The first time I heard John Martyn I was eighteen years old, I had been playing the guitar from the age of ten and had been greatly influenced by Bert Jansch and Davy Graham. One day a friend of mine told me he had a record that I had to hear, he said it was kind of like Bert Jansch but a bit different. He then proceeded to play ‘Solid Air’ on the turntable and as I listened I was blown away, I already knew Danny Thompson but the guitar playing and singing sounded fresh, funky and like nothing I had ever heard before, still to this day ‘Solid Air’ is one of my favourite albums of all time. About a year later I got to hear John Martyn playing live in Liberty Hall in Dublin and was again deeply moved and uplifted by his music.
Over the years I have heard him play live on many occasions both solo and with his band and have collected his albums from the early releases ‘Bless The Weather’, ‘Sunday’s Child’ through his middle period ‘One World’, ‘Grace And Danger’ to name but a few, right up to the last release before he passed away ‘On The Cobbles’, in many ways his music has been like a soundtrack to my life. I got to meet the man himself once after a concert in Copenhagen, a friend of mine the guitarist Sam Mitchell who knew him from the old days in London and who has sadly since passed on was playing at a blues club nearby and John Martyn came by after his own show. They say that you should never meet your heroes but I’m not so sure, Sammy introduced him saying “I’d like you to meet Donal Donohoe”, John Martyn repeated my name in his rich Scottish accent, then threw his arms around me and gave me a big hug, after which we all withdrew to a back room set aside for the musicians for some refreshments. I got to talk to him and told him how much I had enjoyed his show he said he thought it had “started out well, had slackened just a little in the middle but at the end there was some real stuff happening”. After talking for a while John borrowed Sammy’s Fender Stratocaster and Echoplex tape machine then went out and played a great version of the Skip James song ‘I’d Rather Be The Devil’, much to the surprise and great delight of all those present. I later found out that people who were living nearby had called the police complaining that they had never heard music being played so loud at that club before.
Time went by, I had returned to live in Ireland and though I had managed to catch a gig he did in Dublin, I lost touch for a period, mostly due to circumstances in my own life at the time. When I heard the news that he had to have part of his right leg amputated I was saddened and resolved to make it to his next gig. As it turned out that was a small midsummer festival in the grounds of Kinnity Castle in the very centre of Ireland. Although it was not last time I heard John play live, it is the one that stands out most in those final years, for as I saw him being helped on to the stage, being handed a guitar as he sat there alone, he had no band with him, memories of seeing him play that first time in Liberty Hall all those years ago came flooding back. He launched straight into ‘Jelly Roll Maker’, his acoustic guitar playing was masterful, rhythmical and powerful, having lost none of the energy or magic of those early years. The songs came one after the other ‘Don’t Want To Know’, ‘My Creator’, ‘May You Never’, ‘Sweet Little Mystery’ and on more than one occasion I noticed, but was not surprised that the hairs on my arms were standing to attention. I stood there among the crowd in the dark on that midsummer’s night listening to his music, it sounded so beautiful, so unlike anything or anyone else and knew once again that as musicians go John Martyn was one of a kind.
While waiting for the apples to ripen on the apple trees last year I decided to to leave them for an extra week before picking them. When I came back the following week to see how they were doing the first thing I noticed was that the birds had got there before me. If it were the case that they would just eat a few apples and leave the rest undisturbed everything would be fine, but no they absolutely have to take a few bites out of as many apples as possible. Still who can blame them for trying to eat as much as possible before winter arrives and food becomes harder to find.
This year there were not as many apples as in previous years with the exception of one tree which had an abundance of cooking apples. When October arrived I decided to beat the birds to it by picking all the fruit before they got to it. There was still plenty of berries and other food around so I did not feel bad about it and home-made apple tart made with organically grown apples makes coffee time a real treat every time
It’s been a long journey for the songs on this album, having originally started out as recordings made on tape in a studio using mostly analogue equipment. Some of the songs were released on vinyl in Denmark on two LPs while I was living there and some of these along with two previously un-released songs were used when releasing my Irish debut ‘Midnight ’til Noon’ on CD in 2004. Now this album is available to download either as an album or as individual songs on iTunes and the other usual online stores. The technology may have changed but it’s still the same music albeit in a digital format and hopefully I will have some new music available in the not too distant future.
It was one of those days where all tasks relating to the emails in my inbox had been dispatched quickly and the rest of the day stretched ahead without anything else requiring imediate attention. I had up until recently been quite busy in the studio with all that such work entails, recording, listening, mixing and listening again, so much so that it had been hard to find the time just to practice, play and work on new music. When the opportunity to do so presented itself it was seized imediately and the next hour or two was spent on a journey into music with no predetermined destination.
