't actually not do it. I did secondary school teaching, I did um, I went to UCC, which I loved, and I had an absolutely great time there studying music and Gaelic. And then, when you know, I eventually did the dip for secondary school teaching, but new, nearly straight away I did finish the course. I'm going to see it through, but I'm not going to do this. I couldn't see myself going down that line. And shortly after we started playing together, we weren't playing together, I'd say for the the first five years, like as a duo kind of thing, um, and we did.
Speaker 3:Then we made the decision if we want to be together, we have to play together.
Speaker 1:Um, and it was kind of an I think before that we were afraid to play together, as in this could be make or break.
Speaker 1:Well, no, no well, no, I could. I thought I don't know. I I was aware of the. Maybe there's interpolitics that goes on in ensembles or in more than one musician playing with each other. That becomes. That is great sometimes but also can be divisive because there's two different ideas going on about the same thing. So I think I definitely had a conscious thing in the head. It was like let's know our relationship is too important to let this thing become a, but then eventually it became the flip of that.
Speaker 1:It was like if we don't play together. We'll never see each other so that flipped on its head you had to overcome that fear really yeah, yeah yeah, it was a really, it was a really weird thing where we, we absolutely completely avoided it. Definitely conscious on my my part. Yeah, I remember you saying it and it was.
Speaker 3:We were both doing our own thing anyway. It wasn't like we were saying no to invitations like you were. Fiddle was really on the go. I was in college then like when we started going out.
Speaker 3:I was in cork and he wasn't doing all. That was the first three years of us going out, so we were, we meet up at festivals every now and again and I went off at river dance for a couple years, um, but coming out of the, the dip for secondary school teaching, we started. Then we're like, right, I don't want to do that, so can let's do this. And started setting up, um, some gigs in America which were pretty I found pretty easy to set up and they were so willing and welcoming and helpful over there to get us over. Like. I got to go to the Catskills Irish Arts Week a few times and I made loads of friends there and great contacts and they helped me set up tours.
Speaker 3:So once you get the visa you can go and you can and one would hook you on to the next. So I know someone two hours down the road go there the next night when you're setting it up. And it was easy because it was just the two of us. We were in the one car, we'd show up, we'd play, they'd put us up and then the next day we'd go on. So we actually had a great time going around. We did a number of tours in on the east coast of america, one or two over on the west coast, and that's when we really got to know each other's music for playing together as a duet. It's not two individuals playing your individual music. You have to blend, you have to merge, you have to bend.
Speaker 3:So, kieran is obviously so strong as as your music as a fiddle player from dunny gall and the music that you, it was in your heart and from your family and that you know, we respect that and I I'm the same and I'm very conscious of what I'm bringing to the table then as well. So, trying to merge them and complement each other and give and take over and back over all those tours that we did in america, it naturally it wasn't really conscious, but just the fact that we were playing together every night, we were able to kind of give and take and then, over the course of a few years, uh, it got much, it got like you got the right.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and the easiest person to play with, just settle in and link in with each other and I find that like it's still, I use, my favourite person, but I love playing with them. Now If we get to sit beside each other in a session, it's my favourite thing. I love doing that because it's just easy and natural over and back. But through all those tours in America I got these.
Speaker 3:Anywhere we would go, there would be a, an invite to teach as well. So if we were doing a gig somewhere, they'd say, oh, any chance, you'd also do a fiddle workshop on a concertina workshop that day, and there was always a. I was amazed at the demand for concert, you like whatever about fiddles, the demand for concertina workshops, uh, in random places like, and you'd have a class with them of adults learn. I'm like this is like amazing. So then in between tours we'd come home and I'd do some maybe skype lessons, so kind of set up some lessons in dublin, just kind of tie it over in between never really hit the button because it was always a wee bit out of sync.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and then we were forced to do things online, then in that dreaded time we'll not go back to or mention, but I suppose it did change the game for things in so many ways where possibly now, with that little bit of distance, you can take the good out of it, that things have changed for the better and maybe lessons were learned, that these things can be done in a particular way which makes it easier on yourself as well, maybe because I've noticed, you know the the lessons online are so very well presented. You know you've clearly put an awful lot of thought into them, um, and you know that that seems to be working. You know, is it easy to to market that? Is there a demand for that sort of thing?
