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Ómós - A Gig for Mícheál
Excerpts from the concert held as a tribute to Mícheál Ó Domhnaill in May 2007 in Dublin have been aired on Irish radio (The Rolling Wave, presented by Peter Browne). The format is Real Audio: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3
The concert is to be released as an album (no dates yet).
Note to Nightnoise fans: it is primarily a concert of traditional Irish music. Nightnoise never took off in Ireland and most people there associate Mícheál with the Bothy Band, above all.
Posted Jul 31, 06:59 amRadio programme tribute to Mícheál Ó'Domhnaill
WNYC’s New Sound has re-aired a programme on Mícheál that was first broadcast in 2006.
Apart from tracks from The Bothy Band, Puck Fair and the Portland album he did with Kevin Burke, it contains that rarest of rare things: a recording of Nightnoise live in concert. It was recorded in 1989, when Billy Oskay was still in the group, and features a brief interview with the four followed by a set in which they play After Five, Nollaig, At The Races, Nightnoise, and The Cricket’s Wicket. The set starts about 26 minutes in and runs for about 18 minutes.
Considering you can get bootlegs of the likes of Bob Dylan going back to the 1960s, it’s hard to believe nobody ever snuck a tape recorder into a Nightnoise gig. Maybe Nightnoise fans are above that sort of thing. I do know that some radio stations have recordings (Spain’s national radio RNE 3 has a recording from a Valladolid concert dating from the Billy Oskay period – more on that later).
And Ireland’s national TV, RTE, has recordings of them when they moved back to Ireland, with fiddlers and even a cellist filing in the strings side of the equation (Johnny Cunningham had decided to stay in the US), but who knows if we’ll ever get to see that footage.
Meantime, check out the WNYC programme
Posted Jul 27, 10:30 amMícheál Ó'Domhnaill slideshow tribute
Thistle Radio have posted a lovely slideshow tribute to Mícheál Ó‘Domhnaill.
It consists of photos taken by Greg Duffy between 1981 and 1986; the soundtrack is Mícheál singing “Casadh an tSúgáin” (as recorded with the Bothy Band).
Those photos and many more can also be viewed at the Mícheál Ó‘Domhnaill official web site.
Thanks to Al Evers for the tip.
Posted Jul 24, 06:10 pmNew Puck Fair album
Brian Dunning’s band Puck Fair has released a new album called “Forgotten Carnival”.
Review from Pitchfork Magazine:
Back with their first album in 19 years, Brian Dunning’s Puck Fair makes a comeback with “Forgotten Carnival.” The band is acoustic and the music is inspired equally by the driving rhythms of Celtic music with the freedom and spontaneity of jazz. Founded in New York in 1984 and reformed in Dublin, Puck Fair mainly plays original music by Brian Dunning as well as music by such artists as Van Morrison and John Coltrane.
Dunning has a breathtaking command of the flute, coupled with a most personal approach to jazz improvisation and traditional music. He returns here to the repertoire of one of his most successful projects, bringing him together with the versatile guitar of Sean Whelan, the infectious grooves of percussionist Robbie Harris, and two very special guests from Slovakia, violinist Stano Paluch and cellist Joef Luptak, for an evening of cross cultural tradition and innovation. The haunting, melodic atmospheres of this group are long overdue for discovery by fans of Enya and Clannad.
It’s available for purchase and download at the following:
MP3 format (no DRM)
Or if you prefer DRM :
You can listen to most of their first album “Fair Play” (a classic now out of print), on their MySpace page
Thanks to LFGM and A-Train for the links.
Catalan singer Lidia Pujol
This album features Lidia Pujol, a very interesting Catalan singer whose background ranges from rock to opera. She has been working with Puck Fair for some years now, having appeared with them in concert in Dublin in 2006.
Posted Jul 15, 06:10 pmSkara Brae videos on YouTube
Five segments of video on YouTube. They feature Skara Brae, the group founded by the O’Domhnaill siblings with Daithi Sproule long before Nightnoise.