I once heard that when practicing one should work hard but stop just before it reaches the point of pain. I rarely if ever experience pain while playing music, but the hours in the studio meant that my hands were more often turning nobs and draging the computor’s mouse than they were playing my instrument. To say that it was enjoyable to sit there and play music like that would be an understatement and when I decided to stop I was nowhere near reaching the point of pain, but it was somewhere near the point where once again my fingers felt nimble.
She smiles and the world is a brighter place
Her eyes sparkle like ebony lakes reflecting the moonlight
Few who feel the ripples of warmth emanating from her heart are left unaffected
I can only play my guitar
This week someone left a comment on a blog post that I published on this page, it was only the third time that someone had left a comment since I started this page. Probably most musicians would prefer to spend their time playing and working on their music than they would writing a blog and I can’t say that I would feel any different. Up until now writing blog posts has been a relaxed affair because as nobody was reading them, then nobody gave a damn one way or the other. But I guess it was too much to think that I could keep on uploading blog posts while continuing to remain virtually out of sight and un-noticed. Still if constantly uploading new blog posts means that more people visit my website read my blog posts and leave comments, then I wonder if I constantly keep on writing and releasing new songs will it mean that eventually more people will come and…
It’s over ten years now that I have been living on the hill and having lived in cities all my life the experience on the whole has been a good one. It was not so much a question of reconnecting with nature again, it was more like getting to know it for the first time. The yearly cycle with different trees and plants taking centre stage at different times to hog the limelight with their blossoms and changing colours, coming with such regularity that eventually one becomes acquainted with it.
One of the first things I did when I moved here was to plant some trees, somewhere between one hundred and one hundred and fifty trees in fact, the rabbits destroyed some while they were still saplings but the majority survived. They were mostly native trees, oak, ash, birch and beech etc but there were a few exotic ones as well, a ginko, judas and tulip tree and so on. As the years have rolled by many of the trees have reached at least ten metres in height and some like the spruce trees have begun to block the light and smother some of the surrounding trees, so much so that this autumn I will have to select some for felling along with some of the alder trees which have been the most spectacular as far as growth has been concerned.
Still with rising oil and energy prices maybe this is not such a bad thing when one has a wood burning stove that except for maintenance never goes out from the time it is lit in the autumn until spring arrives again.
Many hours spent in the studio working on new music, outside the sun has been shining and life goes on as normal. Inside the studio there is no natural light, the outside world is shut out and time stands still, or at least it does for the duration of the recording as one attempts to capture a moment in time, that can withstand the test of time. When all is finished and it’s time to take the music out into the world, where all the hard work, time and effort can be dismissed in an instant, it’s important to remember that in regard to any anticipation one might feel about possible reactions or response, one must not hold one’s breath.
I saw an advertisement on the TV a while ago for the best music from the commercials for summer 2008 and remembered back to when I first heard Eric Clapton’s music being used in a car commercial. At the time there was a bit of an outcry from music fans who felt that it was selling out. Today such practices are not only acceptable but are the norm, with bands and musicians lining up to get their music used in commercials promoting everything from cough medicine to dog food. Music has become devalued and in many cases comes secondary to the product it is promoting, and it seems like a long time ago now when one would hear music on the radio that would make any sort of social comment about the world that we live in or about the issues of the day.
Music can help to sell things and to many this is it’s greatest value, a commodity that can be used to promote other products. But music is much more than that and deserves to be listened to for what it is, although using music in commercials and as background music to reality TV shows is not only financially attractive to bands and musicians, but in many cases necessary for survival in today’s world. There is probably more money to be made selling merchandise such as band tee-shirts, posters, coffee mugs and anything else that you can put a band logo on than there is trying to sell music CDs or downloads. Music now is very often no more than an afterthought to the packaging and glitter that surrounds it or to the product that it promotes.
There is nothing wrong with the partnership of music and business, in fact it is necessary in order to promote and distribute it in any meaningful way and it has always been so. But when commercial and business interests not only dominate but often dictate the music we hear, the question has to be asked, what will happen to the quality of the music?
There are times when it’s easy to get tired of the virtual world that is the internet and to long for the real world where you can look into the eyes of the person you are talking to and feel the grip of the hand you are shaking. Prolonged periods of dealing with people on the internet can increase this longing, but every now and then the internet throws up something with a human side to it that makes it all worthwhile. A week ago I received an email from someone who had seen me perform in Copenhagen in the early nineties and who got in touch after coming across my name by chance while searching for the band Pentangle on the net. As the person is now living in the south of France it is unlikely that we would have ever met up again anywhere except on the internet. There are a lot of connections, contacts and possibilities in the virtual world and it is nice to sometimes hit on the right ones.