Speaker 3:yeah so. So what happened was we kind of finished up touring a bit and you were, you started working uh, kieran works in tv as well a lot and you got this offer of a great job. That was a full-time job and it was going to be making traditional music programs for tg car and based, based in Gweedore. And at this stage we were married three or four years, we were living in Dublin, didn't really know where we were going to settle, and so this was kind of the oh, this is now happening, we're moving to Gweedore.
Speaker 1:So we kind of knew that kids were going to maybe start coming on the cards in the next few years after that, to backtrack slightly, I think we I remember us recording the album called kathleen and kieran we came up with great labels and brands sometimes it's the simpler, the better people know exactly what they're getting.
Speaker 1:But I remember us recording that album and I remember us chatting about a five year. We're going to gig hard and as hard as we can for five years. Yeah, and I remember a tax form going in one stage where we declared 240 something gigs for the year plus. I'd recorded a six-part series of what was shaven lake at the time in that year. So I'd say we were working.
Speaker 2:That's a lot.
Speaker 1:We weren't at home. We were at home. I tried to figure out. I reckon we were home 11 to 12 days that year to wash the clothes.
Speaker 2:It's as well. You were working, you were gigging together because you definitely wouldn't have seen each other.
Speaker 1:We went at it, and we went at it awful hard.
Speaker 2:But sometimes you have to make those decisions in order to no, we went at it, and we went at it awful hard. But sometimes you have to make those decisions in order to make it work. And you know, when you look back, though any regrets about going as hard at it, because now the wee ones are here, it changes everything completely.
Speaker 3:This is it Like when we, as I said, that was our time to get to know each other as a duet and I know now we'll be playing together for the rest of our lives like maybe if we hadn't put in that hardcore time, you'd still be kind of finding yourselves as a duet, because we did come from different, different musical backgrounds. And then, as he said, we knew, I kind of like, oh, maybe in the next couple of years we'll start thinking about maybe kids or something like that. And I moved to Cúidhóir and you were doing the job and it was kind of like, well, what am I going to do now? Because my whole thing for five or six years or whatever, was organising our tours and managing the tours and doing the tours and promoting them and all of that.
Speaker 3:And I really didn't want to go get a secondary school school teaching job. I just wanted to see, can I do anything else? I also wanted to be at home with the kids, if I could, and not have to, as in on, in my own, on my, on my terms, be with them as much, um. So that's when I got the idea to set up Irish Constantine lessons, which was kind of um, a blessing that I did it at that time, which was 2018, and then added the intermediate level course, 2019, because then, when, as you said, covid hit, it was already up and running and established and I got very lucky. Then I'm one of the. It was one of the businesses that did well out of that time and I know there's loads of businesses that didn't get on well. But because everyone was stuck at home and couldn't get out to their sessions and their lessons, it did quite well and a lot of people were coming on to learn concertina on the website all over the world from their homes.
Speaker 2:And giving it a go like that. You know, and trying different things, that takes an awful lot of confidence as well. You know, in yourself you're putting yourself out there in a completely different way. Um, and you know we're looking at social media now and I think a lot of people are waking up to seeing how important it is. You know that you need your brand out there and all the rest of it. So many people are uncomfortable with it because we can't look at ourselves, listen to ourselves, all these things. And what does it take for you to to do that, to go and try something new, to put yourself out there, when you know yourself there could be naysayers behind the scenes going? Would you look at your?
Speaker 2:one yeah yeah, and all the rest of it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's a tough one to do, having confidence in yourself and integrity. But also it was the need I have to make this work, because the alternative I really don't want to have to go and do it. So it's this or it's that I'm going to put everything into making this work and doing it right from the start, like people would say, oh, just get it out there and you can fix it up later. And I know like first impressions matter. When people come onto the site and they get that first impression, they see what they see and they see it's professional.