This seems to be the TG4 programme of the Skara Brae reunion concert a few years ago.
Segment I
Segment II
Segment III
Segment VI
Segment V
Thanks to Luis Fernando García for the tip.
Posted May 27, 12:40 pmRidiculous pricing
I have set up a Google alert on Nightnoise. It sends me an e-mail every time it finds a new page that refers to Nightnoise. The finds are generally pirate MP3 download sites, where you can get an entire album for less than a dollar.
That is in stark contrast to the 99 cents per track charged by the iTunes Music Store (which only has “At the End of the Evening”, “Shadow of Time”, “Something of Time” and “Nightnoise Pure” for sale), and 89 cents at Amazon’s MP3 Downloads store (which has no Nightnoise music at all only 2 albums: “Something of Time” and “Shadow of Time”, plus 2 albums by the Japanese electronic band called Nightnoise).
But it gets worse. Today Google sent me a new alert, and the link takes me to Amazon’s physical record store where they have 6 used copies of “Nightnoise” by Billy Oskay and Mícheál Ó‘Domhnaill, an album that has been out of print for well over 10 years. The prices range from $47.79 to $95.00.
There is absolutely no reason why this album shouldn’t be available as MP3 from a legitimate online music store, at a reasonable price. And Nightnoise fans ought to be able to lay their hands on this album from a legitimate source, while creating revenue for the artists.
Who wins in this situation? Scummy pirate download sites.
Who loses? The artists, their heirs, and the record companies themselves.
Conclusion: idiocy on the part of Windham Hill. (If anyone has a better explanation, I’ll be delighted to publish it).
Posted Feb 14, 05:27 pm"They were the most elegant group, inspiring to us."
Harp guitarist John Doan, flute duo Meadowlark (Rick Cyge and Lynn Trombetta) and violinist Allen Ames are playing a winter solstice concert at the Scottsdale Center for the Performing Arts in Scottsdale, Arizona, on 21 December 2007.
Lynn Trombetta (quoted above in the title) acknowledges their debt to Nightnoise, and the concert is dedicated to our favourite group.
Posted Dec 13, 10:02 amSony-BMG merger
The BBC reports that the Sony-BMG merger has been approved by the EU authorities (after it had been overruled).
What has this got to do with Nightnoise? I am informed the whole merger story is the reason why only 3 Nightnoise albums are available on iTunes Music Store and only one track on the new Amazon MP3 store. Since Sony had (has?) plans for its own online music store, all electronic sales of BMG music (BMG owns Windham Hill) have been on hold since the merger got under way over 3 years ago.
The result is that Nightnoise, and many other artists, have lost potential online sales since the records are no longer available in the shops, and you can’t download the tracks either. (Well, of course you can, but not in any way that benefits the artists – I mean Usenet and BitTorrent, not to mention those Russian sites :-).
A case in point is the “Nightnoise” album by Billy Oskay and Mícheál Ó‘Domhnaill, but “The Parting Tide” and “A Different Shore”, both by Nightnoise, are also unavailable.
So this may be a sign that Nightnoise’s full catalogue of music may eventually be available for sale online, but don’t hold your breath. The music business has shown in the past that artists’ interests are the very last thing on its mind.
Posted Oct 3, 05:34 pmNightnoise trivia: Windell
The track “Windell” on the “At the End of the Evening” album is named after Billy Oskay’s son. Windell Oskay is also credited with assisting on the recording of the clocks at the beginning of “Timewinds” on the “Something of Time” album.
That was then.
Windell recently featured in Wired for building a 3D fabricator that uses sugar as its raw material.
More information at his evilmadscientist site
Posted Sep 13, 01:15 pmJohnny Cunningham concerts online
There are four concerts by Johnny Cunningham available at the Kennedy Centre#.
Thanks to Luis Fernando García for the link
Posted Mar 23, 08:39 pmPhotos at Johnny Cunningham site
The Johnny Cunningham site is back online. Check out the “News” section for some photos of him and Mícheál.
