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Kernan Andrews

Kernan Andrews


Last Updated: 11/2/2009

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Gender: Male
Status: In a Relationship
Age: 32
Sign: Pisces

City: Galway city
State: Galway
Country: IE
Signup Date: 8/3/2006

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Thursday, October 29, 2009 

Category: Music
By Kernan Andrews

MARTIN TOAL, the popular and much acclaimed English tenor, is possibly Fabio Capello’s secret weapon - because when he sings ‘God Save The Queen’ before an England game, they win without conceding.Martin is coming to Galway to give a concert in St Nicholas’ Collegiate Church on Sunday November 8 at 8pm as part of the Spirit Of Voice festival. He will also give a vocal technique workshop in Áras Na nGael, Dominick Street, that same day at 2pm.On the night Martin will perform songs from his new album Cockles, Mussels, and Arias as well as from his debut album Aria Celtica.“I will sing a mix of operatic and Irish songs like ‘Granada’, ‘Nessun Dorma’, ‘The Wild Rover’, and ‘Carrickfergus’, a beautiful, beautiful song,” Martin tells me during our Monday morning interview. “People will know all the songs. What I am trying to do with my music is to show the power of these beautiful Irish songs to a classical audience and of the operatic songs to a folk audience.”
Manchester Irish
Martin was born in Manchester into a family with strong Irish roots and he can certainly appreciate the sentiments of his fellow Mancunian Morrissey, when the latter sings ‘Irish Blood, English Heart’.“My dad’s mother and father are Irish,” says Martin. “Like many Irish people in the 1930s they came to England and met over here. Granddad was from Armagh and Granny was from Ballyhaunis in Mayo. My dad has 100 per cent Irish blood in his veins even though he was born in Manchester.“There has always been an Irish influence in our household and I would have grown up hearing a lot of Irish songs. Manchester has a very strong Irish community. Three years ago I sang at the Manchester Irish Festival at the Manchester Town Hall and this year I opened the festival. Ireland has a very strong place in my heart. It’s genetic.”The Toal family enjoyed music and sing-songs at parties and family gatherings and one of these family sing-songs provided the spur that would convince Martin to train as a tenor.“My mum’s dad had a great voice and I sang a bit in the school choir but that was it,” says Martin. “For me it all started with the Three Tenors concert in 1990 just before the World Cup. I was watching Plácido Domingo, José Carreras, and Luciano Pavarotti and thought it was fantastic, then at another of those parties I stood up and sang ‘Nessun Dorma’ and someone said ‘You should get that voice heard’.”Martin could have little idea that singing and football would become inextricably linked in his life. In 1991 he was teaching in the boys’ Catholic grammar school in south Manchester, but decided to follow the advice he received at the party.Between 1991 and 2004, he trained part-time with mezzo soprano Jane Irwin and then with Wagnerian tenor and former head of opera studies at Manchester’s Royal Northern College of Music, Jeffrey Lawton.By 2002 Martin was head of modern languages at the grammar school and was singing part time. He was enjoying some success having sung at some sporting and corporate events and performing the lead roles in Bizet’s Carmen, Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin, and Puccini’s Tosca.However the crossroads in his career came in 2004 when he was asked to sing the anthems at the England v Turkey international. His performance was so well received that afterwards his father took him aside and said: “Look Martin, you’re a singer now, not a teacher.”“That convinced me,” says Martin. “It was time to pack in teaching and give 100 per cent to the singing.”
Manchester United
Since then Martin has regularly sung ‘God Save The Queen’ at English football and Rugby internationals in Old Trafford; Elland Road, Leeds; the KC stadium in Hull (with Lesley Garrett), the Millennium Stadium, Cardiff; the JJB stadium; and at Wembley. For Martin though, his most memorable experience of singing that anthem took place in Ireland.“To have sung it at Wembley before the England v Israel game in front of 90,000 people was wonderful but my favourite memory was singing it at Windsor Park in Belfast when England played Northern Ireland,” he says. “What was interesting about that game was that only one anthem had to be sung as both use ‘God Save The Queen’. To hear 70,000 people all singing at once, with no rival supporters booing or making noise was fantastic. I will always remember that.”Over the last five years Martin has proven to be a valuable asset to the England football team and has become popularly known as ‘England’s Winning Tenor’.“What happened is that I have sung the national anthem, three times at Old Trafford, in Sunderland’s Stadium Of Light, and at Wembley against Israel, and each time England has won and not conceded,” he said. “I did ask, at a special dinner the FA held for Fabio Capello, that if England qualified for the World Cup, not to forget to take me along. I’m still waiting for that call!“My dream would be to sing at a major event like the World Cup final, either the English or Irish anthem. It would be wonderful. On November 14, just a week after I play Galway I will be singing at Twickenham for the England v Argentina rugby game. I’ll be singing the Argentinean anthem so I’m learning that at the moment. It will be wonderful to sing at Twickenham. I hope England don’t lose. I might get the blame and have to leave the country!”Given his Manchester birth and the fact that he has performed at Old Trafford, Martin is not surprisingly a keen follower of Manchester United.“We are a very strong Manchester United family,” he declares and he can count Denis Irwin (the former Irish international and mamber of the Man U treble winning side in 1999) as a friend. However Martin has also rubbed shoulders with Man U manager Sir Alex Ferguson and once performed for him at the annual Irish Abroad event in Manchester.“That was November 2005 and it was the night George Best died,” recalls Martin. “I sang ‘Time To Say Goodbye’ and Alex Ferguson said he was extremely impressed with that. My son, who is 16, plays football for Altringham which is managed by Sir Alex’s son Jason. I’m there watching my son play football and the great man himself is watching right beside you.”The red half of Manchester has had plenty to cheer about under Ferguson but does Martin think the Abu Dhabi United Group’s investment in bitter rivals Man City could start to see them taking over from United in the coming years?“United have to be very careful and keep watch over their shoulder,” he says. “City aren’t just planning to get into the top four, they also want to be the biggest team in Manchester. I hope it doesn’t happen but I have great respect for Mark Hughes who is a Man United legend. It will be very interesting, it will be watch this space, but they have to do it on the pitch and that is where United keep on top.”

