Scots tour just another day at the office for Shannon
IF HER mother had had her way, Sharon Shannon’s work schedule would be a sight less hectic.
Instead of starting last week in Philadelphia and flying home for concerts in Dublin before coming over to Scotland for 10 gigs in 10 days, the accordionist, fiddler and whistle player would have been employed nine to five, Monday to Friday in an office somewhere.
“My mother wanted me to repeat my exams for Cork University but I really, really didn’t want to go back there,” says Shannon, whose Scottish tour includes four concerts as part of the Highlands’ Blas festival. Her older sister, Majella, had just enrolled on a six-month secretarial course in Limerick at the time, so her mother agreed to a compromise. The two sisters would do the course and go into a proper job.
This scenario had been unlikely to happen since Shannon started to play music, on the tin whistle initially, at the age of eight. Neither of her parents played music but they were keen dancers and there was always music on in the house. The four Shannon siblings all went on to play an instrument, Sharon the most keenly of all.
There are numerous tales of people phoning the Shannon house and whatever the time, hearing Sharon playing her accordion in the background.
Her dedication paid off. The album she recorded in 1991, aged 23, went on to become the bestselling album of instrumental traditional Irish music to date. She became part of the original, hugely popular A Woman’s Heart album and touring party the following year and later recorded the most downloaded track in Ireland, a live version of Galway Girl with singersongwriter Mundy. She also recorded the same song with Steve Earle, one of many collaborations that include recordings and tours with the Waterboys, Kirsty MacColl, Jackson Browne, John Prine, and Willie Nelson.
Shannon got her first taste of international touring at the age of 14, when the group she’d been playing with since she was still at primary school, Disirt Tola, was invited to the U.S.
At this point she was also competing in horse jumping events but she gave that up to concentrate on music and if her mother believed that young Sharon was taking her secretarial studies seriously in Limerick, she would have been disappointed.
Doing the course meant that Sharon, who’d quickly found soul mates on the thriving Limerick music scene as well as commuting to play in the village of Doolin in County Clare, had to turn down a well-paid American tour with a country and western band, and she vowed that would never happen again.
“My teacher in the secretarial college agreed with me,” she says. “As soon as the course finished, I moved to Doolin, where I had gigs seven nights a week. I was around 18 or 19.”
The next big opportunity to arrive was being asked to provide the music for Brendan Behan’s play, The Hostage, at the Druid Theatre in Galway. She then teamed up with Mary Black’s sister Frances, pianist Patsy Broderick and De Dannan’s bodhran master, Johnny “Ringo” McDonagh in the band Arcady before she was invited to play with the Waterboys at Glastonbury in 1989 as their guest. The guest spot extended for 18 months, during which she toured the world with the band and played accordion and fiddle on their Room to Roam album.
Playing with the Waterboys helped to get Shannon’s name better known and along with her musicianship it opened various doors.
She toured with Christy Moore then recorded with veteran reggae producer Dennis Bovell on her second album, Out the Gap, and her next release, Each Little Thing, featured songs by Chilean folk legends Inti-Illimani and Fleetwood Mac.
“Playing reggae rhythms or Fleetwood Mac songs was never a case of losing interest in or diluting my own music,” she says.
“I’ve loved Irish music since I began playing it with Frank Custy, who was a school teacher as well as a great fiddle player, around the age of eight. We’d go out and play at céilís in a parish hall, four or five miles away from where I lived. Frank showed us how to enjoy music and that the céilís were something that the people in the area looked forward to. It was a great social gathering and that aspect of music has never left me.” The Sharon Shannon Group plays Buccleuch Centre, Langholm, on Friday, September 2; Tolbooth, Stirling, Saturday; Dundee Flower and Food Festival, Sunday (afternoon); Glassel Hall, Banchory, Sunday (evening); Mareel, Lerwick, Tuesday 6; Victoria Halls, Helensburgh, Wednesday 7; Plockton High School, Thursday 8; Corran Halls, Oban, Friday 9; Eden Court, Inverness, Saturday 10; Troon, Sunday 11. For full details of Blas Festival, see www.blas-festival.com Mary Brennan THE Edinburgh International Festival has been carrying a bold and enlightening torch for William Shakespeare – this year being the 400th anniversary of his death. As a finale to the EIF, the Fireworks Concert delivered a pyrotechnic salute to the bard, by featuring music inspired by his tragedy, Romeo and Juliet. As soon as the first swaggering surges of Prokofiev’s Dance of the Knights rose skywards, they were met by a similarly grandiose display of lofty firepower exploding overhead into bright-glowing sparks like gold-dust. Suddenly, the star-crossed lovers were transformed into star-bursts while the SCO, conducted by Kristiina Poska, revealed the light and shade in the composer’s ballet score.
If there was a fine sense of drama in the Prokofiev, there was unstinting mettle and pizazz when the band hit the streets of down-town New York for Bernstein’s West Side Story. As the Sharks confronted the Jets, volleys of hurtling brilliance – oppositional in flares of red and green – leapt from the Castle battlements and the SCO blared out the strutting, wheedling rhythms that would never bend to a happy ending for Tony and Maria. Could the Pyrovision team capture, in fireworks, the wistfulness of Somewhere or the ache of I have a love? For the former, they set alight white flames, like beacons of hope, on the Castle walls, for the latter – well, the waterfall of silvery flickers coursing down the rock-face was like a veil of tears. There were final flurries of colourful whizzwizardry to match Shostakovich’s Festive Overture , and the SCO rocketed through it with a razzle-dazzle all their own. Sponsored by Virgin Money
Music ‘‘ My mother wanted me to repeat my exams for Cork University but I really, really didn’t want to go back there