Posted Mar 19, 07:12 pmRadio show in memory of Mícheál O'Domhnaill
New York Public Radio’s New Sounds programme did a special one-hour tribute to Mícheál in July 2006. You can hear the full programme, which includes a brief interview with the members of Nightnoise in 1989 (i.e. including Billy Oskay) followed by a live recording of some Nightnoise tunes: After 4/Nollaig/At The Races, Nightnoise and The Cricket’s Wicket. The show is in RealAudio format. Get it here
(Thanks to Carme for the link).
Posted Jan 15, 05:31 pmVideo of Mícheál Ó'Domhnaill & Paddy Glackin on YouTube
Its here. It’s 9 minutes long and they play for the first 5 minutes or so.
Thanks to Luis Fernando García for letting us know!
Posted Oct 13, 07:42 pmMícheál Ó'Domhnaill - discography
A prolific musician and producer, not to mention composer, Mícheál Ó’Domhnaill first recorded as part of Skara Brae in 1971. He was a founder of The Bothy Band and Relativity, before forming Nightnoise out of a collaboration with American violinist, Billy Oskay.
Discography
With SKARA BRAE
- Skara Brae 1971 (re-released 1998)
With MICK HANLY
- Celtic Folkweave. 1974 (Vinyl only. Never released on CD and hard to get – copies of the LP have changed hands on ebay for over $50)
With THE BOTHY BAND
- 1977 – The Bothy Band (1977)
- Out of the Wind and into the Sun
- Old Hag You Have Killed Me
- After Hours
- Best of the Bothy Band
- BBC Radio 1 in concert
With RELATIVITY
With KEVIN BURKE”
With PADDY GLACKIN
Posted Jul 22, 08:04 pmObituary in The Independent
Micheal O Domhnaill
Bothy Band guitarist and singer
Published: 22 July 2006
Original article
Mícheál O Domhnaill, guitarist, singer and folklorist: born Kells, Co Meath 1952; died Dublin 8 July 2006.
Irish music didn’t quite know what had hit it in 1974 when the Bothy Band exploded out of traditional music, all guns blazing. They were a folk group in personnel, acoustic instrumentation and pedigree; a rock band in attitude and vision. Most of the focus fell on the band’s more flamboyant virtuosos – the ferocious Donegal fiddler Tommy Peoples, the travelling piper Paddy Keenan, the master flautist Matt Molloy, the alluring singer and harpsichord/clavinet player Tríona Ni Dhomhnaill and the bouzouki rhythm king Donal Lunny.
But Mícheál O Domhnaill offered a subtly crucial counterpoint to the musical fireballs bursting around him, with his thoughtful accompaniments and gentle voice. His contribution to the legend of the Bothy Band was profound and, through many years playing in an assortment of styles, he was recognised as one of Ireland’s finest accompanists of traditional music.
O Domhnaill was also a fine singer who did much for raising awareness and interest in the Irish-language song tradition both before and after the halcyon years of the Bothy Band, going on to achieve further acclaim with the American-based bands Nightnoise and Relativity.
Born in Kells, Co Meath, Mícheál O Domhnaill inherited a deep love and understanding of Irish culture from a family rooted in the Donegal Gaeltacht (Irish-speaking) area of Rann na Feirste and steeped in traditional music history. His mother Brid was a choral singer and his father Aodh was a teacher who also sang and collected music for the Irish Folklore Commission. Aodh’s sister Neilli Ni Dhomhnaill provided a goldmine of material with a fund of over 300 Irish- and English-language songs, some of which – like “Do You Love an Apple?” – found their way into the Bothy Band repertoire.
Taught piano from the age of six, Mícheál gravitated to the guitar and formed his first band, Skara Brae, with his sisters Tríona and Maighread and the gifted Derry guitarist Dáithí Sproule. Their beautiful, adventurous arrangements of mostly Irish Gaelic material did much to raise the profile and status of this tradition when they released their first and only album for the Gael Linn label in 1971. By this time both Mícheál and Tríona were students at University College Dublin, where Mícheál forged a partnership with Mick Hanly under the name Monroe, recording one fine album, Celtic Folkweave, with him, released by Polydor in 1974.
