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Irish Examiner
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Irish Examiner
'There's great satisfaction in hearing your own tunes played': Jackie Daly turns 80
Jackie Daly, accordion legend, composer, Gradam Ceoil recipient, and renowned joke-teller, may already have the honour of putting the Lucrative into Sliabh Luachra, if only as one of his vast collection of puns. But as the Kanturk native celebrates his 80th birthday this weekend, now ranked among his proudest achievements is the title of the Man who put the Planxty into the Sliabh Luachra tradition. Steeped in the music of the Cork-Kerry border, whose tunes he first learned from fiddle master Pádraig O'Keeffe's past pupil Jim O'Keeffe, Daly has long made his own mark on the area's tradition as one of the finest purveyors of its polkas and slides, airs, reels, hornpipes, and jigs. In a career playing and recording with Dé Danann, Buttons & Bows, Arcady, and Patrick Street, and with duet partners including Séamus Creagh, Kevin Burke, Máire O'Keeffe, and Matt Cranitch, Daly's broader musical credentials on both accordion and concertina are impeccable. When public performances were curtailed during covid lockdown, his talents as a composer flourished and a trickle of new tunes became a torrent, culminating in the 2022 publication of The Jackie Daly Collection of 227 original works. Between the jigs and the reels are four planxties, reflective of the Irish harp melodies associated with Turlough O'Carolan, described by Daly as 'a little bit classical'. 'They never seemed to be part of the Sliabh Luachra tradition, so in my collection there's four of them and one of them is getting popular now – it's called Planxty Luachra,' he says. Among his musical accomplishments thus far, he adds: 'At the moment the one I'm most proud of is the planxty because it wasn't done before.' Considering the possibility that in another 80 years academics might pontificate on the origins of this Sliabh Luachra 'planxty tradition', he quips: 'I don't know if they will or not. We'll harp on that later. 'But I love the slides and polkas. There's three [self-composed] polkas - The Cat on the Half-Door, Pauline's Panache, and Joe Burke's – that have got popular now and a lot of people are playing them together. There's great satisfaction in hearing your own tunes played.' Beyond his new compositions, Daly has been helping to shape traditional music for decades through his arrangements, ornamentation, and reinterpretations of existing tunes, many becoming so well known that they are now themselves the standards. 'I should bring out another collection,' he says. 'There's lots of tunes that are not in the book because of the fact that I put extra parts to established tunes. They've become popularised as well, so in the future maybe I'll do something about that.' Already mulling the title of such a volume, he tells a tale of how a Sligo-Leitrim version of the tune The Bucks of Oranmore once earned the disapproval of musician John Kelly. 'Connie Connell was playing it in Dublin and John Kelly said to me 'what's that?'. He said 'Jackie, The Bucks should not be interfered with.' So I'm thinking of calling my book 'Jackie Daly and the ones he interfered with'.' All joking aside, in interpretations of tunes Daly respects the tradition and if he adds anything to the tune it's always in context, according to his long-time collaborator, fiddle player Matt Cranitch. 'On the recording that he did with Dé Danann on The Mist Covered Mountain, the set of reels The Cameronian and The Doon - and The Doon is a well-known Sliabh Luachra tune - every single note on that is a workshop in musical integrity,' says Cranitch. 