Speaker 3:Uh, they'll know, oh, I'm I, I can trust this, I can buy into this and like I'm happy to stay here and it's a thing thing in the back of their head, I'm happy. If I get on well here, I'll stick with it. So I I put a lot of um planning and uh time and effort into the planning of each lesson so that there wasn't too much in each lesson or too little in each lesson, that it was graded so that they got gradually harder as they went down through the course. Um, but it was that kind of necessity. It's a necessity as the mother of invention really didn't want the altar to have to go and do.
Speaker 1:I wanted to be working on my own hours for myself to be able to be with the twins the rest of the time, really, really important I think there's something in the music, um, and I was teaching here all week and, uh, I was saying to the people in the class have you ever heard yourself speak? And the first time anybody hears themselves speak, it's like he almost wince because it's a.
Speaker 1:It's not what you hear to your ear, yeah it's completely different and it's that difference and and I think as a musician, especially as a fiddle player the fiddle is right against your throat. So it's the same experience. The first time you hear yourself playing the fiddle. It's like an alien is playing the fiddle. You've never heard this before. So I'm trying to tell the people in the class this week you have to record yourself and listen to yourself from six feet away.
Speaker 1:This is what the other people are hearing and I think musicians and I think musicians and I'm not saying that we're great musicians, but I know that we're able to play it at a reasonably good level and to get to that part of the experience there is, you have to get used to your own voice and how that projects and become aware and become thick skinned and develop those a lot of the skills that make you entrepreneurial or be able to project what you have as a person or as a personality or as a musician.
Speaker 1:To be able to project that over to other people. You have to work on that. You have to put a lot of work into it. You have to record yourself, listen back to yourself, be your own worst critic, be your own best critic, pat yourself on the back, because if you don't do that, nobody else is going to, you'll never actually get out of your own bedroom. So that that's. I think that's really critical, and that's where musicians have you. You mentioned the word entrepreneurial kind of mindset. I think it comes from that. Now I'd say to anybody out there if you want to do something with as little work to get maximum effect out of it, don't do it.
Speaker 1:Don't work as a musician for you because it's really hard and you have to work night and day and it's all consuming. But that's what we do. It's who, who we are, so we've no other choice. That's it. It's either that or take up a random job and and, uh, just nearly half retire yourself and be okay with that and today's ted talking confidence comes from kieran. Sorry sorry that was brilliant.
Speaker 2:That was so good because it's such good advice that we probably don't give each other. And I think that's absolutely such a nugget there, ciarán, like it's brilliant. No, thank you so much for that, it's class. And then, just like you know, when I mentioned the entrepreneurial thing, that's what I saw in the idea of the concertina wicks. I thought that's class. And when you think about it too, you're from Meath. You've then got this connection with Donegal. You've lived in Donegal, so you know it intimately as well. And then the history of the two places and the Gaelic, the music, the landscape, the history you're mixing it all together. It's kind of a no-brainer.
Speaker 3:you know, as most of the best ideas are. Well, it was a very easy one. When I moved up there first, it was like I moved up, you know, to Gwydor and we all know how beautiful it is the sea and the mountains and the islands, and the language and the culture and the songs and the singers, and the music and the musicians and all the great musicians that come from around there, and, uh, not only even just the landscape. And we had just finished our mad touring seven, five, seven years in america and I had done all the teaching over there and I said, oh my god, they would love to come here and they would love to see this and this is perfect. So it was very easy.
Speaker 3:After that I just set push it out, right, I would like to come to Guido, and do we do so? The idea is that we do concertina classes in the morning and in the afternoon we go out and we learn about the local area. So we have walking tours, we go out to Gola Island or we go to Glen Vague Castle and we have Brian Danny Minnie coming, we've Maraid coming and giving them a concert. So every afternoon there's something like that and I've run it now for seven or eight years and it's, it's they. They book in straight away and most of the people come from America. I think eight out of the ten this year came from America. So they're coming, they want to come, they want to be in the real place. Yeah, and then I was thinking mead has so much history obviously as well so this year I did my first one in mead base that we put.
Speaker 3:I put them up just beside trim castle, across the road from trim castle and got we learned all about new grange and got me holla, riley and brent castle, so zoned in on me the concertina playing and learned about the history of me. Then they came from all over as well how did that feel?
Speaker 2:was it specially? You know a wee bit special, because it was your home country.