The origins of the Bothy Band were set when the accordion player Tony McMahon recruited both Mícheál and Tríona to play at a one-off concert with Donal Lunny, Paddy Keenan, Paddy Glackin and Matt Molloy under the name of Seachtar (“seven”). The night was such a success and the rapport between them so instinctive they decided to formalise the group.
At Mícheál O Domhnaill’s suggestion they called themselves the Bothy Band after a group of itinerant Irish labourers who worked the farms in Scotland by day and entertained themselves with wild, impromptu music sessions by night. Tony McMahon had a day job and bailed out and Paddy Glackin soon left to be replaced by Tommy Peoples, but the incredible energy generated by the new band caused an immediate impact. Planxty had already opened young people’s ears to the joy and excitement of Irish music, but nobody had heard anything quite like the Bothy Band in full flight before.
Full of strong characters and brilliant, thrilling musicians, they had a natural dynamism that manifested itself in fury of passion and blistering power that belied their acoustic line-up and blew most electric rock bands out of the water. People still talk in awe of their legendary début concerts in Ireland (at Trinity College Dublin) and Britain (at Hammersmith Town Hall).
The Bothy Band split after five years in 1979, but they made three classic albums, 1975 (1975), Old Hag You Have Killed Me (1976) and Out of the Wind, into the Sun (1977), plus a fine live collection, After Hours (1979). They set the benchmark by which all succeeding Irish bands have been judged and most of the leading Irish bands of today like Altan, Danu and Dervish point to the Bothy Band as a primary inspiration. It made them famous, but not rich, and due to business and record-company problems none of the band made much money out of the experience.
O Domhnaill went on to record the lovely Promenade (1980), an instrumental album with the fiddle player Kevin Burke (a post-Tommy Peoples member of the Bothy Band) and followed his sister Tríona to the United States, settling in Portland, Oregon. Tríona and Mícheál were subsequently reunited in Nightnoise, a band Micheal had formed with the violinist/keyboard player Billy Oskay, and the flautist Brian Dunning.
Nightnoise couldn’t have been more different from the Bothies, moulding a mellow, ambient instrumental style involving jazz/classical fusion full of spirituality that almost came to define the new age culture. The Celtic influence was minimal, dismaying many of O Domhnaill’s old fans from the Bothy Band era, but they hit a chord in the US and sold more records than the Bothies ever did. They were mainstays of the Windham Hill record label, for whom they recorded seven albums, and O Domhnaill stayed with them for over 15 years.
During the ambient years of Nightnoise, however, O Domhnaill did continue to involve himself in Irish music, founding the band Relativity with his sister Tríona and the great Scottish musicians Phil Cunningham (accordion) and his brother Johnny on fiddle. The late Johnny Cunningham, one of the finest fiddle players of his generation, was even inducted into Nightnoise as Billy Oskay’s replacement after their fourth album.
With the Cunninghams on board and Tríona and Mícheál sharing the vocals, Relativity were an outstanding band, recording two fine albums, Relativity (1986) and Gathering Pace (1987). It proved yet again that Mícheál O Domhnaill had few peers when it came to providing the understated guitar arrangements for others to blossom and get the best out of a jig or reel. Indeed he was critical of the high-octane obsession of many Irish musicians trying to recapture the magic of the Bothy Band.
He returned to live in Ireland in 1997 and again showed his adeptness with arrangements and sparingly sympathetic guitar accompaniments when he teamed up for a tour and a 2001 album, Athchuairt (“Reprise”), with his close friend the original Bothy Band fiddle player Paddy Glackin. Glackin gave O Domhnaill particular credit for his work on popularising Irish language songs. “He took a lot of old songs and re-fashioned them and made them accessible to a new generation,” he said.