Tickets for the St Nicholas’ concert are €13/10 from Zhivago and Charlie Byrnes. Cockles, Mussels, and Arias will be available at the concert before being released on November 9 and available through www.martintoal.com and HMV. For more information see www.spiritofvoice.com and for the workshop contact Julie on 087 - 9955535.
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Thursday, October 15, 2009 

Category: Music
By Kernan Andrews

SHE WAS the gentle but sensuous and hypnotic voice of Mazzy Star. Today she takes that voice into quieter, more sparse, musical realms backed by My Bloody Valentine drummer Colm Ó Cíosóig. She is Hope Sandoval.
Hope Sandoval & The Warm Inventions - featuring Ó Cíosóig and Irish band Dirt Blue Gene - will play Strange Brew at the Róisín Dubh on Thursday October 29 at 8pm. 
Hope was born into a large Mexican-American family in east Los Angeles in 1966. At that time, California was becoming the centre of the hippy counter culture but in LA, the Watts Riots showed there was a dark underbelly to the Sunshine State.
“I grew up in a very rough neighbourhood and these things always cast a shadow on your personality,” says Hope. “I definitely have used those childhood memories in my music.”
By her own admission, Hope grew up “introverted, shy, and quiet” but music provided an outlet for expression. “Music has always been in my life,” she says.
Hope’s father encouraged his daughter’s interest in music by buying her a guitar when she was 12. Three years later she took her first steps as a songwriter. “I was 15 and I wrote my first song with Sylvia Gomez and it was called ‘Shane’,” she says.
Five years later, in 1986, Hope and Sylvia formed a folk duo called Going Home and recorded an album produced by songwriter and guitarist David Roback - an active member of LA’s Paisley Underground scene.
Going Home’s album was never released but meeting Roback was a major turning point in Hope’s life, leading her to move to the San Francisco Bay Area. “I came here to work with David,” she said. “It was in the month of October and I fell in love with the beautiful atmosphere.”
The meeting also led to Hope becoming part of one of the most admired US alternative bands of the 1990s - Mazzy Star.
Mazzy Star began as Opal, a collaboration between Roback and singer Kendra Smith, when Smith left Hope took her place and the duo changed the band’s name to Mazzy Star. The band’s dark psychedelia showed the influence of The Doors and The Velvet Underground, while, as Allmuisc.com said, “their fuzzy guitar workouts and plaintive folky compositions are often suffused in a dissociative ennui that is very much of the 1990s.”
Mazzy Star released three albums - She Hangs Brightly (1990), So Tonight That I Might See (1993), and Among My Swan (1996). Since then the band have remained inactive but in July Hope told Rolling Stone that a fourth Mazzy Star album is being planned. However she admits it is taking time owing to the geographical distance between the two members.
“Both David and myself live in different countries,” she tells me. “It makes working difficult as we need to be together during the process and the distance stretches the time.”
Since 1996 though Hope has kept herself busy by collaborating with a variety of different artists, including Air, folk great Bert Jansch, and The Chemical Brothers. She is due to appear on the next Massive Attack album and has given support to Devendra Banhart and folk-band Vetiver.
“We love Vetiver,” declares Hope, “and when Andy [Cabic, band leader] asked us to be involved with their first album we were flattered. He’s an amazing songwriter. It’s always good to hear new great music.”
Hope was not destined to remain in the background and in 2001 she re-emerged with a new band Hope Sandoval & The Warm Inventions and in October of that year released the album Bavarian Fruit Bread. 
Among the members of The Warm Inventions is the former My Bloody Valentine drummer Colm Ó Cíosóig, whom Hope describes as “kooky, lumpy, and loveable”. How did she come to work with him? “We got to know each other about 12 years ago in London,” she says. “We met in a club there. Eventually he moved out to California and we just started playing music together.”
As with Mazzy Star’s long awaited fourth album, Hope took a long time to release the follow-up to Bavarian Fruit Bread. It was only this year that Through The Devil Softly came out. Why the eight year gap?
“After what happened in New York in 2001 we became afraid and spent a lot of time speculating and some of the speculations were more frightening than the bombs themselves,” she said. “It seemed to pale the importance of music for us, but then of course we realised it was the best remedy.”
Aside from world events, events in the music world also delayed the recording of the album. My Bloody Valentine re-formed and Ó Cíosóig was back as sticksman for Kevin Sheilds.
“The My Bloody Valentine reunion did catch us off guard,” admits Hope, “but it gave me more time to spend listening to the record and change anything that needed to be changed, or in other words, over analyse the record and indulge myself with more time to work on it.”
Eventually Hope, Colm, and Dirt Blue Gene were able to resume recording Through The Devil Softly, the songs being written in California and Ireland. Inspiration, for many of Hope’s songs it seems, comes from a little bit of eavesdropping.
“There is nothing better than sitting in a restaurant and eavesdropping on the table next to you,” says Hope. “With a little bit of imagination, by the end of the night you have a story.”
When it came to recording the songs, the approach was more one of imagination than science.
“We write our little songs and if they’re still sparkling in the morning they tell us what they want to sound like,” she says. “Sometimes they stay exactly the same, sometimes we hear ghost guitars, or a sound that isn’t necessarily an instrument, just a sound we try to recreate. The best music is ideas that are shared.”
Performing them live can sometimes be daunting. Rolling Stone noted how Hope is “notoriously terrified” about performing in public. “I don’t perform,” Hope says. “I sing live and I do feel like myself though it can be a bit awkward at times.”

Tickets are available from the Róisín Dubh and Zhivago. Gugai will be DJing afterwards. 

To read more at www.advertiser.ie/galway CLICK HERE
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Thursday, October 08, 2009 