'When an ornament is put in, they have incredible effect and meaning and this kind of thing doesn't happen by accident. It happens from his lifetime of music and the genius of the man himself.' Daly's lifetime in music is a world tour of festivals, concerts, and sessions from America to Japan, from Kanturk to his current home in Miltown Malbay, Co Clare, and of friendships and acquaintances, famous names, and fond memories. In four 'fantastic' years from 1978 with Dé Danann 'we played a lot in America and bluegrass festivals where they'd never heard Irish traditional music before and it went down a bomb,' he recalls. He went on to perform at 'a big festival in Milwaukee, one in Chicago, in Boston, lots of them, and the Catskills I did 13 years on the trot. I've even done a few tours of Japan.' Of all his collaborations, however, Daly acknowledges accordion-fiddle duets are his 'favourite kind of music' as the instruments 'go so well together'. Influential in popularising C#D, rather than B/C accordion tuning, he says: 'I was the first person to start tuning my box 'dry', as they call it; not using an awful lot of tremolo on it, so it fits in better with the fiddle - and some people even find it hard to differentiate between the fiddle and the box with that kind of tuning.' Eavesdropper, his 1981 duet album with Kevin Burke, earned great critical acclaim and his eponymous 1977 album with Séamus Creagh is for many people one of the seminal recordings of Sliabh Luachra music. Though a native of Westmeath and a former showband electric guitarist, he and Daly were both into the same things – 'music and music and music' – and Creagh fell in love with the Sliabh Luachra style. Séamus Creagh and Jackie Daly provided one of the seminal recordings of Sliabh Luachra music. Picture: Domhnall Ó Mairtín Daly, a fitter by trade, had joined the Dutch merchant navy at 18. 'I was also in Denmark in the late '60s and unfortunately I had a bad experience,' he says. 'I met my wife in Denmark when I was doing a training course and we got married but she passed away a year after. And that's when I packed up my work as a fitter and sold my house in Little Island. 'I started busking on the street and shortly after that I met Séamus Creagh and we took off together, which was great.' Regular fixtures together at The Gables and The Phoenix in Cork, Daly also recalls other gigs in far-flung corners. 'Lovely weekends when we'd play in Dingle on Saturday nights and Sundays we'd do Sherkin Island.' Creagh had taken on the job as the local postman on the Co Cork island. Though profoundly affected by the loss of his wife, her death also 'made me see that you should be doing the things that you love - and I loved music since I was a child', says Daly. Still doing what he loves, between gigs with Cranitch in Beara, Kenmare, and Ballydehob, Daly was back in Miltown Malbay last week, where he plays Friday sessions with fiddle player Eileen O'Brien. In Kerry, what Cranitch terms Daly's 'fiddle sensibility' derived from his early O'Keeffe influences, ensures 'when World Fiddle Day happens in Scartaglin every year he has a position of honour among all the fiddle players in the sense that he's considered to be part of that tradition'. This year, that connection was celebrated in Scartaglin with a tribute to Daly in advance of his 80th birthday this Sunday, his tunes taking centre stage with a new generation. 'They had a concert in my honour,' he says. 'All the musicians went up - a lot of them were young people - and played tunes of mine. It was beautiful to sit there and listen to them.' Jackie Daly is joined by Matt Cranitch, Eileen O'Brien, and Paul de Grae at the Gleneagle, Killarney, on June 27; support by Teorainn. See: Jackie Daly is joined by Matt Cranitch (left), Eileen O'Brien, and Paul de Grae at the Gleneagle, Killarney, on June 27 Jackie Daly: Question of Taste Current reading? My Oedipus Complex by Frank O'Connor. I love his writing. He was a very intelligent man and had a beautiful way of expressing himself. I read an awful lot and I go to the library every week. Current hobbies? I do crosswords all the time. I had a brain haemorrhage about 30 years ago and I was told that if you keep your mind busy, that's good. I do Sudoku as well. I had three aneurysms but I think my memory has improved slightly over the years and I still have the names of all the tunes. Current listening? I listen to any music that I consider to be good, but pop music I hate. The Beatles were good. Myself and Alec Finn took Hey Jude and made a hornpipe out of it and Alec got a letter from McCartney saying it was the best version of it that he came across. It's beautiful as a hornpipe – it's so melodic. What's important in your life right now? The news these days is bad. But I love going for walks and I do meditation. I love meeting people, talking to people - and yes, telling jokes.
