You’ll have to draw your own conclusions!
If you threw a stone anywhere in the beautiful environs of Malin it would probably fall on land occupied by a McLaughlin. In that part of north Donegal’s Inishowen peninsula, as in other parts of Ireland where there is a concentration of a surname, to differentiate between the different septs the name of a forefather might be added. In Malin the award-winning singing sisters Karen, Lorna and Joleen come from a family known as the ‘Henry’ McLaughlins.
‘Henry is the family nickname. It was our grandfather’s first name,’ Lorna says. ‘Our cousins, uncles and aunts are all “Henry”. There are six sisters in our house and we’d get called the Henry girls. When we were thinking of a name for our group, “The Henry Girls” made sense. We also all liked the Indigo Girls [US folk duo] so The Henry Girls was also a wee nod to them.’
‘Maybe I should be more coy so people can relate the words to their situation’
So that’s that cleared up. What is also evident is that just over 20 years after the release of their debut album Far Beyond The Stars, The Henry Girls’ latest album, and first for almost seven years, A Time To Grow, can stand among their finest works. Their trademark harmonies are evident throughout with Karen and Lorna contributing fiddle, guitar, tin whistle and accordion while youngest sister Joleen plays the harp. Her name comes, not as I guessed from the Dolly Parton song, but from a contraction of the names of Joseph and Kathleen, their parents’ names.
Initially inspired by local folk luminaries such as Altan and Clannad, The Henry Girls’ musical influences became broader-based.
‘We grew up near this fantastic music venue called McGrory’s Bar in Culdaff [about 20 minutes from Malin] and that’s where I went out at the weekend when I was 19 or 20,’ Karen, the eldest of the trio says. ‘I saw so many different styles of music there: from folk music and singer-songwriters to what people call “World” music now. I started playing fiddle because I wanted to play like Ciarán Tourish from Altan. I went to Cork and studied music down there. One minute I would love Americana and then it would be African music or classical or jazz; anything goes really, but we all like a whole range of different music.’
A Time To Grow is made up of a clutch of original songs that touch on topics such as displacement, faltering relationships and one written in the aftermath of a tragic event in recent local history.
Lorna wrote two of them, Leaving Dublin and Where Are We Now, about changes in her own life.
‘Leaving Dublin was a co-write between myself and Ry Cavanaugh who is based in Boston. I lived in
Dublin for a few years and I was moving out of there during lockdown and everything about that was hard,’ she says.
‘Where Are We Now is such a personal song, so much so that I don’t really want to say what it’s about. But I’ll say it is about a struggle between a couple and things that impact on their life together. I’m a devil for telling people what a song is exactly about and friends say maybe I should be a bit more coy so people can relate the words to their own situation, so that’s all I’ll say.’
Another song that attracted airplay before Christmas was Not Your Fight, a collaboration between The Henry Girls and Manchester-based Armagh singer Ríognach Connolly.
‘The Nerve Centre in Derry [one of the city’s arts centres] had made Ríognach their artist-in-residence and they asked me did I want to do something with her because I was based in Derry,’ Karen says.
‘The second time we met was the day after Lyra McKee was shot in Derry and we were both really in shock. That was in our minds when we were writing the song. I think it struck a chord when it came out in October because of what was going on in the world. It was different from what we normally do and Tommy McLaughlin [at Donegal’s Attica Studio] really put a lot of work into the production of it.’
Two other songs on the album, Winter’s Day and Don’t Fear The Night, celebrate the birth of Joleen’s first child – a girl – in late 2020. The next generation of Henry Girls has a new member.