Category: Movies, TV, Celebrities
By Kernan Andrews

AS THE mad haired Ballymagash town councillor, the beleaguered Gobnait O’Lunacy, and the outrageous Fr Jack Hackett, Frank Kelly has played three of the most iconic and memorable characters in Irish comedy, and this month he is bringing one of them to Galway.
Frank Kelly is coming to the Galway Comedy Festival to host Stand Up Comedy From The Characters Of Fr Ted in the Town Hall Theatre on Thursday October 22 and Friday 23 at 8pm.
On the night, Frank will be in character as Fr Jack Hackett to present performances by Joe Rooney (Fr Damo), Patrick McDonnell (Eoin McLove), and Michael Redmond (Fr Stone).
“I’m excited about doing this,” Frank tells me during our Tuesday morning interview. “As Fr Jack I will be introducing the comedians. It will be mad. I’m arriving into another generation’s comedy and going in at the deep end but that’s what I like. I will not resign and never retire. I hope to be like Tommy Cooper and die in the middle of a TV show. It will be fun and Fr Jack is very dangerous if you cross him. If they do they will be wiped out.”
Frank was born in Dublin in 1938, the son of the cartoonist Charles E Kelly, whose witty cartoons were a hallmark of the Dublin Opinion magazine. Charles’s sense of humour and satirical outlook were an important influence on his son.
Growing up in a house where there was that satirical atmosphere was bound to affect your development,” says Frank. “I think I was subsuming it all.”
Frank is one of Irish comedy’s most iconic figures, one with whom each generation can identify, whether it be through Fr Ted, Hall’s Pictorial Weekly, or Wanderly Wagon. As well as television he has also enjoyed a long career in the theatre, having worked at the Gate with Hilton Edwards and Micheál MacLiammóir and starring in Hugh Leonard’s Da and The Patrick Pearse Motel. He also appeared in films such as Yu Ming Is Ainm Dom (2003), Evelyn (2002), War of the Buttons (1994), Hear My Song (1991), Ryan’s Daughter (1970), and The Italian Job (1969).
“In The Italian Job I was a warder and it was I who released Michael Caine out of prison and led him into Nöel Coward,” says Frank. “I was in Ryan’s Daughter as the ‘silent corporal’, the ‘lanky corporal’s friend. I brought my wife and my babies down to Dingle while we were filming and we stayed there for quite some time. I had a car and inherited a driver and was driven all over Kerry at the expense of the film company. I had a great time...while I had it.”
Hall’s Pictorial Weekly
It was through Hall’s Pictorial Weekly that Frank became a household name. Presented by journalist and broadcaster Frank Hall, and starring Frank Kelly, Eamon Morrissey, Paul Murphy, and Pat Daly, the show ran from 1970 to 1982. Highly satirical, it pointedly and hilariously ridiculed the political establishment, particularly the 1973-77 Fine Gael/Labour Government.
“It was a very disparate government,” recalls Frank, “made up of very different characters like Conor Cruise O’Brien and Garret FitzGerald who wore odd socks, or was it shoes? That was wonderful material. You can go to town on that. That doesn’t mean Garret was stupid but boy was he a good target.”
FitzGerald may have been a good target but Hall’s reserved its most savage satire for the then Taoiseach Liam Cosgrave and the deeply disliked Minister for Finance Richie Ryan - what made them such attractive targets?
“It was an eccentric government whose members tended to work against each other and contradict each other,” says Frank. “Richie Ryan was radical and brought in things like DIRT tax which had never been heard of before. He was considered someone to run from if you saw him coming down the street. He was a very contentious minister. Eamon Morrissey did a terrifying take of him and Liam Cosgrave in a string vest and bowler hat, plucking bats out of the air and eating them.”
Hall’s is widely regarded as having played an important role in undermining the credibility of that coalition.
“We are credited with doing that but I think it’s a matter of faith,” says Frank. “The show went to the jugular vein hard and did contribute to a slide in the Government’s fortunes. What satire does is to show the obverse side of how government operates and satire is purgative, otherwise we’d all tow the one line.”
The FG/Labour coalition lost power following Fianna Fáil’s 1977 landslide victory which saw Jack Lynch become taoiseach for the second time. Frank’s take on Lynch’s avuncular persona, best seen in his “I’m happy, you’re happy, we’re all happy” routine for Hall’s captured the state of government as the economy headed toward recession and industrial unrest rose sharply.
“I enjoyed doing the Jack Lynch character and received a Jacob’s TV Award for it,” recalls Frank. “On the awards night the guest of honour was Jack Lynch! Afterwards he and I drank an entire bottle of Paddy whiskey. His wife Maureen was in toilet refusing to come out because I was there and my wife was with her pleading for her to come and join us. He was a charming gentleman I must say.”
During this time Frank also hosted his own radio comedy programme The Glenabbey Show. It produced Frank’s most memorable character (until Fr Jack) in the form of the flat cap, brown coated, and trouserless Gobnait O’Lunacy, who would eventually give us the immortally funny ‘Christmas Countdown’ (the 12 days of Christmas). It earned Frank an appearance on Top Of The Pops in 1982 and a letter from England’s Queen Elizabeth II.
“I think a handmaid wrote it,” says Frank, “but it said ‘her majesty got great pleasure from your song’ and so forth. I have it hanging upstairs.”
Fr Ted
Frank was kept busy in the early 1990s with film roles before comedy writers Graham Linehan and Arthur Mathews approached him with the idea of playing the part of an irascible priest called Fr Jack Hackett for a new show called Fr Ted.
“In Hall’s Pictorial Weekly I used to play this crazy town councillor with his hair standing in a point at the top of his head and this is who Graham and Arthur had in mind when they were creating Jack,” says Frank. “They wanted to have three generations of priests represented by three generations of Irish comedy - so they had me, Dermot, and Ardal.”
Fr Jack’s character - drunk, obscene, unpredictable, and seemingly possessing only four words; “Drink! Feic! Arse! Girls!” - turned him into one of the most memorable TV comedy characters of all time.
“I think he was so utterly irreverent that he was beyond effrontery,” says Frank. “He also lit things up when things were getting out of hand.”
Yet Father Ted itself is iconic. It has had such an impact on Irish viewers that many people have never got over the series. It was such a turning point in their lives that a little bit of them will always be in 1995-1998, quoting lines and watching repeats again and again. What accounts for this phenomenon?
“You have to look to the writing,” says Frank. “They cast it suitably. The characters are memorable. You can judge it on different levels. For the young there is The Beano comic element of outrageous events which children can tap into it. Older viewers see the satire of the Church they have known.
“The programme also came at a time when the old John Charles McQuaid Church was disappearing and the scandals were emerging. It allowed Catholics to laugh at themselves rather than only laughing at Jews and Protestants. Ireland is becoming more secular but I don’t think the Church is going away. I think it will mutate into something more democratic, involving the laity, hopefully.”

Tickets for the Fr Ted show are available from the Town Hall on 091 - 569777 and from Ticketmaster. See also www.galwaycomedyfestival.com

To read more at www.advertiser.ie/galway CLICK HERE
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Thursday, October 01, 2009 

