Interview with Mícheál Ó'Domhnaill

9 April 1999

When I finally managed to contact Mícheál, he had told me he had been on tour.

Who have you been touring with?

I’ve been touring with Paddy Glackin.

What sort of material do you play?

It’s Irish music – jigs and reels and a couple of songs. Basically traditional Irish music.

You’re planning an album with him?

We’re half-way through an album at the moment, for Gael-Linn. Because of the availability of the engineer, and because Paddy has his day job at RTE, it’s taking a lot longer than planned.It may be the end of the year before we’re actually finished, so I wouldn’t expect that to be out until next spring at the earliest.

How about Nightnoise? Is Nightnoise still in existence?

It’s still in existence. We’re going to start rehearsing again next week. Brian Dunning is in the States at the moment. He’s got his own project with Jeff Johnson. He’s coming back on Saturday next. At the moment, Tríona is working with her sister Máighréad. They’re doing the follow-up to the “No Dowry” album with Dónal Lunny. They’re rehearsing until the middle of next week, and then Nightnoise are going to get together because we’re doing at least one track – possibly two – for an upcoming Celtic Christmas album. We’re going to use that as a kind of springboard to see do we all want to do it again, do we want to continue. We’ve been apart now for over a year. We needed to take a sabbatical – we’d been at it for 12-13 years.

Also, you moved back to Ireland at the same time.

We moved back to Ireland and everyone wanted to go and do their own thing for a while. So we all took a year off. We’ve been talking recently and everyone feels that, having put so much work into it, it would be a shame to throw it all away, so we’ve been talking about giving it another stab. We’ve got a big following, particularly in places like Spain, Japan, and parts of the States. What we need to do, though – and it’s going to take a while – is we need a lot of new material because we spent 10 or 12 years playing basically the same repertoire. It was no fun any more. You need fresh material.

Would fresh material have more of an Irish sound to it, given the fact that you are back in Ireland now?

There are different strands within Nightnoise. There is clearly a Nightnoise-type thing and it has an Irish element in it which I don’t want to lose. It’s part of who we are.

Who have you got as a fiddler?

We’ve found a marvellous fiddler – his name is John FitzPatrick. He’s from Belfast. He’s a classically-trained violinist who plays a wide range of music: from classical through jazz to traditional. He was on one of the Celtic Christmas albums.

Changing the subject – what was the Japanese connection?

Well, we played on an album that Mimori Yusa did. It was recorded in Ireland. She came over to Dublin and did an album here. She wanted to have an Irish flavour. There were a rake of people playing on it – Dónal Lunny, ourselves, Sharon Shannon and others.

I believe you were on a TV show?

When we moved back we did a series of 26 programs on Irish TV, every Wednesday night, and we were the house band. We had a different guest musician every week – a cellist, a piper, an oboe.

What’s the situation as regards the record company?

We have finished our contract with Windham Hill. We delivered seven albums. We had a contract for six and they asked us to do another – which was the live album. So we saw that as a sort of farewell to that period of our lives – in the States. And we all moved home. We are without a contract at the moment. Several record companies are knocking on the door and would be interested. That’s a big decision to make. We’re going to have to sit down and thrash that one out.

Posted Jul 18, 10:44 am
John Rynne