Dónal Donohoe

© 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.

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.

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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.

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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.

Many years had passed since I had been in county Mayo, I was back in Ireland to attend my brother’s wedding in Roscommon and the next day got a bus from Elphin to Foxford from where I intended to retrace my steps from memory and find my old friend who had recently moved back from the U.S. to a farm there left to him by his uncle. He would travel down from Dublin at weekends as a young man to help his uncle with various chores around the farm and sometimes I would join him. The farm was nestled on a bend of the river Moy with the end of the Ox Mountains visible to the north and the majestic Nephen mountain dominating the vista to the west. The highlight of the weekend was usually the dance at the Pontoon ballroom situated on the narrow strip of land that separates Loch Conn and Loch Cullin, on starlit nights during our summer visits we would sometimes sit on the rocks at the shore of Loch Cullin after the dance and talk until late into the night.

I had not seen my friend for over ten years and it was even longer since I had been back to the farm, but with the image of Nephin in my mind’s eye I was sure that I could find my way back to the farmhouse using it as a marker. So setting off on foot on the road south out of Foxford I kept the great mountain to my right and hoped that I would reach my destination before evening came and the light faded. After about three miles the road climbed a long hill then descended again down an equally long slope to a bridge over the river Moy. It was just as I remembered it and if I could now find the turn and the Norman tower I knew I would be almost home and dry. I crossed the river, found the turn and after a short distance I saw the Norman tower in a field on the right, a little further on a narrow road turned off up a hill on the opposite side. I continued on my way eager to reach my journeys end.

After walking for some time I saw nothing that looked familiar or that I could recognize, I did not remember it being such a long distance from the Norman tower to the farm and with each step the feeling grew that something was amiss. There were no turns on the road and I continued along it seeing no other option, I sang an old song to help pass the journey. As the song ended I came to a place where there was a turn to the left after which the road continued on over a humpback bridge, on the corner there was a small quaint cottage. I stopped for a while and searched my memory but had no recollection of a humpback bridge.

I walked the narrow pathway from the gate through a small lush country garden and knocked on the door of the cottage. A young woman with a pleasant smile answered, I explained my predicament and inquired after my friend. She knew who I was talking about and said that I should take the turn to the left and I would find the place. It seems that I should have taken the turn opposite the Norman tower but had instead continued on almost to the village of Bohola and had come around full circle and would now be approaching the place from the opposite direction to what I had originally intended. It was late in the afternoon as I walked the remaining half a mile or so and then there it was, some of the surrounding spruce trees had been felled and those remaining had been trimmed, but the house looked just the same. I greeted my friend and he boiled some water to make coffee.

Winter was approaching fast, I was in a foreign country, couldn’t speak the language and needed somewhere to live. I had already met Richard by that time, originally from London we had played together a few times and it was he who brought me along, having lived there himself for about two years, to that place on Vesterbrogade close to Copenhagen city center to see if he could get me a room there too. He showed me his own room which was furnished exactly like the other hundred or so rooms for rent there, a bed, wardrobe, table and chair. I was introduced to the landlord, paid a deposit and moved in right away. Five stories high I lived on the top floor and Richard reckoned it was one of the more luxurious rooms there, seeing as how it had an ashtray. With a fifteen minute walk to the city center, ten minutes to my favourite Pakistani restaurant on Viktoriagade, two minutes to the nearest of four local bakeries and five minutes to one of my regular gigs, the location if nothing else seemed right.

As you came in the door the rooms were to the right off an L-shaped corridor, on the left side was a bathroom, kitchen and a broom closet. A Norwegian couple had just moved into the first room and the man spoke a little English. They were always smiling and seemed very pleased with their new accommodation, he spoke in such glowing terms about the place that you would have thought it was the Ritz hotel he was talking about. He told me one day that they had just discovered a great place to eat with good food at reasonable prices located on Vesterbrogade on the way into town. I checked the place out but the menu was very traditional with a lot of red meat and I decided to stick to the samosas, allou tikkis and dal turka in the Pakistani restaurant.

My room was in the middle and the two rooms at the far end of the corridor were occupied by single men who just came and went and didn’t say much. A couple lived in the room to the right of mine which was the biggest on the floor, he was fifty years old, bald with greying sideburns, she was twenty one and considerably over weight. Unlike the other people who lived there, they had set up home there, cooking regularly in the kitchen where they kept their pots and pans and other utensils in a cupboard secured by a large padlock. Their room had three windows, two budgerigars, an aquarium with various types of fish and at least two dozen exotic looking plants along with a sofa, bed, table and chairs etc. Everyday a friend of theirs would call by and they would sit there drinking beer for the afternoon.