Category: Music
By Kernan Andrews

UNDERGROUND PSYCHEDELIC folk-rockers Agitated Radio Pilot and Yawning Chasm are releasing new EPs on the independent Rusted Rail label. The EPs will be officially launched at a gig featuring both artists upstairs in the Róisín Dubh on Tuesday at 8pm.
Rusted Rail is run by Galwegian Keith Wallace who feels both EPs - Agitated Radio Pilot’s A Field Day and Yawning Chasm’s The Shadow Is That Hidden - sum up what he is trying to achieve with the label.
“There is an entire world within the songs on these EPs,” Keith tells me as we sit for the interview on a Thursday afternoon. “Both Aaron and Dave would have played together over the years and now they are labelmates. It goes back to this community ideal in music which existed in the late 1960s and early 1970s, which I find very inspiring.
“No one is there to be popular or to jump on a bandwagon that left town four years ago. It’s all to do with the music and what’s in it, not with marketing or haircuts. You hear music, you don’t see it. I’d like Rusted Rail to be a home for this kind of music. I’d like to think the label has its own identity and that people will say ‘It’s on Rusted Rail I must check it out’.”
Agitated Radio Pilot is singer-songwriter Dave Colohan and the seven track A Field Day is his second Rusted Rail release. It is an impressive example of modern psychedelic-folk. It may take a couple of listens to get used to but soon beguiles with its poetic and deeply personal lyrics, and its autumnal, pastoral atmosphere.
Dave is a great admirer of The Incredible String Band and Fairport Convention and English psychedelic folk is a major influence.
“I love that music and I think it has something to do with purity and the experience of it,” Dave tells me. “Those bands weren’t afraid to take on what came out of The Beatles’ ‘Strawberry Fields’ and explore that further. I also like the link between landscape and music that is evoked by these bands, not only in their words but in the sounds their instruments make. It’s like the creation of a pastoral Nevernever Land.”
Stand out tracks include ‘Far North’ which rises into a wah-wah guitar driven crescendo and ‘The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things’, which sounds as if Dave is being backed by a sitar. However it is actually a weird sounding guitar borrowed from Aaron Coyne.
The EP had an unusual genesis with much of it being written a number of years ago in Australia before being left untouched until “the cajoling of Keith Wallace” helped it see the light of day.
“The lyrics came before the music,” says Dave. “I wrote the music for this EP in the last year but I had no lyrics to go with it. Keith heard the new music and liked it but I explained I had no lyrics. He encouraged me to look up some of my old notebooks from when I was in the band Holt and we were touring Australia. So it ended up with this unlikely pairing of recent music and words from a certain time and about certain people.”
Keith was impressed by the final result and offered to release them on Rusted Rail. Dave is pleased the songs are released and beleives A Field Day’s fuller sound, featuring a number of contributing musicians, “captures the Pilot in transition”.
Yawning Chasm is the stage name of Galway underground singer-songwriter Aaron Coyne. He is well known to many music heads in the city as one half of electro/guitar band Mirakil Whip, but through Yawning Chasm he explores, like Agitated Radio Pilot, a modern, ruminative, psychedelic folk-rock.
“I was writing songs on mandolin and they had no home so I started to record them under the name of Yawning Chasm,” Aaron tells me. “I liked the name as it signified a wide open space that gives me the freedom to travel in any direction I like. I was doing gigs under the name but never released any of the songs. Then I recorded this fresh batch over the last couple of months and Keith offered to put them out.”
The stand-out track on the EP is ‘Tumble River’ where Aaron’s voice echoes through a sinister, swirling, spindly sound produced by a Yamaha Portosound keyboard fed through several effects pedals. Although I hate pigeon holing things, the song is excellent Goth-psych-folk.
“My main instrument is a tenor guitar, which has four strings, and the mandolin,” says Aaron. “The keyboard sound was inspired by the sound of water. At the time I was living by the River Corrib and you would hear this noise constantly outside the window. It was like white noise on a radio, and that’s where the idea of the song came from.”
The EP’s six songs were written, performed, and recorded by Aaron onto 4-track cassette in the cosy confines of a shed in Galway, throughout April, May, and June. It may sound primitive (4-track was the height of technology in 1967!) but The Shadow Is That Hidden has a rich, deep, and full sound, more impressive than its humble origins suggest.
This more intimate form of recording music has becoming increasingly popular among musicians and seems linked with the rise of independent labels and music becoming available via the internet.
“You’re against the clock in a studio and you can feel rushed and end up being unhappy with what you recorded,” says Aaron. “In these alternative settings you can take your time. This way you can record where you are comfortable. You have time to tinker around. It’s more immediate.”
“There is a community of people now who record in sheds or a kitchen,” says Keith. “Bon Iver recorded For Emma, Forever Ago in a cabin in the woods in Wisconsin, but he had electricity so it was possible to do.”

Admission is €5. The EPs will be available on the night and afterwards from www.rustedrail.com and www.myspace.com/rustedrail. Both EPs come in a 3” hand-stamped format housed in a handmade sleeve.

To read more at www.advertiser.ie/galway CLICK HERE
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Thursday, September 24, 2009 

Category: Music
By Kernan Andrews

STRANGE BREW, the Róisín Dubh’s night to showcase the best new bands and the latest, most interesting indie/alternative, reaches it’s 350th night next month. Headlining is a band who called it a day in February, only to return stronger, more focused, and with a fine new album - Delorentos.
Delorentos - Kieran McGuinness (guitar, vocals), Ró Yourell (guitar, vocals), Níal Conlan (bass), and Ross McCormick (drums) - play the Strange Brew 350th night in the Róisín Dubh on Thursday October 1 at 7pm.
On the night the band will play tracks from their new album You Can Make Sound, which will be released on the band’s own DeloRecords label on October 9.
“I’m delighted the record is coming out,” Kieran tells me during our Monday morning conversation. “To release a first LP is amazing but to release a second LP is doubly amazing, as we feel it’s an improvement on the first album, it has stronger songs, and is a development of what we want to do.”
That the album saw the light of day with the band still intact is also amazing, given that, as Kieran admits, “there was a messy period over the last six to eight months”, during which the band announced it would splitting after a final tour.
The news was greeted with shock and disappointment by fans who had sent Delorentos 2007 debut album In Love With Detail into the Top 10, and by music critics who had high hopes for the Co Dublin quartet. Then, after a triumphant gig in the Róisín Dubh on May 21, Gugai announced from the stage that Delorentos would not be splitting, but instead were carrying on, to the sound of huge and enthusiastic cheers.
So what had gone on during those “messy” months?
“When we finished the last album we locked ourselves away and worked our asses off in writing new material and in trying to set up deals to release the album independently in the UK and on the Continent,” says Kieran. “We stopped gigging, and being locked away all the time we got cabin fever and started getting annoyed with each other.
“Then we were offered a very attractive record deal and it was a dream come true and they were saying that next summer we would be touring Japan and Australia, so we pulled out of the other deals we had organised, but then, because of the recession, the deal with the label fell through, and we now had a contract that wasn’t worth anything.
“So we poured everything into the writing. The songs were coming out but we weren’t getting along and one day Ró said he was leaving. We had started this band together so we decided we would end it together. People hadn’t seen or heard us in a long time. By the time the statement came out we had broken up for a month.
“People were asking for gigs and when they heard they went ‘What!?!’ We didn’t enjoy reading our obituaries, but some in the press claimed there were fist fights but that was so untrue.”
Delorentos knew they had a strong collection of songs written and that it “would be a shame if nobody got to hear them”. It was the belief in those songs that helped heal the wounds and draw the band back together.
“We decided to record the songs and asked Ró if he wanted to play on them and he said yes. Then we asked if we could release them and he agreed, then we asked if he would like to tour the songs with us and he said OK. So we got back into playing together and suddenly we had a purpose and we realised how important the band was to us. We sat down and all of us felt we could make it work.”
You Can Make Sound is a strong album, with the title track, the dark, Franz Ferdinand-esque ‘Hallucinations’, and the anthemic ‘Secret’, among the stand outs. Not surprisingly, it is also an album full of emotional turbulence, dealing with complicated relationships, as in ‘You Say You’ll Never Love Her’, ‘Leave Me Alone’, and ‘Soulmate’.
Kieran explains the background to some of the songs on the album.
“‘Hallucinations’ is a very aggressive, angry song, about the abuse of power. It was a metal song when it started out. When we were recording it we ended up sitting on the floor roaring into a mic that was plugged into a guitar amp.
“The last song on the album, ‘I Remember’, is very different for us as it features piano and acoustic guitar. The song was about the band breaking up and it was supposed to be the last song we ever did. Now it’s very strange. It’s still in that moment, but something we felt should be on the album.
“The album ended up being about us without us even realising it at the time. It is darker than In Love With Detail but it’s also an optimistic album. It says ‘You can get through this’ and ‘Be strong’. That became a mantra for us.”
Delorentos can now look to the future, older, wiser, but with more reason to be confident than any time over the last year. “We’ve learned from our mistakes.” says Kieran. “We won’t be making the same mistakes again.” They are planning tours of Italy, Germany, and Scandinavia next year and are looking forward to hitting the stage in Ireland in the coming weeks.
“Live is the thing,” says Kieran. “Standing on the stage and seeing people sing back to you is something special and playing live also allows you to bring out different aspects of the songs. If the main melodies are in the verses you can bring them out there or if they are in the chorus you can do that. On stage you are connecting with people.”
Delorentos will return to the Róisín Dubh on Friday November 6 at 9pm followed by an all-ages show in the Dominick Street venue on Saturday 7.

