Is iontach an rud é go bhfuil an tEarrach tagaithe arís. Is é Lá le Bríd an lá amáirach,féile chumasach i dtrimriall na bliana. Ghuimhim gach rath ar mo chairde uilig ar fuaid na cruinne agus go mbeirimid beo ag an am seo arís.
What a wonderful occasion is St. Bridget’s day, the first day of Spring in the old Irish cosmos and very welcome to those poor souls at home who have been grappling with black ice, burst pipes, treacherous surfaces and the flood that preceded.
I welcome the Spring and thus bring you a timely new “Touchline.” My life is ridiculously rich and eventful; I never take this for granted and am eternally grateful for it. As my faithful friends and fans have heard nought from me since May of the Year Nine, let me sketch the interim months as briefly as possible. May was a delightful month at home; I heard the cuckoo for hours at a time at my brother’s house in Cill na Martra near Baile Mhuirne in West Cork; indeed Darby my brother told me that if he wanders down the boreen near his home in the merry month of May and calls “cuckoo” himself, that harbinger of summer herself will answer him. To my amazement and ignorance, I believe ‘tis the male cuckoo does the calling and not the other way around, as I always thought. I had the good fortune for the summer to have the use of Máirtín’s sister Máire’s house in Raffeen village near Monkstown, Cork Harbour, as a friend of mine stayed at my farmhouse in Feothanach, on the Dingle Penninsula. It was nice to be back in the Cork area, near my family and near my sea-farin’ friends and their vessels in Crosshaven. In June we undertook our usual week of sailing, drinking and playing in a little fleet of sailboats along the west Cork coast and with my cousin Billy Daly’s cinematographical skills, I should, in the fullness of time, be able to put some photos up from “Ceol fé Sheol” (our Music Under Sail Week). It was an ineffable week of friendship, music and sailing that I’ll never forget Having no vessel of my own since “Salonika” and “Nora Lee” before her, I am resolved to acquire a sturdy barque just as soon as I re-settle in Cork harbour which may take some time yet.
While the gigs at home weren’t exactly as plentiful as sands in the Sahara, there were enough and welcome they were. I particularly remember having a lovely time at Carrick-on-Bannow in a quiet corner of south Wexford to celebrate the memory of a wonderful local musician, Phil Murphy. Phil’s wonderful personalized way of playing the harmonica has been inherited by his two sons, Pip and John, the former is landlord of a famous traditional pub in the village called Colpher’s. The breath of the Phil Murphy weekend is far wider however than just traditional Irish tunes and John varied eclectic taste displayed a wide mix of world music with some really fine young bands from America playing in the marquee behind the pub by night.
I opened the first year of my one-man show celebration of the ballad history of the people of Cork at the Firkin Crane Theatre, near Shandon Steeple in the heart of Cork’s nothside. This was a big move for me; a definite u-turn away from the pub gigs, which, to be fair, have sustained us all through tough times. However, if I’m to be taken serious as a creative artist on both sides of the Atlantic, get me to a theatre! We ran two nights a week right through the summer and it was a delight to work with Paul McCarthy and his wonderful team of technicians. We ran commensurate rare footage to accompany the songs and the intelligent, versatile set was very comfortable to work with. I met some great people after the shows most nights and they were profuse in their praise to my great delight.
I got a break in the middle of August to return to America and hook up with the band, “Captain Mackey’s Goatskin and Stringband” for the Irishfest at Milwaukee. It took nearly forty years for me to be invited to play here and I don’t know what it is about my current “cur chuige” or “modus operandi” that inspired those wise committee members and festival directors to engage me. I think I was reasonably interesting ten years ago: twenty years ago too-and they could have captured me in my prime thirty years ago! However, I guess it must have something to do with that fab new outfit of mine or the irresistible, indefatigable, irrepressible Máirtín de Cógáin.