Irish Times
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
Ray Burke on a landmark pub in Oranmore, Galway that played host to many well-known artistes
Anyone who travelled to Galway from Dublin or from the South of Ireland by road before the advent of motorways or bypasses cannot have missed the thatched pub that stands at the T-junction where the roads converged in Oranmore village. 'Quite a pretty place with a nice thatched pub, an old forge [and] a 1916 memorial' was how the RTÉ reporter Cathal O'Shannon described Oranmore village on a Newsbeat television programme in July 1967. 'All the traffic between Galway, Dublin and Limerick comes through here', he added, standing outside the thatched pub whose landmark location ensured that it attracted passing trade as well as local custom. The internationally renowned orchestra conductor and jazz pianist André Previn and his better-known future wife Mia Farrow were able to sit quietly talking and sipping Guinness in front of the pub's fireplace, unnoticed by any of the locals, shortly after O'Shannon's broadcast. READ MORE She had recently left her husband, Frank Sinatra, and she still sported her tom-boy hairstyle from the 1968 film Rosemary's Baby that made her famous. The couple had booked bed and breakfast next door to the pub in Oran Villa, a guesthouse owned by Maisie McDonagh, mother of the pub's proprietor, George. A group of musicians who could match André Previn in virtuosity arrived into the pub's lounge one Saturday a few years later at around midday. Three members of the nascent traditional Irish music group Planxty ventured tentatively into the empty lounge accompanied by their mentor, the master piper and broadcaster Seamus Ennis. Their fragile collective demeanours told that they were recovering from a late night. Less fortunate than the Hollywood actress or the famed musicians was the Galway hurler Mickey Burke, captain of the team that was beaten by Cork in the 1953 All-Ireland final. A farmer in Glennascaul, a mile north of the village, Mickey had his teeth knocked out by Cork's Christy Ring in that match. He was never again allowed to finish his drink of choice, a bottle of Guinness, in peace in the pub. His occasional daytime visits always ended prematurely when someone mentioned the 1953 final. More than 20 years after the match, Mickey invariably had to place his unfinished drink on the counter and walk out. Another occasional daytime customer was a fine, tall man who lived with his mother on Tawin Island, on the edge of Galway Bay and accessible via a narrow bridge. He never set a foot in the pub at night, but he used to call for a chat and a couple of pints whenever he cycled the seven miles to Oranmore for messages. The pub was usually quiet or maybe empty when he called at around midday. He was such a handsome, sturdy man that the bartender asked him one day why he had never married. He replied that when he had told his mother that he was thinking of getting married her response was: 'You have never yet had to iron your own shirt in this house' - 13 words that dictated the rest of his life. He never married and he never again raised the subject with his mother. A greater human tragedy overhung the arrival of three uniformed Gardai into the lounge one mid-winter Saturday afternoon. White-faced and wearing heavy overcoats, the Gardai exchanged barely a word and they left immediately after consuming two double-brandies each in quick succession. They were returning from the scene of a fatal car crash on the road to Galway. Oranmore village had fewer than 200 residents in 1967. Some feared that a road bypass proposed in Galway Co Council's draft development plan would turn it into 'a ghost town'. The most recent Census recorded a population of 4,721 in the Oranmore electoral division. The village hinterland was entirely agricultural until the 1960s when the first local industry was established. Producing pre-cast and ready-mixed concrete, it was known locally as 'the factory'. One of its original employees lived in the village. He had charge of one of the factory's machines, but he regularly took unofficial leave to spend part of each day in McDonagh's pub. He always went home at lunchtime to avoid any factory manager who might call into the pub for a newspaper or a packet of cigarettes. 'You'd need to be careful Amby or they'll sack you and put somebody else in charge of that machine', a fellow drinker advised him one morning. 'They can't', Amby replied instantly, 'I have the key to it here in my pocket'.