Also playing the Strange Brew 350th Night are Lost Chord, Blasterbra, So Cow, Feed The Bears, and The Ralphs. Gugai will be DJing afterwards. Admission is €10. Tickets are available from the Róisín Dubh and Zhivago.

To read more at www.advertiser.ie/galway CLICK HERE
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Thursday, September 17, 2009 

Category: News and Politics
By Kernan Andrews
Irish neutrality will be protected and copperfastened by a Yes vote to Lisbon. Irish neutrality will be seriously undermined by a treaty bristling with military articles, so it is wiser to vote No.The Irish people have a right to be concerned about the militarisation of the EU but in truth the real issues have become fogged - deliberately or accidentally? - by the constant throwing about of the word ‘neutrality’.‘Irish neutrality’ is misleading. Ireland is not neutral, never has been, never will be.
Since independence Ireland has never been properly neutral, but always chosen what side it wants to be on in any given conflict.
The first hint of this came during the Spanish Civil War of 1936-39. In the Dáil, Fine Gael deputies were screaming for de Valera to formally send Irish troops to assist Franco, who had led a coup d’état against the republican government.De Valera resisted, saying he would not align Ireland with any Fascist state or movement. Although not a formal endorsement of the Spanish Republicans, Ireland had subtly chosen which side it least favoured.
The major test came during World War II. De Valera declared that Ireland was officially neutral - a wise move given that the young State was too weak militarily and economically to take on Nazi Germany. If the French could not resist Blitzkrieg, how could Ireland?
In reality though neutrality was a figleaf. Ireland was anything but neutral. It was thoroughly pro-Allies.
In the dark days of 1941, when Britain stood alone against the Germans who had by now engulfed Europe, Ireland (and Britain) knew that if Ireland were invaded, the Nazis would use it as a stepping stone and Britain too could be lost.
As such de Valera was pragmatic and wise to approve of covert pro-Allied actions in Ireland. Weather information was shared with the British (vital for air and naval movements), the British were allowed to open up diplomatic missions in Ireland and station military, naval, and air attachés there.
The Irish State also provided assistance to Belfast when it was bombed in 1941 and allowed the Allies use the ‘Donegal Corridor’ - a narrow strip of Irish territory linking Lough Erne to the international waters of the Atlantic, over which the Government permitted flights by British military aircraft.
Irish diplomats spied for the USA during the course of the war and provided information to the CIA’s forerunner, the OSS.
Above all, and surely Nazi spies were aware of this, of the 140 Allied flights that came down in Ireland during the war, the planes were refuelled, or if damaged repaired, in Ireland, and survivors were repatriated to the North to re-enter active service.
By contrast, of the 18 German flights that came down, the crews were interned in the Curragh for the duration of the war, as were numerous German citizens living in Ireland. 
All the above was carried out with the full knowledge and approval of de Valera.(Interestingly, 18,600 men from the Irish State fought in the British army in WWII - far more than the 11,500 that went from so called ‘Loyal Ulster’.)
These were not the actions of a neutral country. These were the actions of a country making an effort, on the side of the Allies, against Nazism. That is nothing to be ashamed of (apart form the horrid faux pas of offering the German ambassador condolences on the death of Hitler) and Ireland deserves more credit that the abuse it normally gets for its stance in WWII.
If you are still in doubt that Ireland is neutral, then think of this - thousands of US troops are using Shannon as a stop off point before being deployed in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the Government has turned a blind eye towards suspected rendition flights. These are not the actions of a neutral country but of a country shamefully doing George W Bush’s bidding.
We should stop using the term ‘neutral’ because we are not. Instead, talk of neutrality masks the real issue at stake in debates about the militarisation of the EU - choice.
Will further EU integration deprive us of the right to choose with which conflicts we wish to become involved?
Will it result in conscription which the Irish have always rightly opposed?
Will we have the right to choose how we conduct our foreign military policy?
Before you vote on October 2, ponder these issues without using the term neutrality:According to the Yes side, the ‘triple lock system’, protected by Lisbon, means Irish troops cannot serve abroad unless it is with the agreement of the Government and the Dáil, and that the mission has a UN mandate.
Without these the EU cannot force us into any military action and we retain our right to choose.
No campaigners point out that Articles 21-55 and 326-334 and Protocol 10 of Lisbon all focus on EU militarisation. As a result, the EU is moving inexorably towards having its own army. Future integration will result in Ireland having to play a role. As such a Yes vote will not be enough to protect our right to choose in the long run.