A gentle, unassuming, mild-mannered character, Mícheál O Domhnaill was held in high regard by his peers for his quiet influence both as an ambassador of Irish music, his willingness to embrace other styles and the rich legacy of tunes and songs he brought with him. He collaborated on an album by the Japanese singer Mimori Yusa and appeared weekly as part of the house band on the RTE1 show Brid Live. He was also a producer, radio presenter (he was the first host of the Irish music show The Long Note) and a keen golfer, but, perhaps more than anyone else, he defined the role of the guitar in traditional tunes with his lightness of touch and understated style.
Colin Irwin
Irish Times obituary for Mícheál Ó'Domhnaill
Musical visionary who pushed the boundaries
Mícheál Ó Domhnaill: The vibrant pulse of traditional music was rendered silent last week with the news of the sudden death of Mícheál Ó Domhnaill at the age of 53. He was a quiet, self-effacing man who never sought the limelight on stage, yet he was a musical visionary whose influence touched musicians and listeners in traditional, folk and contemporary music circles across the world. He was a quiet, self-effacing man who never sought the limelight on stage, yet he was a musical visionary whose influence touched musicians and listeners in traditional, folk and contemporary music circles across the world.
Mícheál Ó Domhnaill was born on October 7th, 1952, in Dublin, the second son of Aodh Ó Domhnaill from Rannafast, Co Donegal, and Bríd Comber, Dublin. The family were reared in Kells, Co Meath. He had two sisters, Maighréad and Tríona, and two brothers, Éamon (who died in 2003) and Conall. He moved to Portland, Oregon, in 1979 and married American potter Peg Feindt. But in 1997 Mícheál returned home to be closer to his family and settled in Dublin.
Mícheál was an avid sportsman. He was a Meath minor footballer and played rugby until an injury brought him to the attention of the GAA, which then banned him from Gaelic football. His love of golf was lifelong, particularly in latter years as he happily combined musical sorties around the country with Paddy Glackin with daily golf games.
Mícheál’s musical literacy was encouraged from an early age. A grounding in piano, courtesy of the Kells nuns, left a lasting influence on him, as did his participation in a choir founded by his father.
An emergency hospital admission with appendicitis at the age of 12 resulted in an unexpected musical opportunity that steered his life course thereafter. To ease the boredom of recuperation, a brother who was teaching in Mícheál’s school gave him a guitar, which quickly became an extension of his 10 fingers, and later defined his musical identify with enormous subtlety and skill.
Mícheál first came to prominence at the age of 20 when he and his sisters, Tríona and Maighréad Ní Dhomhnaill, joined him along with Dáithí Sproule in the group, Skara Brae.
They recorded one seminal album in 1970. After a brief but adventurous interlude playing with Mick Hanley in Munroe, Mícheál embarked on a picaresque journey as one of the founding members of The Bothy Band in 1974, along with Donal Lunny, Paddy Glackin, Matt Molloy and his sister, Tríona.
By the age of 22, Mícheál had already played a central role in two groups, both of which pushed the boundaries of traditional music through a combination of sheer genius, forensic attention to tune pairings and arrangements, and crystalline vocals and harmonies.
He later engaged in diverse musical collaborations, including Nightnoise, with Brian Dunning, the late Johnny Cunningham and his sister, Tríona, which achieved significant successes in the US and Japan; and Relativity, with Tríona, Johnny and Phil Cunningham.
Mícheál had a keen ear for great music and was never slow to share his discoveries with a willing audience. He was the first presenter of Radio Éireann’s The Long Note, and was the producer of what is acknowledged to be a sublime recording in 1978 of concertina player Noel Hill and fiddle player Tony Linnane. Ó Domhnaill also contributed harmonium to this recording, making his mark with the subtlest of accompaniments, and undoubtedly broadening the audience for traditional music in the process.
Although steeped in the tradition, primarily through his father’s Donegal roots and through Aodh’s role as a music collector, Skara Brae took some of the oldest songs in the tradition and breathed fresh life into them, with their peerless sibling harmonies and sympathetic yet startling arrangements.