New York Times
15-05-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Christy Moore, Ireland's Folk Music Legend, Is Still Writing History
A sudden buzz crackled through the 2011 Oxegen Music Festival as one of pop's starriest power couples — Beyoncé, who was performing on the final night, and Jay-Z — made their way backstage at the summer fete in the rolling countryside of County Kildare, Ireland. An older gentleman (bald, barrel-chested, in a black T-shirt) held open a door to the V.I.P. entrance for them. Sweeping past, Jay-Z pressed a $50 bill into the man's hands, assuming he was a staff member or security — unaware he'd just tipped Ireland's most beloved living musician, Christy Moore. Moore closed the festival that night, as the surprise guest of the headliners, Coldplay. Performing his soaring 1984 anthem 'Ride On,' he heard 60,000 fans roar at his introduction ('One of our heroes since we were kids,' Chris Martin announced), sing along at full volume and chant his name. Born in nearby Newbridge, Moore had returned home after a long, celebrated career as a singer, songwriter, solo artist and leader of the groundbreaking folk band Planxty and the Celtic rock collective Moving Hearts. He'd become an icon, a national treasure — but a man still easily mistaken for the help. 'Once, at Carnegie Hall,' Moore recalled gleefully during a recent interview, 'a critic wrote, 'When Moore came out, I presumed he was a stagehand coming to move the piano.' I think that review was OK.' Moore, who turned 80 earlier this month, finds himself at a surprising professional peak. Last year, his 25th studio LP, 'A Terrible Beauty,' debuted at No. 1 in Ireland, besting Sabrina Carpenter and Tyler, the Creator. Once a globe-trotting touring artist, these days Moore only plays his native island, performing solo — accompanying himself on guitar, bodhran drum or sometimes singing a cappella — while exploring a repertoire of songs that cut across 600 years of history. Whether singing about the Blanket Protests ('90 Miles From Dublin'), detailing the Stardust nightclub tragedy ('They Never Came Home') or pondering post-Troubles reconciliation ('North and South of the River,' his collaboration with U2), Moore has made a career charting his nation's tragedies, triumphs and often difficult progress. 'Christy occupies a very rarefied part of Irish culture preserved for those who are trusted to speak of, from and for the Irish people,' said the Edge of U2. 'It's an almost priestly role, but one he handles without ever becoming pompous or taking himself too seriously.' In a music business perennially in thrall to the latest tech and trends, Moore is a rarity. 'I've not been on a plane for 25 years, not been on a ferry for five,' he said. 'I don't engage closely with social media. I use an old Nokia. I've been on the road since 1966, and yet my audience seems to get younger as I grow older.' As Moore's fan base has evolved, its affection for his music has grown more intense. 'It's something else to hear Christy achieve a connection to an arena or festival-sized crowd,' said Elvis Costello, a friend. 'There were times when I saw him when the audience's participation was almost overwhelming — but he was always in charge.' That depth of feeling for Moore is down to the fact that 'Irish people see themselves in Christy,' said Patrick Kielty, host of the country's long-running television institution, 'The Late Late Show.' 'Part of it is because he does look like he could be the doorman at the venue,' Kielty added. 'If you saw Christy behind a wheelbarrow, you'd think that looks right. But when you see him with a guitar, you go, no, that looks better. And when you hear him sing, you know that's what he was meant to do.' IT WAS EASTER SUNDAY in Mountmellick — a small town in the Midlands of Ireland — as Moore sat for what turned out to be his first ever video interview. Wearing a knit hat and rimless glasses, his blue eyes widened with wonder as he peered into a laptop and came face-to-face with an interlocutor some 5,000 miles away. 'Jaysus,' marveled Moore in his gentle burr. 'This is amazing.' Backstage at the Mountmellick Community Arts Center, Moore was preparing to play a concert for 450 fans, his most intimate show of the year. Though he once gigged 67 consecutive nights at the start of his career in the '60s, Moore now performs once or twice a week, for audiences typically ranging from 1,000 to 5,000, before returning home each night to the Dublin suburb of Dun Laoghaire, and his wife of 52 years, Valerie Isaacson. Going to a Christy Moore concert has long been a popular ritual in Ireland. In 1994, he played 12 shows for 50,000 fans in Dublin, resulting in his classic 'Live at the Point' album — which stayed on the Irish charts for 11 years straight. Moore traced his current renaissance to the pandemic in 2020, when he filmed a series of online 'Lockdown Sessions' performances, ushering in a new wave of fans. 