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Monday, August 31, 2009 

Category: Music
By Kernan Andrews

OKKERVIL RIVER, arguably the finest indie/alternative band in America right now, will play their only Irish show - apart from Electric Picnic - in the Róisín Dubh on Monday September 7 at 9pm.
A rural childhood
Okkervil River is centred around the gifted songwriter, vocalist, and guitarist, Will Sheff, who grew up in Meriden, in rural New Hampshire. “I was sort of isolated as a kid,” Will tells me during our Tuesday afternoon interview. “I grew up before the internet was in everybody’s home. We only had two TV channels. The town had a population of 500. I was sheltered from a lot of things.”
In his childhood and teens, Will listened to his parents’ record collection - Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell - as well as “things I heard on the radio that didn’t suck like Nirvana”.
All would influence the future sound of Okkervil River. However Irish traditional music also had a lasting impact.
“I went through a long phase of listening to a lot of Irish music in High School,” he says. “That influenced my feelings on melody and the emotional content of melody. Irish song appealed to me and being from the country, that music spoke to me a lot. You can see that in Okkervil River in the use of the acoustic guitar, the mandolin, and accordion.”
Literature was also a potent influence. Will’s lyrics have a novelist’s sense of fine detail with a poet’s ability to convey large ideas in epigrammatic and rich language. Allusions to René Daumal, John Berryman, and The Gospel Of Thomas dominate such albums as The Stage Names and The Stand Ins.
“I was definitely influenced by Flannery O’Connor and Faulkner,” says Will, “but I don’t want people to think I was more influenced by that than by Nirvana. Songwriting is a noble, old, powerful, sacred, and profound art form. It’s been around longer than fiction and to me it’s an equal of, not greater than, fiction.”
By 1998 Will was at university, writing songs, and interested in forming a band. During the summer holidays he teamed up with Zach Thomas and his old school friendSeth Warren to form My Wet, which played one show at an open mic night. The trio relocated to Austin, Texas, where Okkervil River was truly born. Literature would play its part in giving the band its moniker.
“Trying to come up with names for your band that don’t sound stupid is really hard,” says Will, before laughing, “I don’t know if we’ve achieved that.”
“I was reading a short story by Tatyana Tolstaya called Okkervil River. She’s a contemporary Russian writer and great-grandniece of Tolstoy. Everybody liked the name but I said nobody is going to know how to say it or spell it. We had made 10 copies of a demo and had to call it something so we put the name Okkervil River on and then we couldn’t change it. All the other guys in the band have left and I’m stuck with the burden of carrying the name around.”
Over the band’s 11-year existence, numerous members have come and go (notably Shearwater’s Jonathan Meiburg), and today Will is the only original member left.
“Everybody is from different eras of the band,” reflects Will. “We’d be in the bus on tour, telling stories. Travis our drummer, he’s been with us for six years, but every now and again there will be a story even he doesn’t remember, but I think the band has always maintained an essence, a feel to it, no matter who the members are and the spirit continues to go and it feels like the same band.”
In 1999 Okkervil River released its debut album, Stars Too Small To Use. This was followed in 2002 by Don’t Fall In Love With Everyone You See and 2003’s Down The River Of Golden Dreams. The albums enjoyed critical acclaim but poor sales and a disillusioned Will was on the point of quitting.
“I was completely broke,” he says. “I hadn’t a place to live, I was crashing on other people’s couches. I was sick and sick of being broke and being worn down. I will always write for fun, but could I do it as a career? Black Sheep Boy turned out to be successful and things have been a lot better since then and much better more recently.”
2005’s Black Sheep Boy proved to be the band’s breakthrough album. A powerful, epic collection, it is dominated by lyrically and musically sophisticated country-rock ballads, based around themes Will saw in Tim Hardin’s song ‘Black Sheep Boy’. Further success would come with the even more impressive The Stage Names (2007) and The Stand Ins(2008).
The trouble with indie?
The Stage Names saw Will perfectly balance his writing between a full blooded indie-rock (‘A Hand To Take Hold Of The Scene’) and country-rock ballads (‘A Girl In Port’). Lyrically, the album was rich with literary and pop-culture references, post-modern musical and verbal puns, and homagés.
Two songs on The Stage Names dealt with people who committed suicide - ‘John Allyn Smith Sails’, which chronicles the suicide of the poet John Berryman, and ‘Savannah Smiles’ about Shannon Wilsey, a porn actress who killed herself in 1994. What drew Will to this subject?
“It was not the suicide but what brings you to a point where you want to do that,” says Will. “In their case it was a loss of what defined them, and what defined them had to do with ego. It was not with being a good father and husband for John Berryman or with a good home life for Shannon Wilsey, it was more to do with the loss of an assumed identity.
“Shannon Wilsey couldn’t work anymore because of an accident which scarred her face. John Berryman felt his poetic gifts had abandoned him and that he would never write good poetry again. You think about the personalities they built up, trying to constantly live up to that, and not wanting all the other stuff of just being a human, so they just threw it all away. That was an interesting idea. I wanted to figure out what makes you feel that way. What makes you think life isn’t worth living after you lose your alter ego?”
This willingness to delve into such troubling subjects marks Will out as different from most other indie rock songwriters. While indie/alternative is rock’s most consistently diverse and creative genre, it is marked by a narrow secularism and, as Will puts it, can be “very phobic of sexuality”.
“If the most bourgeois music is James Taylor than indie is in second place,” he says. “Indie is the music of the privileged. In the genre we work in there is a sort of burying your head in the sand and fear of adult responsibly and ‘adultness’.
“If indie rock is more afraid of anything, it’s even more afraid of spirituality than sexuality. I’m not talking about organised religion but Sufjan Stevens is a Christian and he doesn’t deal with that in his writing. Indie rock’s subject matter isn’t very wide and it is afraid to go to that place.
“I am a spiritual man and it’s very, very important to me. I was raised a Catholic. My father was president of the Catholic Holy Cross University in New Hampshire. I have a hard time with the Roman Catholic Church and organised Christianity generally but I still identify with the ideas and feelings I was raised with. If you are raised in that environment you will always see the world through that lens.”
The next release from Okkervil River will be as the backing band on the new solo album from Roky Erickson (13th Floor Elevators lead singer), which Will is producing.
“After that we will be good to go for a new Okkervil River record,” says Will. “I want to keep doing what I love and keep evolving.”
Tickets are available from the Róisín Dubh and Zhivago.