One day when summer had come around again I came home and their door was open along with their windows because of the heat and they were sitting there as usual with their friend drinking beer, I said hello as I passed by on my way to my room. A few minutes later there was a knock on my door, it was the woman and she asked me if I would like to join them for a beer. I joined them and although we spoke very little of each others language we soon struck up a conversation of sorts. They asked where I was from, I told them I was from Ireland, they had already guessed that I was a musician having seen me come and go with my guitar. They told me that they could sometimes hear me playing and I asked if it was too loud or if it disturbed them, they replied it was not a problem and that the music sounded ‘very nice’. I also learned that the highlight of their week was a trip to a large nearby park called Søndermarken located at the end of Vesterbrogade on the way out of town, where they would bet at the pigeon racing that took place there every Saturday. They said it was great fun and really exciting and that I should try it too. I told them I might check it out sometime.

An elderly man somewhere in his sixties with a head of short cropped grey hair, finely chiselled features on his weather worn face and friendly eyes that still sparkled lived in the room to the left of mine. Slender of build he was usually dressed in a worn crumpled suit that had seen better days and an open neck shirt, he never wore a tie. He spoke no English but would always greet me with his toothy smile whenever we would meet in the hall, his surname might have been Hansen. Occasionally I heard him listening to the radio in his room, twice I noticed him making tea in the kitchen and once I saw him take a mop from the broom closet and wash the floor in the hall, but mostly he just came and went like the rest of us. Although I lived there for about a year I never really got to know Mr. Hansen, if that was his name, where he was from, what he had worked at or if he had any family and I don’t know what ever happened to him. But I remember lying there in my bed and hearing him through the wall coughing all night long.

It was Christmas eve and the night was frosty as I made my way back across the city having done the deal. I was eighteen years old and had just bought a new guitar, a decent one this time and not like the last one which fell apart on me after two years. This guitar was almost new, had a nice tone and stayed in tune when you played it up along the neck and the new guitar strings that I had purchased earlier in the day enhanced the sound even more. I spent the rest of the night with friends playing for them just about every tune I knew at the time on my new instrument. On Christmas day as soon as I got a chance I slipped off to played the guitar and after a while wrote a tune. Over the next few days I played the new tune many times and even managed to write some lyrics for it, so it was now a song with one verse.

Although I tried to finish the song over the following weeks and months I never managed to get beyond that first verse, but I liked the tune and thought that someday somewhere down the line I would finish it. There matters lay until twenty years later when I had just returned to Ireland and was living in an old farmhouse in county Wicklow. I had started to write songs in Irish and one night sitting in front of the open fire I got an idea for a song and started to write some lyrics. When I thought about a melody for the lyrics for some reason the tune I had written twenty years previous came to my head. So keeping the guitar arrangement as originally written I set the new lyrics to it and they fitted like a glove. The song is called ‘An t-Slí Go Cill Mhantáin’ and is the second track on my second album ‘Ceol ’s Rann’.

Some songs have a history.

The new CD ‘Ceol ’s Rann’ hits the radio stations this week and so I am hoping that it might receive a few spins amid the thousands of other musicians who are trying to do the same.

Although the Irish language has been in decline for some time now it is really amazing just how many musicians not only sing in Irish, but write songs in Irish too. Long may it continue for it would be a sad day when it’s beauty and lilting sound were lost for ever.

Though my own command and grasp of the language is quite limited, indeed some would say little more than the ‘cúpla focal’, these songs mean something to me and help me maintain a connection to what, if history had been just a little different, would have been my mother tongue.

In an age when many Irish people are reluctant to use their own language even occasionally or in a bilingual context, I hope that these songs can stand as my meagre contribution to keeping it alive.

Autumn comes around again and yesterday the wood burning stove was lit for the first time to keep the house warm through the night. The laurel trees that I cut down to logs last year are now seasoned and ready to burn. The long winter nights dreaded by so many are in some ways perfect for playing and writing new music.

The new album ‘Ceol ’s Rann’ has just been released and will be on the shelves of all good music shops in the near future, at least in a perfect world that is how it should happen. Alas there are not too many music shops good or bad around any more and like most other musicians I must resort to cyberspace for such matters. To this end a new website has been launched today which I think is more attractive and easier to use than the old one.

I will be dropping by from time to time with updates and news and anything else concerning the music that I think might be of interest to you. So try the links, listen to the music, keep in touch and if you have any comments please send them to me.