Sailing was a regular feature of the summer and as well as Ceol fé Sheol, there was a delightful sail up the estuary to Ballydehob in West Cork with a fleet of traditional West Cork sailing fishing boats enjoying a tremendous revival. I had the good fortune to be crewing on Nigel Touse’s Hanora, the original flagship of the fleet and a boat that Nigel, a musician, thatcher and first-rate craftsman built with his own hands from the bare breastbones of the original Hanora. The fleet was very kindly invited for refreshments at actor Jeremy Iron’s castle en route and it was marvelous to visit one of the famous Irish castles of the South Coast, formerly owned by the famous Munster Clan, the McCarthys. This particular castle of Jeremy’s has withstood all sorts of sieges and bombardments from the Elizabethans onwards. I had a nice chat with Jeremy, who sails a lovely traditional sailboat, and he told me he has taken up the fiddle and finds it much more adaptable to Irish music than the guitar. The weather was kind to us and the fleet cut a pretty dash making right up to the quay with the tide.
I was guest at the Cape Clear International Storytelling Festival in September, my last engagement ere I returned to Amerikay. It is a professionally run event with amazingly well -conceived logistics for the transportational limitations of a small island in the Atlantic. I nearly moved to Cape Clear myself in the nineties; but circumstances moved me further westward to Feothanach, Co. Kerry. If Chuck Kruger has the southernmost house in Ireland, I dear say, with the exception of the western islands, I must have the westernmost. I found Cape to be a wonderful place; there was great respect from the fine international body of “tellers” and it was an honour for me to be chosen as the musician for the Year Nine.
September and October took us to the wonderful Jackson Festival in Mississippi, to Munroe in Louisiana, one of the friendliest festivals in America and to many duet gigs with Máirtín south of the Mason-Dixon line. I loved the Muskegon Irish festival in Michigan and it was a treat to be in the company of our guitarist, Don Penzien who as a Michigan man, proudly told us so much about local history and showed us the sights and sounds of this wonderful State. My friend, Mick Moloney, launched Captain Mackey’s debut album, Soldiers’ Songs: The Irish Abroad and Soldiering at Ireland House, part of the campus of New York University in Greenwich Village. Close friends and new friends amazed us with the concerted effort they made to entertain all the guests, Donie Carroll, my dear friend talked about me as a young fella in Douglas, Cork, smoking the pipe at fifteen upstairs on the number 6 bus and playing the mouth organ-though not at the same time-to entertain the passengers. Donie introduced Mick Moloney who made a nice speech about what the band stood for; the importance of the song tradition which had become a little bit swamped by instrumental music, an unbalance that The Stringband respectfully humbly hope to address.
Máirtín and me took a few long hikes out west in November; one to California and one to Arizona. I drove to New Orleans, stopping in Jackson at Val and Don’s house, a very hospitable establishment and later at my good friend Noel Reid’s house in New Orleans, doing a few solo house concerts to keep me going and pay me way, including a lovely night at my adopted State’s capital of Tallahassee. Arizona, when we reached there and met up, was even beyond the fertile imagination of those artists who decorate the covers of Western novels. Indeed, one of the places we played, at Flagstaff, was called the –wait for it! -the Zane Grey ballroom! Tumbling tumbleweeds, pyramidical cacti, nameless birds of the desert, it was all there in raging Technicolor as we drove, in Mairtin’s father-in-law Ali’s jeep through this sensational terrain convenient to Death Valley, no less.
Máirtín and me took a few long hikes out west in November; one to California and one to Arizona. I drove to New Orleans, stopping in Jackson at Val and Don’s house, a very hospitable establishment and later at my good friend Noel Reid’s house in New Orleans, doing a few solo house concerts to keep me going and pay me way, including a lovely night at my adopted State’s capital of Tallahassee. Arizona, when we reached there and met up, was even beyond the fertile imagination of those artists who decorate the covers of Western novels. Indeed, one of the places we played, at Flagstaff, was called the –wait for it! -the Zane Grey ballroom! Tumbling tumbleweeds, pyramidical cacti, nameless birds of the desert, it was all there in raging Technicolor as we drove, in Mairtin’s father-in-law Ali’s jeep through this sensational terrain convenient to Death Valley, no less.
