Dónal Donohoe

Recently we saw the passing of Liam Clancy, the last of the Clancy Brothers and of course Tommy Makem. ‘Wild Mountain Thyme’, ‘Óró Sé do Bheatha ‘bhaile’, ‘The Parting Glass’, I heard all of these songs and many others for the first time sung by Liam Clancy. He was a great singer, his voice was powerful but yet had great warmth and resonance, it will be his legacy.

Probably nothing else has taken up so much space in the entertainment section of both the printed and electronic media in recent times as the hype surrounding the music talent shows on TV both in Europe and in the US. The person behind the biggest of these shows is also behind much of what gets into the charts, especially coming up to Christmas. Most of the songs sung on these shows up to and including the finals are old hits that have been covered many times before, so nothing new there. The show would seem to be as much about the so called celebrity judges who sit on the panel assessing the performers as it is about the performers, how many of these judges are qualified to judge music is debatable and they are more likely there to further their own careers as much as they are supposedly trying to help and develop new upcoming musical talent. This was very obvious recently when for two weeks in a row a certain act, where singing and dancing abilities were virtually non-existent, were kept in the contest by the judges ahead of acts that were for all to see far more musical simply because their antics brought more viewers to the show.

It has been stated by many and this was confirmed by the person who is top judge on both of these shows that if Bob Dylan were to participate in the contest he would be voted off immiediatly by these judges, presumably for his lack of star quality. So we are led to believe by these people who control much of the music we hear on mainstream radio and TV that what the world needs to hear is not an artist who writes original and often thought provoking songs but manufactured pop stars, whose image and musical output they control, singing cover numbers that are rarely anything near as good as the originals. But then I would say all that wouldn’t I, being as I am naturally suspicious of musical talent shows where a musical insturment is never to be seen.

Leonard Cohen, O2 Dublin, July 2009 © Irene Lundgaard

He danced on to the stage sang, played and entertained for almost three hours, then danced off in to the night. Yes they were all there, Suzanne, So Long Marianne, Bird On The Wire, Who By Fire, Dance Me To The End Of Love, Hallelujah, I’m Your Man, the list goes on and it is impressive that one man could write so many great songs. Having spent so many years on the periphery of the music business and having been written off as irrelevant, unable to sing, Leonard Cohen is the finest lyricist that I have ever heard and it is surely some form of poetic justice that he is at last receiving some recognition for his work while he is still in this world. The concert at the O2 in Dublin was not the first time I had heard Leonard Cohen perform live and I hope that it will not be the last.

I have always enjoyed the drive north from Dublin to Belfast, the image of the distant Mourne mountains catching the summer sunshine as I played on one of the many beaches that dot the shoreline north of Dublin is one that stands out clearly from my childhood. The winding road that used to pass through almost every town on the way has now been replaced by a motorway that stretches from Dublin to just south of Belfast, cutting the travel time to about half of what it used to be.

Situated where the river Lagan enters Belfast Lough the city sits snugly between Cave Hill and Black Mountain to the north and the Mourne foothills to the south, making it feel more compact than Dublin. The two giant Harland & Wolff cranes which can be seen from most places in the city bear witness to it’s ship-building past and the dry dock where the Titanic was built is now a museum. The city centre lies in the area surrounding Belfast City Hall, where many of the streets are pedestrian and most tourist attractions are within easy walking distance of each other. The Belfast accent is strong, flat and very infectious, the people are friendly and helpful as I found out when at one stage I was looking at my map not far from the Europa Hotel trying to locate the Linenhall Library and out of the blue a man stopped and asked if he could help me, something that would rarely if ever happen in a city like Paris or New York.

It was nice to spend a few days in Belfast, wandering around at a leisurely pace checking out whatever caught one’s fancy or sitting in the sunshine on Arthur Street drinking coffee at the oldest cafe in the city. All too soon it was time to head back south again, but no doubt I’ll be back to Belfast.

For the second year in a row it has rained for almost the entire month of August, the downpours were monsoon-like in their intensity, causing mud-slides and severe flooding in many areas. But for the past week there have been clear blue skies and sunshine with temperatures in the low twenties, which is not bad for September. The farmers who had been facing the possibility of losing most of their crops due to the inclement weather, are out in force with their combine harvesters, tractors and trailers making use of every hour of sunshine, sometimes working late into the night. On such days the countryside is a hive of activity, with the harvesting of each field adding to the ever changing tapestry of the landscape. Perhaps these wet summers are the first signs of the effect climate change is having on this part of the world, or else it could just be a part of the long-term cycle of weather patterns that have been going on down through the ages. But if next year brings another monsoon season with record amounts of rain falling instead of a summer, then I will have my doubts.

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.

© Irene Lundgaard

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.

Check out iTunes here.

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.

© Irene Lundgaard

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.

© Irene Lundgaard

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.

© Irene Lundgaard

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.

© Irene Lundgaard

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.

© Irene Lundgaard

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.

© Irene Lundgaard

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.