We headed off to Ireland, staying with our friend Dorothy who is great fun and who we feel runs the best B&B in East Clare (and who will always guide us to the best music) to
a) Make sure that we were out of the UK for the Royal Wedding as there was no way we could put up with all that crap about the spoilt kid of some rich old woman living in a big house getting hitched at our expense
and
b) much more importantly to coincide with fiddle player Martin Hayes being back in his home village for the 10 year anniversary of the death of his father P. Joe Hayes.
The latter turned out to be very special as Martin has decided to re-release (at long last) his original debut recording that he made with his father. This was originally released only on a cassette tape (which was recorded on a four track cassette recorder at the house of Pat Talty and was not very long because Martin’s father had to leave to play in a ceilidh with the Tulla Ceilidh Band).
It took me many years to find an original copy and they are as rare as ‘hen’s teeth’!
So on Friday 6th May on the 10th anniversary of P. Joe’s death a few of us were lucky enough to find ourselves in Bohan’s pub where Martin launched the CD and played for us with friends such as Mary MacNamara, Steve Cooney, John Canney and Mark Donnellan (whose father played with Martin’s father in the Tulla Ceilidh Band). The music went on into the small hours and it was a privilege to be here listening to these great players playing in the back room. It is always a special treat to hear Martin and Mark together as they clearly love playing together and Mark is such a talented and unassuming player himself.
The CD is released on a small label (Quillan Records CD 001) not Green Linnet; and I’m not sure of it’s distribution. I do know that Custys of Ennis will be stocking copies. However, the initial pressing is only 2000 copies (and you’re not having ours!). The CD contains 3 extra tracks recorded with Dennis Cahill on guitar in addition to the original recording. This was really a bit of history in the making.
This was of course only the start of a great weekend with Martin playing with the Tulla Ceilidh band on Saturday night and playing in a 3 hour session in Peppers on Sunday. For someone who would happily sit and listen to Martin tune his fiddle this was of course a fabulous weekend for us.
Thanks for the blog. I’m a fiddle player living in New Zealand so its great to see real news about traditional music. I have a copy of a copy of the original cassette which I have listened to a lot and really enjoy, hope I can get one of the CDs from Custy’s!
Ooh, green with envy! Huge Martin Hayes fan, here. My cousin in Ireland sent me a Martin Hayes CD several years ago, and it is wondrous, lyrical music he plays.
Thanks so much for the history around this recording, was recently given a copy of the cd, and am enjoying it.
Heard Martin Hayes in concert last night, along with other instructors at the Swannanoa Gathering, a fabulous summer music camp in western North Carolina. He brought the full house (large theater) to their feet with a roar for a standing ovation! In particular, it was a duet with John Doyle that did it. What a fabulous musician! Great blog!