Going wild with Sharon Shannon

Queen of traditional music, Sharon Shannon, shares childhood memories and what’s coming next, with Siobhán Breatnach

There was usually blue murder in the back seat playing a game called turns and squashing each other against the side of the car. Daddy used to put down the boot and try to get the old Volkswagen Beetle up to 90-miles per hour, with the four of us shouting excitedly, roaring and squealing, with the excitement of the speed, shouting ‘up to ninety, up to ninety Daddy’.

Summer brings back joyous childhood memories for Sharon Shannon carefree days on the farm and holidays to the beach. “I hated school, so I lived for the summer holidays. We had a fantastic idyllic childhood,” she says. “We had great freedom on my parents’ farm, running through meadows and climbing trees, playing with neighbours’ kids and training the family pets to do tricks. Surrounded by nature and animals - dogs, cats, goats, cattle and sheep - Shannon’s true love is horses. “My father used to breed Connemara ponies and we trained them to jump,” she says. “My younger sister Mary and I did a lot of competitive show jumping as teenagers. It was a big obsession. We were lucky that it was also a huge passion for our father IJ, so he gladly nurtured our love of the ponies and horses. We often had pet lambs and calves,” she adds. “I loved the farm animals equally as much as I loved the cats, dogs and horses.”

“My father had lots of old-fashioned farm equipment. I remember him using the plough with a horse to plough a field to sow spuds and a hay-turner to turn the hay. He still has that hay-turner at the old family farm. I remember well the pains we all had in our backs from sewing spuds,” she says. “They had to be planted a foot apart. My father would give each of us a 12-inch-long stick for measuring.”

Carnival day in Corofin, with its bumpers, swinging boats and candy floss was always met with great enthusiasm and excitement. As was the annual summer trip around the windy roads of the Burren, Doolin,

Black Head and Gregans Castle in Ballyvaughan. “We had many trips to the beautiful beach town of Lahinch on what seemed like the only stretch of good road in the whole of Co. Clare,” she says. Not much has changed these days, though she now lives in Galway. “At the moment, I’m loving being at home with the animals,” she says. “Lots of walking and swimming with the dogs and some jumps off the top diving board in Salthill, with my two sisters Mary and Majella. I visit my father down in Clare every chance I get. He’s 93 now and he’s doing great.”

As one of the finest traditional musicians to come out of Ireland, the pandemic called a halt to touring in 2020. “I miss meeting the lovely people that come to my shows and having the chance to go to fantastic places all over the world but at the same time, I’m very much a home person and I love being in Salthill. With all this time at home, I’m getting way more inspiration for writing new music. I just finished a week of filming a TV show called ‘Heartlands on the River Shannon’, which will be airing later in the summer,” she adds. “We had a fabulous time on the river and it’s something that I’d love to do again. A great friend of mine has a cruiser boat, so it’s on the cards big time.”

When she’s not performing, Shannon says there’s no shortage of amazing sessions to enjoy across the country year-round. “The places that I love to go are Doolin, Kinvara and Galway City, Valerie’s in Aughrim, mainly because they’re the handiest for me, locationwise. At the moment I’m listening to superb fiddlers Claire Egan, Bríd Harper and Dónal McCague and box players Conor Conolly, Dermot Byrne and Josephine Marsh.”

Though very much a home bird, one of her favourite holidays was a threeweek break in Thailand with her band and manager. “Thanks to an extremely generous friend, we had the use of a house for free on a beach in Phuket. It was a gap in the middle of a tour of Australia and Japan and it was cheaper for us to stay that side of the world than come home for the three weeks. We travelled out to beautiful Islands every day on the colourful long-tail boats. It was my first time spending Christmas Day on the beach. The whole thing was an incredible experience and I’d love to do it again sometime.”

In a post lockdown world, Shannon hopes to return to playing live gigs around Ireland and European festivals. “And hopefully Australia and New Zealand at some stage,” she says. “I’m hoping to record. Every so often I get a fit of writing tunes. It could last a few weeks and as a result, I have loads of new tunes that I’m very happy with. I’m playing loads of guitar and hoping to record a new version of ‘The Beast from the East’ from my 2020 album, ‘The Reckoning’, with the guitar playing the lead melody instead of the accordion. “We already have a fantastic new backing track for it with an orchestral arrangement by composer and arranger Brian Byrne in Los Angeles.”

A few gigs have started to trickle in but in the meantime, she’s hoping for another one of those glorious carefree summers. Is there a soundtrack she’d choose to go with it? A song that best encapsulates summer in Ireland? “There are several,” she says. “Off the top of my head, I think of ‘Song for Ireland’ by Phil and June Colclough and ‘Ireland for the Summer’ by Pádraig Stephens.”

Sounds good to us. Play on.

‘I’m loving being at home with the animals. Lots of walking and swimming with the dogs and some jumps off the top diving board in Salthill’