I had been keeping an eye out for sometime wondering when it would happen, then yesterday as I stood in the kitchen beside the window that faces east a bird flew right up to the window paused for a second and flew away again. It was a swallow, the first I’ve seen this year and no doubt his companions will be joining him over the coming days and weeks. Easily to distinguish from most other birds by their agile and graceful flight and a joy to watch on long summer evenings as they swoop down over the field catching insects on the wing. Sociable creatures they love to gather on the telegraph line in the evenings to chatter and do they chatter, I have never heard any other flock of birds that seem to have such lively conversations without actually screaming at each other as crows and rooks do.
About two years ago I was sitting reading one summers day with all the windows open when suddenly a swallow flew in one window and started flying around the room unable to find it’s way out again. After circling the room two or three times it collided with the wall and fell to the floor where it remained motionless. I carefully picked it up to bring it outside and as I did so my fingers gently stroked it’s plumage which felt like silk to touch, occasionally the odd bird has fallen down the chimney and needed rescuing in a similar fashion, but none had feathers that were so smooth to the touch. In a strange kind of way just as the swallows are arriving from Africa to spend the summer so it is that the wild geese are gathering to migrate to eastern Greenland and Iceland until the winter, flying in their distinctive V-shaped formations and honking all the while.
For three days in a row last week the sun shone, the temperatures rose to between 15 and 18 degrees centigrade and the living room window had been left open all day and long into the evening. It really felt as though spring had come, the alder, birch and rowan trees had all started to bud and the laurels had already flowered. Then just as the prospect of the new season seemed to dangle before us bringing with it long, warm and sunny days, it all changed. The winds turned northerly bringing the cold weather down from the Arctic and covering the hills in a blanket of snow, winter was giving us one last flash of it’s teeth, but it was beautiful.
It’s Sunday afternoon, the sky is overcast and there has already been a shower of rain so notions of pruning the apple trees or going for a walk in the woods have been cancelled. As a matter of fact everything else that involves anything other than chilling out has also been cancelled for the day too, because it’s coffee time. There is nothing like the aroma of freshly ground coffee beans hitting the nostrils in advance of the taste which almost always seems to give the perfect lift at this time of day. Around here coffee time usually happens sometime between 4pm and 6pm, although this can change when out travelling or during extended periods away from home. There are probably some places where there is no such thing as coffee time, but I try to avoid such places and don’t think that I could live anywhere like that, at least not by choice. Could you?
Trying to work with and live from music can sometimes feel like hovering permanently between a state of ecstasy and a state of bankruptcy. Before his death the musician and songwriter Nick Drake once said that if his music had done anything to help one single person, it would have made it worth it. In the last two years or so I have received messages and had contact from people in many different parts of the world who have expressed their appreciation of and said many beautiful and often moving things about my music. Some people have even used their hard earned money to purchase CDs of my music. That anyone anywhere would like any part of my work makes me happy. I can’t help it if I’m lucky.
There have always been hunters and those who were hunted, down through the ages the Inuit people of the the Arctic regions have hunted seals and other animals using their meat for food , their skins for clothing and the oil extracted from the dead carcass to burn in their lamps and give them light through the long winter night. The bushmen of the Kalahari in South Africa will sometimes pursue an ox on foot for days until the animal no longer has the energy to flee and the bushmen will then, often with one strike, kill it and pray to the soul of the dead animal in thanks for the food that it will provide for them and their families over the following days and weeks. Taking what is needed in order to survive from nature’s resources has been the way for mankind since earliest times, with many indigenous tribes and people taking care not to deplete individual species to the point of extinction or destroy vegetation excessively, realizing that they depended on these same resources for own existence.
In my own part of the world there are farmers who will shoot the occasional animal to protect their livestock or the odd individual who will shoot a rabbit or two when the countryside is abundant with such creatures. But there are others who would set loose a domestically reared stag only to be chased sometimes to it’s death by a pack of vicious hounds followed by a posse of horsemen and sometimes women usually dressed in costumes reminiscent of the landed gentry of the nineteenth century whose lifestyles it would seem they would like to emulate. Sometimes it is an unfortunate fox that these groups of so-called hunters and their baying hounds chase, the result again often being that the fox is savagely mauled to death. The practice of hare coursing too although the hounds are muzzled is still none the less not a pretty sight.
Tradition is often sited as justification for these practices, but cannibalism, eating the heart of your enemy to gain the power of his soul and throwing Christians to the lions have also been traditions in this world. Not all traditions are necessarily good or worth keeping. That anyone would want to inflict such pain and cruelty on an animal and experience pleasure in doing so is something that I cannot relate to. Only humans hunt for sport.