'A lot of people will be coming to see me for the first time tonight,' Moore said, 'many of them in their 20s, and that brings its own energy. I also have occasions where grandparents, parents, kids and great-grandkids — four generations — pop up together too.' Over the course of his career, Moore has been variously an ardent champion of folk music like Pete Seeger, and also a disrupter of its tradition in the manner of Bob Dylan. Like Kris Kristofferson and Jackson Browne, he's penned exquisite love songs but brought equal passion to tales of political outrage and social injustice. Yet somehow his appeal hasn't been limited by his unwavering moral compass and outspokenness. A Moore concert offers the same inclusive, ecstatic communal spirit one might find at a Bruce Springsteen show. In an email, the president of Ireland, Michael D. Higgins, said that Moore was 'a rare talent, but more than that, a deeply humane spirit. Christy's work reminds us that the arts, and music in particular, are not simply forms of frivolous entertainment, but play an important role as vital expressions of our shared humanity, of our griefs and joys.' Moore sees what he does in more modest terms. 'I'm a rambling Irishman who sings for his supper,' he said. 'I like the concept of the old traveler singers who went from town to town singing on the streets and selling their penny broadsheets, carrying the news.' 'A Terrible Beauty' — set to be rereleased in an expanded edition this summer — certainly plays like a timely report, with stark narratives about domestic violence and homelessness, the killing of the journalist Lyra McKee, and the conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza. 'Christy's gift is that he's always able to sing the right song about the right thing at the right time,' said Kielty, who conducted a powerful, emotional interview with Moore about the album last fall on 'The Late Late Show,' a program the musician has been a fixture on since 1972. Moore closed that appearance with a performance of 'Viva La Quinta Brigada,' his song about how some Irish volunteered to fight against fascism in the Spanish Civil War, while others were seduced by it. It was a meaningful choice, given that the country has seen its share of far-right invective and violence in recent years. 'One of the reasons why people are tuning into Christy in droves currently is that Ireland has changed,' Kielty said. 'As we change, we look to certain artists to try to work it out for us, like, 'Who the hell are we now? What does it all mean?' I know, we'll go and see Christy Moore. It's almost like we're going to have an audience with the sage to get his take on things.' FROM THE TIME he first began exploring the ancient folk collections in his local library as a teen, the main thrust of Moore's life has been songs: rediscovering old tunes, writing new ones and making the work of others feel like his own. Moore has been the pre-eminent interpreter for several generations of great Irish songwriters — Jimmy MacCarthy of Southpaw, Shane MacGowan of the Pogues, Brian Brannigan of A Lazarus Soul. He's given voice to the words of the I.R.A. hunger striker Bobby Sands, the Native American rights campaigner Floyd Red Crow Westerman and the Seattle political activist Jim Page, and reimagined the works of Woody Guthrie, Dylan and Costello. 'It is something else again to have Christy sing one of your songs,' Costello said. He noted that Moore's rendition of 'The Deportees Club' — 'at first manhandled and later simplified, so its story was clear,' as he explained — 'was an inspiration to me.' Over the years, Moore has played those songs on picket lines and in prisons, and recorded tracks critical of the Catholic Church, corrupt politicians and merchants of corporate greed — efforts that have made him a target for harassment by the government, the courts and the press. But Moore has never shied from challenging anyone, including his own audience at times. 'There's little sense in singing a song of conscience to an audience that's uniformly in agreement,' Costello said, 'and Christy's been willing to make the case in his song interpretations. As much as they come from within the song, they also come from within the man.' Even as music is increasingly treated as a background utility, Moore retains his faith in its power. 'Songs have changed my thinking,' he said. 'I've been educated by songs, soothed, angered, encouraged, driven, calmed in the dark of night. I've had songs banned, slated, loved, lauded. Songs can change me, change you; there is power in that, a power that can change the world.' Last month, the Irish Traditional Music Archive — which acquired Moore's manuscripts and recordings — announced plans for a major exhibition on his career to open in January. 'The real news, the real versions of what happened historically has always been in the old songs,' Moore observed. 'Hopefully that's encouraging to young songwriters to show that they can be telling the truth of what's happening today.' As he prepared to mark his 80th, Moore was pressed as to whether he had any creative or career goals left. He pondered the question for a long moment, before his manager came to remind him that the audience in Mountmellick — 20-somethings and multiple generations of families alike — would soon be filing in to see him play. 'I've been very privileged in my life and my music. I've no regrets, no great ambitions to fulfill,' he said, smiling, 'apart from making it home safe tonight.'