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Thursday, August 06, 2009 

Category: Music
By Kernan Andrews

“I LOVE the way Pierce Turner sings. He walks on the table tops and dances between the ashtrays and the glasses. As the women peek up the leg of his trousers he lets on not to notice.”
So says Christy Moore in his poem ‘The Way Pierce Turner Sings’, his surreal celebration of one of Ireland’s finest and most imaginative songwriters. It is true. In concert, Pierce will strut around the room - across tables, over them, and between them - singing, smiling, and engaging with and entertaining the audience.
It adds a theatrical and personal touch to his shows and Galway can expect to see Pierce singing and walking “between the ashtrays and the glasses” in the Róisín Dubh on Tuesday August 11 at 9pm.
So when did Pierce first start these ‘adventures’ beyond the confines of the stage? 
“It began with parties in my apartment in New York,” Pierce tells me over the phone from his native Wexford. “I would get up on the table and conduct people to sing along with Sex Pistols records. I think I got it from my dad, he didn’t get up on tables, but he used to conduct people for sing-songs.”
Such flamboyance was also a way to combat stage fright and fear of audiences.
“I was sick at being cut off from the audience by the stage. I wanted to break down that wall and make them part of the show,” he says. “Nervousness in performance comes from a fear of the audience. I got tired of thinking ‘How am I going to impress this audience?’ and I had a revelation that I didn’t have to think that way. The audience are here to enjoy the show. They are not coming with negative attitudes so you think ‘I’m not in this gig alone, I am with these people. We’re all here together.’ I may be the captain but I can’t do it without the crew.”
Today, all of this is an integral part of Pierce’s live shows, and it is an approach which has rubbed off on other performers.
“I was on tour with a US band called The Smithereens,” he says. “Nobody knew me but I would walk out into the crowd in a ‘How’s it going?’ sort of way and it really worked. By the time we got to LA, the Smithereens’ lead singer was doing it as well!”
Pierce recently released his new single ‘Julie London’. The song - inspired by the US actress, singer, and noted beauty form the 1940s and 1950s - is dominated by a riff played on violins and a chorus with a strong 1950s/1960s feel.
“I saw a documentary about her and I was blown away by her story,” says Pierce. “You can see footage of her on YouTube. She had an amazing voice and had America in the palm of her hand in the 1950s, during that era when people could drink cocktails at home and listen to albums.
“Julie London was a massive star. She was a movie star, a singer, and talented. She made 40 albums and then suddenly stopped and never sang again. The thing that took my interest was that she was married with two children to this guy Jack Webb and he never came home. This woman was incredibly sincere and non-egotistical. She knew there was something more to life but he didn’t.”
Pierce’s music career began in the 1980s when he played gigs in Wexford and Dublin, before realising that the Ireland of that time - economically destitute and suffering from a post-colonial inferiority complex - was somewhere he needed to escape from, at least for a while. Moving to New York proved to be a revelation.
“I had an education there I couldn’t have had here in Ireland, “ he says. “I was in Manhattan and my girlfriend was a modern dancer. I was in a new wave band and writing music for modern dance. I was in that art world and that would have been beyond me had I stayed here, so I got an art education in Manhattan. I performed in front of that world so coming back to perform on RTÉ for the first time was pretty easy after that.”
Pierce’s music commands high respect from his fellow artists - his 1986 debut album, It’s Only A Long Way Across, was produced by Philip Glass, one of the greatest living modern classical composers - and he has a devoted cult following, but the wider success his talents merit has proven elusive.
“It’s tough,” he admits. “I can’t get onto the Galway Arts Festival but the reality is I have a low profile in Ireland. I divide my time between Wexford and New York and I don’t go anywhere else. I don’t socialise enough. I don’t think about notoriety enough. I don’t have that business sense. I have a new album ready to go but I don’t want to throw it out to the world to be ignored.”
Yet Philip Glass remains a champion of Pierce’s music. In March, the composer presented shows by his favourite artists, such as Patti Smith, Suzanne Vega, and Pierce Turner, in New York’s The City Winery venue.
“He is a great supporter of mine,” says Pierce proudly. “I got a call from his manager saying he was doing these evenings in a club in Manhattan where he would present artists he believed in. Philip Glass is a very busy man. He has scored 40 movies besides composing operas and doing live performances. For him to take his time to play and rehearse with me was fantastic. We did two songs and had five rehearsals, and he came up with a part for one of the songs that was extraordinary. It was a great experience to perform in front of 400 elite New Yorkers and it went down an absolute storm. It was one of these things I need in these times of my life.”
There is also the story that Brad Pitt is a fan?
“He was at a gig in Whelan’s but I didn’t even meet him,” laughs Pierce. “After the gig the manager told me Brad Pitt was upstairs with 25 bodyguards around him taking up the whole space but he did say Brad Pitt really enjoyed the show.”
Tickets are available from the Róisín Dubh and Zhivago.

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By Timothy Garton Ash
Release date: 1998-09-29
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Thursday, July 23, 2009 

Category: Music
By Kernan Andrews

PRIMAL SCREAM guitarist Andrew Innes is ready for Galway. “When you get on stage you realise it’s all worth it,” he says. “When people are cheering you on it’s hard to beat that and you think, ‘It’s great to be in a band’.”
Tomorrow evening from 7pm, Primal Scream, innovators, great survivors, and now elder statesmen of British alternative rock, take to the stage of the Galway Arts Festival Big Top in a bill that also includes Spiritualized.
“We’re just back from touring and I’m trying to wash my clothes,” Andrew tells me with a laugh, during our Wednesday afternoon conversation. “That’s the glamourous rock’n’roll lifestyle for you. We’re looking forward to playing Galway. It should be a good day. I was talking to Jason Pierce from Spiritualized and he’s up for it as well.”
Alongside vocalist Bobby Gillespie, Andrew is the longest serving member of Primal Scream and he has featured on every album from their 1987 debut Sonic Flower Groove up to last year’s Beautiful Future.
“It’s been 25 years we’ve been together as a band, we should get a gold clock this year,” says Andrew in a tone that betrays both pride and amazement at the band’s longevity. “The band is part of what you are. You look at the old records and say ‘I was doing that back then’. It’s a document of your life.”
Primal Scream was founded in 1982 by Gillespie as a side project to his main duties as drummer for the Jesus and Mary Chain. He appeared on their lauded 1985 album Psychocandy before quitting to commit himself full-time to the Scream in 1986.
Gillespie recruited Andrew, an old friend he had known since they were teenagers in Glasgow in the 1970s, as rhythm guitarist. In the late 1970s, Glasgow, like many other cities in Britain (and Ireland), was a harsh place to grow up. The economy was stagnant, unemployment was high, there was the three day week and industrial unrest, and Thatcher loomed on the horizon.
This was the ‘No Future’ the Sex Pistols sang about and the only forms of escape were football and music. Andrew - like Gillespie - is a follower of Glasgow Celtic FC (“There’s Irish on my mother’s side,” he says. “The Irish are everywhere.”) but music - more specifically punk - gave the young Glaswegian hope for the future.
“There was nothing to do in Glasgow but I was obsessed with music, still am,” says Andrew. “You bought these seven inch singles and they were like things of magic. There were a couple of record shops in Glasgow and I used to go to Brucie’s, he later became manager of Simple Minds. He would let people stand around and listen to the new LPs and singles and it was a fun thing to do on a Saturday afternoon. It was like a youth club.
“When you see the history of punk now on the TV everybody claims to have been into it but nobody was into it back then. You’d go to gigs and people would actually try to bar you from getting in. It was exciting and you didn’t know what was going to happen.
“I know people who went to those gigs as well and they are still involved in the arts and music. They were outsiders and didn’t fit into normal growing up. Punk changed their lives. It had that ‘Do it yourself’ attitude. The Buzzcocks made their own records and that was the first indie music.”
Inspired by the spirit of punk and a love of 1960s psychedelic rock, Primal Scream set out to conquer the world. They signed to Warner Brothers and in 1987 released the Byrds/1960s jangle rock orientated Sonic Flower Groove.
The album was not particularly successful and the band were dropped. They then turned to their old friend Alan McGee of Creation Records, who had also grown up in Glasgow and was inspired by the punk ‘Do it yourself’ ethos, and released the much stronger, more hard rock/alternative rock Primal Scream in 1989.
That same period also saw the rise of acid house and the Scream were suitably impressed. “We have always been into acid house,” says Andrew. “We were going to the clubs in London in 1988 and 1989. It was a magical feeling. Everyone there was friendly and against the Tories and giving two fingers up at them, saying ‘We’re going to have a good time anyway’.”
This new music would put the Scream on a course that would provide their commercial breakthrough and more importantly, allow them create one of the most important albums of the last 20 years - 1991’s Screamadelica.
Together with the dance/techno DJ and producer Andrew Weatherall, what the Scream created on Screamadelica was an overwhelming, extraordinary, and courageous exploration of dance, techno, house, and trance that somehow managed to keep its rock roots. The album turned rock fans onto the possibilities of dance and showed that guitar rock was not about to be overwhelmed by the new dance scene.
“Andrew Weatherall [dance/techno DJ and producer] came to review us for Melody Maker and we thought he was a total dance head,” recalls Andrew, “but he really likes Thin Lizzy and T Rex so we became instant soul mates, and have been ever since.”
The band asked Weatherall to remix some tracks. Weatherall set to work on ‘I’m Losing More Than I’ll Ever Have’, the stand-out track from Primal Scream. Its horn section formed the basis of ‘Loaded’, the band’s first major hit single and a taster for their new album Screamadelica.
“His first go at ‘Loaded’ was quite normal. We said ‘We want you to mess it up’. He did it again and it was great,” recalls Andrew. “A lot of what propelled us towards Screamadelica were samplers. You didn’t have to write songs on guitar. You could sample a bit of James Brown and add all these dreamy sounds and all these musical colours would just explode.”
The impact of the album, the rise in the band’s profile, and the pressure of coming up with anything to match it took its toll and the early to mid 1990s saw the band struggle with drugs.
“We’ve done our share,” sighs Andrew. “You couldn’t have made Screamadelica without the influence of Ecstasy but when you get more interested in the drugs than the music - and the drugs do take over eventually - it’s time to stop. I’d rather be a musician than a drug addict any day.”
In 1996 the band received a new lease of life when former Stone Roses bassist Mani joined. Over the next few years the Scream delivered three of their best albums - Vanishing Point (1997), Xtrmntr (2000), and Evil Heat (2002).
The album’s combined the band’s love of classic rock and techno/dance to stunning effect and returned Primal Scream to public and critical favour. Many credited Mani with injecting fresh life into the group and Andrew does not disagree.
“Mani’s a force of nature,” says Andrew. “We were in a bad way and down at the time but he lights up any room and he lit up our band. He’s a rock’n’roll star.”
With the aforementioned ‘experimental trilogy’, 2006’s Riot City Blues, and last year’s very fine Beautiful Future, the Scream showed they were still very relevant and they can now be considered elder statesmen of British alternative rock.
“I hope we’re still relevant,” says Andrew modestly. “What do people like best about our band? You should ask Noel Gallagher about that. He has a very good line about what people like about our group. I wish he had been our manager. I’d be living in a big house in the country now!”