Their revolutionary harmonies sparked the imagination of everyone from Máiréad Ní Mhaonaigh (later of Altan) to Clannad.
It was Mícheál, along with Dáithí Sproule, who introduced the DADGAD guitar tuning to Irish music, having been influenced by John Renbourn and Bert Jansch of Pentangle. (This tuning enabled countless musicians to unpick the harmonies and underscore the melodies in traditional and folk music with a finesse previously unknown.)
The group set the bar high with this early recording, aided in no small way by their deep appreciation that to sing a song well, one had to understand its provenance. It was here that Aodh Ó Domhnaill’s long summers of music collection bore fruit.
Mícheál inherited his father’s passion for delving deep beneath the skin of the tradition, and he spent well over a year in the company of his blind aunt, Néilí Ní Dhomhnaill, in Rann na Féirste.
Her unique and formidable store of songs fuelled a lifelong love of forensic musicianship in Mícheál, a passion he later pursued by collecting songs in the Hebrides and western isles of Scotland. This attention to detail was also repeatedly evident in his magnificently detailed arrangements of songs and tunes on two albums with Relativity and seven album recordings with Nightnoise, not to mention his superbly innovative recordings with Kevin Burke, Portland and Promenade.
Ó Domhnaill was a musician who had a deep appreciation of the space between the notes as much as he did the notes themselves. He had an equal facility with songs in both Irish and English.
In that he united disparate audiences, with his arrangement of the Scots Gaelic song, Fionnghula, becoming a keystone of The Bothy Band’s repertoire; while his interpretation of Lord Franklin, a seminal English seafaring song, has yet to be matched, in terms of both the sensitivity of his arrangement and the subtlety of his vocal delivery. His more recent forays into the recording studio resulted in the excellent collaboration with Paddy Glackin on 2001’s Athchuairt/Reprise.
At his funeral, the remaining members of The Bothy Band convened, along with piper Liam Ó Floinn, accordion player Tony MacMahon and Máiréad Ní Mhaonaigh, an apt farewell to a musician whose talent remains peerless.
Mícheál Ó Domhnaill: born October 7th, 1952; died July 7th, 2006
© The Irish Times
Mícheál Ó'Domhnaill - biography (I)
Childhood and youth
Born and raised in Kells, County Meath, Ireland, Mícheál Ó’Domhnaill comes from an interesting family background. His grandparents were from Rann na Feirste (in English “Rannafast”), a village in an Irish-speaking region (a “Gaeltacht”) in County Donegal. They received a land grant in County Meath as part of an Irish government initiative to set up a Gaeltacht near Dublin by transplanting native Irish speakers to the area (Irish was, and still is, only spoken as their daily language by a minority of the people of Ireland, concentrated mainly in certain western areas of the country).
Mícheál’s grandparents returned to their native Donegal after 15 years. However, in the meantime their son Hugh (to whom the tune of the same name by Tríona on the album “At the End of the Evening” is presumably dedicated) had married a Dublin woman, Brid Comber, and settled as a teacher in Kells, Co. Meath. His children, Mícheál, Tríona and Maighread grew up in Kells, spending their school holidays in Rann na Feirste. Hugh was also a musician, singer and collector of songs, and Brid was a choir singer, so the children grew up in a very rich musical environment. They received music lessons from an early age (Mícheál recalls receiving piano lessons from the age of six until he was sixteen – when he was able to focus on the guitar – his preferred instrument).
Summers in Donegal brought the siblings into contact with their aunt, Neilí, a renowned singer who had a vast reportoire of songs in Irish and English. Other acquaintances made in Donegal were Pól and Ciarán Brennan (members of Clannad), and Dáithi Sproule (long a member of Altan).
Skara Brae
Mícheál and Tríona came together with Dáithi when they went to University College Dublin in the late 1960s. They played gigs around Dublin and Mícheál and Dáithi spent a summer as the house band at Teach Hiudaí Bhig in Gaoth Dobhair (Gweedore), Donegal. Around 1970, the three siblings -Mícheál, Tríona and Maighread – teamed up with Dáithi Sproule to form Skara Brae.