Returning to delightful Dunedin, Florida, where the weather was warm and wonderful, I relished in being in one place for at least a week and set to work on the Big Book, as I call the first volume of my collection of Cork Urban ballads. Flying to New York some weeks later, I had the pleasure to work with Heather Bixley who can transcribe my singing of these ballads into music notation just as soon as they pass through my teeth. I can do it; but I’m too slow. Not only that, but all the nuances, the inflections that a traditional singer never assesses, she can likewise commit to paper. I spent a few lovely days working in Harlem with Heather, we teamed up for a few sessions in the evenings and once again, I stayed with my dear friends, Donie Carroll and Teresa Ward in Sunnyside, Queens. I’ve become very fond of New York, there is no finer, more inspiring city, as yet that I’ve had the good fortune to enjoy. I played a bit of bouzouki, sang the odd harmony and produced one of the tracks on Donie Carroll’s debut solo album which will turn few ears, I can tell you. He has found a lovely vocal territory encompassing Music hall, ballad, even lounge and some poignant First World War popular songs learned from his father Paddy Carroll, a great friend of my Da’s.
Went home for the Christmas once again; my mother, Olive, is ninety and I want to spent as many of the Christmases that I can with her. Despite dreadful weather, I had a great time. Went up to visit my friend Ado Morris in Spanish Point, Co Clare and we took the perilous, icy journey across the Burrnen to join Johnny Moynihan for a session at Kinvara.
Ma left the Nursing Home in her native parish of Douglas, just south of Cork City and made the long journey with my sister Geri to Thomastown, Co Kilkenny for the Christmas celebrations. I nearly made it, but came unstuck in black ice near their home in Chapel Hill, near Thomastown after a gig in Dungarvan, Co Waterford. The Wild Rover, as I call my trusty old Land Rover, despite all the warnings of cat weather from the met people only laughed at them and made her way through the ice and snow of the Leinster heartland towns like Mulliinivat, but as under the Lee of The Commeraghs I felt in my heart of hearts I was pushing my luck. Thank God for mobile phones! As the Wild Rover skeeted dangerously independent of brakes and engine, in a particularly portentous diagonal sweep towards the ivy-clad stone walls of County Killenny, I prayed that she has least would find a soft bed in the rushes, I somehow got the vehicle to stop; found a heavy stone or two and clamped ‘em behind the wheels and called John O’ Sullivan, my brother in law I was only one mile from his house. Soon I saw his welcome figure, torch in hand, trudging through the snow. Very gingerly he escorted me the long way home. I was a gorgeous Christmas in John and Ger’s, with Ma in high spirits and the “two maidens”, as I call my niece Aileen and Samantha, John’s daughter, being particularly engaging company. Then I had a lovely sojourn at my Kerry farmhouse on the Dingle Peninsula, which warmed up nicely despite the Artic conditions. I played a few gigs with my old pal, accordion player John Benny at his famous pub in Dingle and apparently Corca Dhuibhne, as we call the Dingle Penninsula in Irish was the warmest place in Ireland in January; I was able to take a walk most days on the mountains and Brandon was like the Matterhorn, eclipsed by snow; maybe skiing Mount Brandon is the future of Kerry Winter Tourism!
A delightful cruise in the Caribbean with Máirtín was welcome in late January, the Year Ten as an antidote to Hibernia. In the company of some enchanting fellow bards like Paddy Reilly, Mary Black, The Elders and a host of others, we sang away the winter blues around the sunny Wild Caribee, as Jerry O Neill calls it in his fine eponymous song.
And that brings me to the present, my dear friends, back waiting for St Bridget’s day tomorrow, (Feb 1) in delightful Dunedin in the Sunshine State.
Slán tamall, Jimmy.