For tickets contact the festival box office, Merchants Road, 091 - 566577. Tickets are also available through www.galwayartsfestival.com

To read more at www.advertiser.ie/galway CLICK HERE
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Thursday, July 16, 2009 

Category: Music
By Kernan Andrews

“I DID history to BA level and I never heard of John Boyle O’Reilly until I played at a club named after him in Springfield, Massachusetts. I’d love to know why he’s been written out of Irish history.”
So says the great Galway folk-singer and songwriter Sean Tyrrell who is on a one man mission to re-awaken awareness of and interest in John Boyle O’Reilly (1844 - 1890), the Irish journalist, poet, Republican, and civil rights campaigner, through his show Message Of Peace.
Sean will present Message Of Peace in The Crane Bar, Sea Road, this Saturday and on Saturday July 25 at 6.30pm as part of the Galway Arts Festival. “I cannot understand why lesser Irish men are celebrated while better men like O’Reilly are forgotten,” Sean tells me during our Monday afternoon interview.
John Boyle O’Reilly was born in Co Louth and at 19 joined The Fenians, was later convicted and deported to Australia, he emigrated to the USA where he became an influential and outspoken journalist and newspaper editor, civil rights campaigner, a poet, and a champion of Irish poetry, concerned to promote awareness of the form in the States.
Sean first became interested in O’Reilly when he found O’Reilly’s book A Thousand Years Of Irish Poetry in a bookshop in New York. Five of O’Reilly’s own poems were in there and three of them - ‘Cry Of A Dreamer’, ‘Message Of Peace’, and ‘Only From Day To Day’ - captivated Sean.
“When I read ‘Message Of Peace’ I was so astounded,” he says. “It could be a pen picture of any US president of the last 30 years from Nixon to Reagan to Bush, and particularly Bush.”
He set them to music and they became the “backbone” of his acclaimed 1996 debut album Cry Of A Dreamer.
Thanks to a friend in Boston called Ted Moriarty and Galway bookseller Des Kenny, Sean amassed all the information he could about O’Reilly and produced “on an old Apple Mac, my first computer”, a treatment for a film on his life. However a friend suggested it might be better if Sean “did something more personal” with it. As a result the show Message Of Peace was born.
The show traces O’Reilly’s colourful life as a rebel, prisoner, campaigner, and poet, through stories, slow airs, jogs, and songs by John Lennon, Bob Dylan, Bobby Sands, and Oscar Wilde. Also included is Little John Nee’s song ‘Wee Moroccans’ and songs from Sean’s own pen.
“O’Reilly just fascinates me,” says Sean. “He predicted that the US would one day have a black president. He foresaw a united states of Europe, he campaigned for the rights of Native Americans in the 1880s when most people regarded them as ‘vermin’, he campaigned for the rights of African-Americans, and against anti-Semitism.
“He was a newspaper editor in Boston and during an Orange parade there, there was a riot in which many people died. O’Reilly wrote about it in his newspaper and he lacerated both sides - and remember he was a Catholic and a Republican.”
Sean considers Bob Dylan’s ‘Blowin’ In The Wind’ appropriate given O’Reilly’s crusading stance as a civil rights campaigner. Bobby Sands’ ‘The Woman Cried’ is included as it references a man who scuppered a Fenian plot in which O’Reilly was involved.
“I set Bobby Sands’ poem to music years ago,” say Sean. “O’Reilly joined The Fenians in 1863. He then joined the British cavalry. About one-third of the British army at that time were Irishmen. The Fenians wanted to infiltrate them and cause a rebellion but it was foiled by an informer and the song mentions the informer.”
Sean also feels that John Lennon’s ‘Working Class Hero’ was an obvious choice for the show. “O’Reilly was often referred to as a ‘working class hero’,” he says. “The forthcoming album will have a ‘Parental Advisory’ sticker on it as Mr Lennon uses the F word twice and I’m not about to sabotage the song.”
Sean has already performed the show in the States where it, and indeed O’Reilly’s message, received a great reception - which is the point Sean is trying to get across with Message Of Peace.
“I performed the show at a festival in Oregon and afterwards a woman leaped onto the stage, took me by the hand, and said ‘At last, somebody is saying something!’” says Sean. “I never got a reaction like that before. O’Reilly was so broadminded and ahead of his time. What he said is as relevant now as when it was first published. I’m trying to bring that message into modern times and become O’Reilly’s conscience for the 21st century.”
For tickets contact the festival box office, Merchants Road, 091 - 566577. Tickets are also available through www.galwayartsfestival.com

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By Ben Donald
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