It Occurs To Me: Cups of tae and music galore in Ardara this weekend
‘The Sunday of the festival is dedicated to the memory of the late Stephen McCahill, a founding member and Chairperson of the Cup of Tae committee’
This year’s special guests at the Cup of Tae Festival in Ardara are Fiona and Jim Byrne.
I first met them some twelve years ago at the Robbie Burns Supper in Harvey’s Point. They were superb entertainers and Fiona’s Scottish background made her a natural for the annual extravaganza.
Anyone who has heard Fiona singing the Bard’s Ae Fond Kiss will know that, coming as she does from Burns’s Ayrshire,it lends a beauty and authenticity to her already beautiful voice.
Fiona and Jim Byrne are this year’s special guests at the Cup of Tae Festival in Ardara
There and at other local clubs, Pete first heard the likes of Dick Gaughan, the Fureys and Martin Carthy and Dave Swarbrick.
Moving to Scotland in 1970, he married Heather Williamson, whom he had met in Blackpool. As Heather Heywood, she would go on to make her name as a fine Scots ballad singer, cutting her teeth at Irvine Folk Club, where the couple became increasingly involved in the flourishing Ayrshire folk scene and established Kilmarnock Folk Club in 1974.
The same year, they helped establish Girvan Folk Festival, Pete later becoming one of its principal organisers and acting as artistic director until its twenty-first anniversary.
A native of Ayrshire, Heather, heard a Martin Carthy album when she was 19 and was bowled over by it. She listened rather than performed, however, until one night at Eglinton Folk Club in Irvine.
They were short of floor singers so Pete pushed her forward. She sang a Maddy Prior number and to her surprise, got a resounding reception. After that, in her words, she "never looked back" and has been called “one of the finest singers of the last three decades”.
Coincidentally, it was at the aforementioned Girvan Folk Festival in 2003 that Fiona Heywood met Jim Byrne who not only was performing there, but was a friend of her parents. She had remembered him from a gig when he played with Craobh Rua, but as she recalls with a laugh: “I actually fancied the piper but years later, Jim and I fell in love.”
Although many people assume with a name like Byrne that Jim is indigenous to south-west Donegal, he was actually born in East Dumbarton to a Scottish father and mother from County Limerick.
“My maternal granny was a McGinley from Ramelton and my grandfather was a trained violinist and played in a ceili band”.
The family came to north Belfast when he was a child and he first picked up a guitar at the age of 8. “There was a programme on BBC2 called ‘Hold Down A Chord’ and I learned from that. In 1972 he heard Planxty and Horslips and within a few years joined ‘Craobh Rua’.
Coincidentally, their current fiddler Conor Caldwell from Belfast is a student of Donegal fiddle music and was awarded a PhD in 2013 for his thesis on the great John Doherty.
Jim spent eleven years with the band and he got to know Peter Oliver McNelis. Fiona’s parents knew Packie Manus Byrne and as Fiona says: “When we came to Ardara in 2008, we were drawn to it immediately. Not just the music and being in the heart of fiddle country but the friendliness of the people. You feel as if you’ve always been here.”
They started playing their Friday night sessions in The Beehive in 2009 and have never looked
back. In fact, they will host a concert in the Beehive tomorrow night and will be joined by a number of their musician friends, and on Saturday in the same venue - as a tribute to the late great Packie Manus Byrne - they will be accompanied by other musicians and storytellers.
The Sunday of the festival is dedicated to the memory of the late Stephen McCahill, a founding member and Chairperson of the Cup of Tae committee. I am honoured to have been asked along as part of the tribute and will read my commemorative poem to Stephen on the night.
Music in the Glen
Tom Byrne on the other hand is not only local, but like his late father Paddy, has harnessed the music of his native Malin to his ancestral Kilcar.
Seven years ago, ahead of Tom’s wonderful tribute to his late father in a concert in Kilcar, I recalled an early memory of going across the hills from Bogagh to Kilcausey with my grandfather, Francie Byrne, as he looked for sheep that may have strayed.
He had made that journey often over the years and part of the ritual was visiting his Byrne cousins ‘Up the Glen’ for the ‘tae’ and chat. Undoubtedly, music was a big part of the conversation. Tom’s next concert, organised by the Kilcar Heritage Committee takes place in the Parish Hall on Saturday, May 9 at 8.30 pm (doors open 8.00 pm). The occasion is the launch of his new CD, Gather Your Wits,dedicated to the memory of his late brother Colm Byrne, and will be available to purchase on the night. Admission is €15 and proceeds are in aid of local heritage projects, particularly the conservation work carried out at St Cartha's old church.
The concert also includes Michael Gallanagh, guitarist and singer, and Ella McGroary on keyboard.
Tom, one of Ireland’s greatest harmonica players, has a number of his own compositions on the recording, and one composed by his father, Paddy, including Paddy Byrne’s Barndance and, appropriately, Music in the Glen.
Rory’s story continues
All of the above are yet to take place, but one gig that most definitely did was the launch of Rory Gallagher’s latest recording, Nine, in Whelan’s in Dublin. What a performance!
And what a turnout for a Sunday afternoon…many Dublin people who have got to know Rory in Lanzarote turned up, and although it clashed with the disappointment of the Down win, there was a sizeable Donegal support present.
Well done to the supporting act, the very talented Colm Hargan, whose mammy Michelle O’Donnell is a native of Bogagh.
I was delighted to meet his dad, brothers and sisters, and as Paul Gallagher noted, he sounds like a young Joe Cocker! Praise indeed! Ahead of the launch, Rory didn’t mince his words:“I have a funny feeling this could be my last album unless something drastic changes in the music industry over the next few years. From around the age of 11 I sat in my bedroom figuring out Beatles chord structures with the help of my father on the guitar, then slowly finding the beauty in the abstract notes that Kurt Cobain was using in Nirvana songs, learning how to back trad music in the local Scór na nÓg competitions in Kilcar, learning classic folk songs from Christy Moore albums for my first pub gigs, discovering the little differences between dull lyrics, poetry, or things that just "sing well" but don't make total sense ...to make a long story short just trying to learn my craft, and to be honest, failing 95% of the time!
“But recently some of my friends have sent me tracks they have ‘written and composed’ with the likes of Suno or ChatGpt using new AI technologies. My gut instinct tells me this is my final album because it can take me a month to create a song from quick inspiration, craft it , demo it, then go to a good studio, spend €500 at least getting it to a decent modern audio quality, then timing a release...
“When all my friend (who is a plumber) has to do is type maybe eight sentences about his cat into an app, choose a singing style he likes (like Teddy Swimms) , a studio quality he would like, (like Abbey Road), hit "enter" and 60 seconds later he will have something that connects more with him than my song ever could, and maybe even sounds better to an untrained ear!
“So I have printed off 1000 of these stickers - ‘No A.I. in the writing or recording’. I am placing one on each of my albums, and I'm delighted that already a few artists including Kezia Gill have said they will also stick them on their album cover, let the tiny human fightback begin! Hasta la vista baby !”
Let’s hope Nine is not his last album…he’s far too talented as a songwriter and entertainer to pull in his horns at this stage. Like me, he’s a lover of bad puns so my reaction to his ‘threat’ to leave the recording studio is to beg: “Nein…Nein!”