Skara Brae produced an album of the same name in 1971, and broke up in 1972. The album was re-released in 1998 by Gael-Linn.
Posted Jul 18, 10:47 amInterview 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?
Posted Jul 18, 10:44 amWe 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.
Mícheál Ó'Domhnaill discography
With SKARA BRAE
- Skara Brae (1971, re-released 1998)
With MICK HANLY
- Celtic Folkweave. 1974 (never released on CD and hard to get – copies of the LP have changed hands on ebay for over $50)
With THE BOTHY BAND
- 1977 – The Bothy Band
- Out of the Wind and into the Sun
- Old Hag You Have Killed Me
- After Hours
- Best of the Bothy Band
- BBC Radio 1 in concert
With RELATIVITY
With PADDY GLACKIN
- Athcuairt (2001)
Biography
Below is a partial attempt at a biography, running up to the point where the Bothy Band was formed.
Early years
Born and raised in Kells, County Meath, Ireland, Mícheál Ó’Domhnaill comes from an interesting family background. His grandparents were from Rann na Feirste (in English "Rannafast"), a village in an Irish-speaking region (a "Gaeltacht") in County Donegal. They received a land grant in County Meath as part of an Irish government initiative to set up a Gaeltacht near Dublin by transplanting native Irish speakers to the area (Irish was, and still is, only spoken as their daily language by a minority of the people of Ireland, concentrated mainly in certain western areas of the country).
Mícheál’s grandparents returned to their native Donegal after 15 years. However, in the meantime their son Hugh (to whom the tune of the same name by Tríona on the album “At the End of the Evening” is presumably dedicated) had married a Dublin woman, Brid Comber, and settled as a teacher in Kells, Co. Meath. His children, Mícheál, Tríona and Maighread grew up in Kells, spending their school holidays in Rann na Feirste. Hugh was also a musician, singer and collector of songs, and Brid was a choir singer, so the children grew up in a very rich musical environment. They received music lessons from an early age (Mícheál recalls receiving piano lessons from the age of six until he was sixteen – when he was able to focus on the guitar – his preferred instrument
Summers in Donegal brought the siblings into contact with their aunt, Neilí, a renowned singer who had a vast reportoire of songs in Irish and English. Other acquaintances made in Donegal were Pól and Ciarán Brennan (members of Clannad and, incidentally, older brothers of Enya), and Dáithí Sproule (long a member of Altan.
Skara Brae
Mícheál and Tríona came together with Dáithí when they went to University College Dublin in the late 1960s. They played gigs around Dublin and Mícheál and Dáithí spent a summer as the house band at Teach Hiudaí Bhig in Gaoth Dobhair (Gweedore), Donegal. Around 1970, the three siblings – Mícheál, Tríona and Maighread – teamed up with Dáithí Sproule to form Skara Brae. Daithí has long been a member of Altan.
Skara Brae produced an album of the same name in 1971, and broke up in 1972. The album was re-released in 1998 by Gael-Linn.
Monroe (with Mick Hanly)
Mícheál met up with Mick Hanly at the Swamp folk club in Rathmines, Dublin, in early 1972. Together they formed Monroe and played support for Planxty on their Irish Tour in 1973. In 1974, Monroe recorded an album, ‘Celtic Folkweave’, for Polydor, now considered a seminal album which signposted the arrival of a new and confident breed of contemporary Irish folk singer. Monroe split in 1975 when Michael joined the Bothy Band and Mick headed for Brittany and the life of an itinerant Irish folk troubadour. (Text adapted from the Mick Hanly web site). The “Celtic Folkweave” album has never been released on CD.
To be continued …..(to include The Bothy Band, Relativity and, eventually, Nightnoise). Comments or corrections to the above are gratefully accepted.
Posted Jan 21, 10:18 pm