Speaker 3:Yes, it was very proud, yeah, and to get Michal in, who I learned from, and Brenda Castle's in and, like Michal O'Reilly and MacDowell O'Reilly's played a lunchtime concert for us. And I'm there going. I have the best job in the world. I'm going to sit back and watch these giants who learned from MacDara, learned from my dad, but you know, we love listening to them. We're in awe of them and their rhythm and that's a fiddle concertina duet as well, and just yeah, brilliant.
Speaker 2:It's lovely when it comes together like that and it's just so rewarding as well. But it doesn't come together without the hard work and the graft has been there for years and years and years. So sweet to the when it works out. But I'm sure all the time.
Speaker 3:You show up in the hard days too, isn't it? Oh, this session, it's no joke working with your spouse either. Like you know, we kill each other, so don't be thinking now it's all roses I'm saying man, to be honest, you were painting a fantastic picture there, but I do have.
Speaker 2:I do have a little surprise for you that I'll get to in a minute. Um kieran and waney at lachan o'graham. So I'm for everybody watching on youtube. I've got this in my hand. Uh, hot off the presses. By the way, um lost in the music kyle chasaheol, a brand new album, um, and I have to say, absolutely gorgeous. I was really drawn to the Onst bridal march. Where did you get?
Speaker 1:that Onst. If you were looking for, in this particular jurisdiction, the most northerly post office, next stop, actually more northerly On the lane than Bergen. Onst is the most northerly on the line than Bergen. Unst is the most northerly point of the Shetland Islands and we played there May 2024. Mad experience. The electricity went out for all the islands. In the middle of us performing a song, the High Seas were playing there. Kyle O'Kerrion was singing, we were playing along with him, lights went out and, kind of without losing the beat, we just said the show must go on, continued. On End of the song, crowd erupted. The Freedon Sisters were there. The same night. There was a brass ensemble. What was it? Tenement, tenement jazz band, fantastic, and 300 people from Unst crammed into a small parish hall. It was absolutely fantastic. And I'll tell you the Unst bridal march where that came from. Do you remember Virgin Megastore? It used to be behind us here. I do, I do. Where that came from. Do you remember virgin megastore?
Speaker 2:used to be behind us here, right so my ma, my ma's, from shawls road right and she's very well.
Speaker 1:You couldn't tell my she she shops when she'd go into castle court here in the 90s christ, I'm sorry, excuse my language. Uh, she'd go in there. And four hours later she's still looking at the same three tops and Debenhams and two other places and I don't know, do I like that one? I don't know. It's two pound cheaper down there. Whatever, me and Dad were around to Virgin Megastore and I got an album called Da Silver Bow Da Silver Bow Topic Records Classic album, ali Bain, tom Anderson and a load of Shetland Fiddlers and I still have that album and it's still top shelf at home if ever I want to chill out and listen.
Speaker 1:Load of fiddle players from Shetland. I love it and I got that tune off that.
Speaker 2:Fabulous, bringing us back to Belfast, and not just to Belfast, but literally a stone's throw from where we're sitting.
Speaker 1:Are you good at throwing stones?
Speaker 2:I'm not good, I'm actually, I'm only joking. Do you see, if I threw a stone at you right now and you're right beside me, I'd miss.
Speaker 3:I'm so bad Snowball fight.
Speaker 2:You do not want me on your team? No, you do not want me on your team, the new album's yourself and Sean O'Graham and although your very distinctive fiddle playing obviously is To the Four, there's something really fresh and different about it.
Speaker 1:Did you approach it purposely that way? That's a great question because I don't really know the answer to it. But I can tell you what I was thinking about, which was I had recorded an album over 20 years ago solo album and I was happy enough with it at the time. I'd just been given an award or a Gratham by TG Kerr for being a young musician at the time and I was bowled over by that, didn't really know, and I remember Moraid saying something to. He said you've got an opportunity now that loads of young musicians your age and younger out in the country would die for Tappy and Jesh. And I was there. No, you're right, because I remember even between being told that that award was coming and eight weeks later or whatever, when there was a no, actually four or five months later when there was the award ceremony, I had to keep this news a secret.
