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Posts Tagged ‘Traditional Music’

Tommy Potts and The Liffey Banks

Posted in Music, tagged , , , , , , on March 18, 2010| 4 Comments »

Other traditional and folk music uploads on CHTM

Liam Weldon
Dominic Behan
The Furey Brothers
Seamus Ennis (on pipes)
Seamus Ennis (Mrs. McGrath)

The Liffey Banks- Claddagh Records


The Liffey Banks

I remember the first time I saw the image above. It was over on Niall McCormacks blog, and the image just grabbed my attention. In truth, I hadn’t heard of Tommy Potts before. The image is striking but, a man completely content and in his element at one of the most iconic spots in Dublin. Bord Fáilte would ruin it if they tried to capture something like that again. It’s completely natural, a moment caught perfectly.

Anyway, it turned out that Tommy was a Dublin firefighter, and I heard mention of him from my father. Based at Tara Street fire-station, he was injured in the Pearse Street fire of October 6th,1936. Three Dublin firefighters died in the fire, including a 1916 veteran named Robert Malone, and two other firemen- Tom Nugent and Peter McArdle. The three men are buried at Glasnevin Cemetery, side by side.

Sibéal Teo, a television production company, deserve massive credit for their ‘Cérbh é….‘ series on Tg4 exploring some of the key personalities of traditional music in Irish history. Among the figures studied in the series was one Tommy Potts. It opened my eyes not just to his own music, but an entire hidden scene in Dublin, centered around the (sadly gone) Lavin’s pub. The show was presented by Paddy Glackin, a fiddle player himself, which no doubt added to the character of the show.

Here, we have two tracks from 1972s ‘The Liffey Banks’. From the voice of Liam Weldon to the pipes of Seamus Ennis, it’s posts like this I most enjoy.

You can purchase The Liffey Banks from Claddagh Records online for only €13


My Love Is In America

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Classic Dublin Albums: Finbar and Eddie Furey (1968)

Posted in Music, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on January 25, 2010| 2 Comments »

“…in 1966 Eddie and Finbar Furey won the international folk award in Tralee against eighty other groups. For this they got £170 in prize money which they say lasted about three days. ‘It went to charity’ says Eddie. The ‘Guinness charity’ says Finbar”

Finbar and Eddie Furey LP

Finbar and Eddie Furey, Transatlantic Records, 1968.

“You’ll meet a tall, dark handsome man….” she told my mother. Mrs. Furey that was, who used to tell fortunes up in Ballyfermot. “Jesus, she got that one wrong!”

I had a great time recently researching the Liam Weldon article, and got a laugh out of the images and memories it brought to mind especially for my mother. German TV cameras in the front garden, Christy Moore on the wall, a whole family at work musically. The Fureys were much the same, on Spidel Road.

Six in the family, the four boys and the parents. A musicial house to say the least. Another cornerstone of what I consider the great forgotten Trad-scene of Ireland, the Downeys acts. For all the romanticism surrounding traditional music in Ireland at the time (1968), you hear very little about Ballyfermot and what was going on there. The Furey Family, The Keenan Family , Paddy Sweeney (who did some time in the Dublin City Ramblers), The Weldon Family, and all the drop-ins you’d get on occasion for The Phoenix Folk Club, with the likes of Andy Irvine, Jim Page, Donal Lunny, Barry Moore (Better known now as Luke Bloom), Mary Black, Ronnie Drew, Mick Hanly and others. Christy Moore did a fundraiser for the folk club too, and things were really going on to say the least. You were no one without an instrument up there, with mam trying out the fiddle briefly and the father opting for the bodhran.

Anyway, the album.

An amazing array of instruments. Whistles, pipes, bodhrans, guitars, whatever you’re having yourself. Finbar and Eddie were sweeping awards from a young age, with several junior championship awards for pipes under both belts, and the Ulster Senior Trio championship taken along with the father, Ted.

The Spanish Cloak
Come by the Hills
Sliabh Na Mban
Dainty Davy
Tattered Jack Welch
The Flowers in the Valley
Pigeon on the Gate
Graham’s Flat
Leezy Lindsay
Piper in the Meadow Straying
The Curragh of Kildare
Eamonn an Chnuic (Ned of the Hills)
This Town Is Not Your Own
Rocking the Baby

Come By The Hills:

“Eddie’s first song was written by Scottish TV producer Gordon Smith. The words are set to the traditional Irish air Buchal an Eire”

The Curragh of Kildare:

“Sometimes called the The Winter It Is Passed and was said by Dean Christie (Who included it in his collection of traditional ballad airs in 1876) to have been written about a highwayman called Johnson, who was hanged in 1750 for robberies committed on the Curagh, the pen heathland that stretches to the East of Kildare”

Enjoy these two. While currently away in Belgium, nothing makes me long for a Downeys pint like this LP! More on the way friends, more on the way.

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