The world has become a smaller place and although many people including myself tried to avoid it as long as they could, in the end it is impossible to ignore it. Yes I am talking about the internet, the place where lovers meet, deals are done, contacts are made and information is exchanged. I still find it fascinating that I can sit here at home on a hillside in Wicklow on the east coast of Ireland and communicate with people in Boston USA, Cumbria England, Copenhagen Denmark or Chile in South America sending messages with the click of a button and often getting a reply within minutes.
Recently I re-established contact with some old friends and acquaintances from my time living in Copenhagen, many of whom had changed address and telephone numbers since I had last seen or spoken to them. All of this happened by surfing the internet and very often coming across them in cyberspace by chance. Also there are the people you meet on the internet that you have never met in real life and probably never will, virtual friends so to speak. Of course there is a downside, spam and the people who send it, but like everything in life there are people who will use a thing like the internet for creative purposes or for just doing their daily business and there are people who will use it to cheat, steal or just to disrupt other people’s lives.
Whatever the disadvantages with the internet may be the opportunities it opens up for independent musicians to get their music across to a wider audience without having to sign away the copyright and control of their music to a major record company make it look like the more attractive option. So here’s to the small businessmen, entrepreneurs and independent musicians of this world, may the new technologies serve them well as they try to survive against the onslaught of the multinationals and big corporations.
A dusting of snow covered the hill this morning but soon evaporated and time is running out for the winter to hit with any real bite. One more month and spring will herald new growth and nature will be renewed again for one more year. So it is with the music too, last years songs make way for whatever the new year will throw up, maybe nothing or maybe a song that will long out live this musician. No one knows for sure what the future holds but I like that and think that is the way it should be.
‘Ceol ’s Rann’ has been sent out into the world and will sink or float in the great sea of sounds that surround us everyday, fate will decide. Some airplay on Highlander Radio in Boston and RnaG and Raidió Idirlíon in Ireland has helped to get the music out to a wider audience which will hopefully lead to some requests and then a little more airplay. One can always hope for hope springs eternal and in the meantime it is back to working on the next bunch of songs, the new year has begun.
The sound of the needle hitting the grove and that old warm anologue sound filling the room in stereo feels like a thing of the past in these days of highly compressed digitalized music stored on iPods and blasted through headphones directly into the brain. Although it is nearly 20 years since the introduction of CDs, music is still being made on vinyl. I am delighted to have some of my music, which was recorded on tape using anologue equipment, now for sale in Dublin.
Along with the CDs ‘Ceol ’s Rann’ and ‘Midnight ’til Noon’ two vinyl LPs ‘Winter Makes Me Hard’ and ‘Everytime I Turn’, featuring tracks from the same recording sessions as ‘Midnight ’til Noon’ but including nine tracks that do not appear on that album, are now for sale at
Road Records on Fade Street, Dublin 2.
It was nice to be outdoors in the afternoon sunshine, the Indian summer having lasted until November and going some way towards making up for the summer we never had. I was absorbed in what I was doing when I turned around to get something and there he was, the fox. With his redish brown fur, long bushy tail and cat-like eyes, he was no more than three or four feet away from me. He just stood there looking at me expectantly in the hope I suppose that I would feed him. My elderly neighbour had told me that while her grandchildren had been staying with her for a few days sometime earlier they had fed the fox by hand a few times. Somehow feeding a wild animal with human food did not seem right, it could make him a little too trusting of people which might not always be in his best interest.
He followed me around for about a half an hour and although it was hard I resisted giving him any food hoping instead that he would turn his attention to catching one of the many wild rabbits that inhabit these hills. Eventually the fox did go his own way, but over the following days and weeks he has come around many times. Sometimes he would eat some of the apples that were left out for the birds and other times he would drink from the bird bath, but maybe he was just dropping by to say hello in his own foxy way. As far as I am concerned he is always welcome.
The hills of Wicklow have turned from green to gold and the drive to Dublin has become a feast for the eyes. In a week or two most of the trees will have lost their leaves, all except that is the evergreens but at the moment the beech trees in particular are spectacular in their autumnal display. The weather has been unnaturally warm for this time of year, with little or no frost at night so far and outdoor daytime activities here on the hill still conducted without a jacket. But the apples have been picked from the fruit trees and almost everything that needs to be is battened down, ready for the rain and gales and anything else that the winter might throw at us.
On the music front the dust is still settling following the release of ‘Ceol ’s Rann’ which has elicited some response and reaction from various quarters. The first review was mostly positive and hopefully there will be more. As for radio play it’s hard to say at this stage if it will receive any amid the boy bands and other acts that have a major record label and thus a big publicity machine behind them, but the fingers are crossed. Although the music business is in a state of turmoil at the moment and has been for some time, it’s good to know that the music itself will never change. There will always be those who sing, play and write music and those who enjoy listening to it.