Speaker 1:But I remember growing up an awful lot in that time because I was aware that when the news got out about it, uh, that people were going to be listening to me and that crystallized me to the point where, within months, I was in recording my first solo album, and that was 2004. I recorded my first solo album. I was 20 years old. I recorded the album and I said right, 20 years on time, to lay another marker down. And that was what was in my head. Now I'm a few years older, it took a few years to get to get out, but um, it was just.
Speaker 1:It was like lay another marker down this is what I sound like at this age, at 60 and I'm coming probably coming out of what I was saying we were playing 240 odd gigs. That was back 2016, 2017. Now we're playing far less. We've three kids, the plane is far, far, far less and it's uh kind of a word that you some not that it might decay, but it's going to change I think that's a lovely way to put it, though, that this is a marker of where you are, where you're at now because, it will change, because things do change and you've embraced change throughout your career.
Speaker 2:You know whether it was starting off with that solo album with the brilliant advice from your auntie, maria de waney, who I would only imagine has been just a fantastic support in the background, and you listen to what she says because she's lived it. She's just done it all.
Speaker 1:She's still living it. She won't give up either, you know what Isn't she class? She is right, she's deadly for it.
Speaker 2:And you know, and then with Fiddle, the great success you had with that trio as well, because I remember when you started, everyone said what do you mean? Three fiddles? And that's it, just three fiddles. Like how's that gonna work? Oh, let them show you like. That was just a phenomenal period in time. And then, like your, your solo album, with catchling the high seas as well, was just brilliant. And then on to this, and not to mention the amount of stuff you've done with your family also, and there's just elements of all this here, and I just thought it was fantastic, ciarán.
Speaker 1:So congratulations. I hope it does really well for you. Well, look, it's a marker, it's laid down, it's there now and other people will judge it, so I'm very happy with it, I have to say. And Sean Ogg is what a gem, an absolute gemstone that needs a lot of appreciation because he's someone that doesn't come around very often. He's a wonder and hats off to him.
Speaker 2:He's a gem big shout out to Sean O'Graham and Band V Studios and all the brilliant music he's making up there and that gorgeous set up that he has as well on the banks of the Ban just outside Port Lanone, Interestingly just a wee nugget.
Speaker 1:The place his house, banview, is called the Largy. My ma was born in a place called the Largy just outside Glenevy, so on the other side of Lough Neagh, and then, when she was very young, they moved in here to Belfast. Her ma is from just down York Street here and I just loved the fact that we had the Largy in common. I thought it there's here's something that myself and Sean I'll go. I know we're from different counties and different accents and all that, but there's a, there's a telepathy there. That's not much needs said, it's just you know beautiful kindred spirit and Cailteas a Cioil as well.
Speaker 2:There's something about that the power of just losing yourself in it and being in the moment as well. I love that. It was a great title, ciarán, and 50 minutes of losing yourself right there in that album. We are out of time. I could talk to the two of you all day, but I did want to do a wee quick Mr and Mrs thing, so all you have to do is point at the person.
Speaker 2:I'm gone just point at the person you think best answers this question. So it's going to be one of the other of you. So, kieran, if you think it's catching pointed, or if you think it's you point at you and the other way around, right, okay? So who? Who really made the first move? Who's more likely to slip out for a session for an hour or so? I shouldn't have. I didn't have to answer that question actually no in Dublin who takes longer to get ready.
Speaker 1:I've seen fireworks. That's a backhanded compliment, but yeah no, she's great.
Speaker 2:Who gets up with the kids if they wake up in the middle of the night? Best cook, who knows the most tunes?
Speaker 1:you know, depending on what repertoire of things we're talking about, it's just a quick, it's just a quick arrow, you're thinking too long. We're both. We're both very good at that. We're both this one.
Speaker 2:Now you're thinking too long. Who's the most romantic? Brilliant? There were a couple of very surprising answers there.
Speaker 3:I have to say he's a great cook.
Speaker 2:Thanks for being good sports.
Speaker 1:Great to chat to both of you, thank you for joining us for music at Madden's for putting us in stupor a few nights during this week. It's absolutely what. A best pub in the country fantastic.