- [Announcer] This week on "Tradfest: The Dublin Castle Sessions", it's Ireland's greatest ever group, Hothouse Flowers, with Clare Sands, Zoe Conway and John McIntyre, and Shane Hennessy.

[soft bagpipe music] "Tradfest: The Dublin Castle Sessions" are funded in part by the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sports and Media.

[soft folk music] ♪ The sea is our strength ♪ On these western shores ♪ Falling golden sands ♪ Your caressing hands ♪ Our bodies glide ♪ We move with the tide ♪ The thunder she roars ♪ You cry out for more [sings in foreign language] [continues sings in foreign language] [continues sings in foreign language] ♪ Sail on, sail on, sail on ♪ With me a while ♪ Sail on, sail on, sail on ♪ With me a while ♪ A slow Sunday morning ♪ We are still intertwined ♪ The heat of passion ♪ Moonlit night gone by ♪ The sunlight creeps in ♪ You explore every crevice in my skin ♪ ♪ The r5cord spins ♪ Oh, God bless sin [sings in foreign language] [continues sings in foreign language] [continues sings in foreign language] ♪ Sail on, sail on, sail on ♪ With me a while ♪ Sail on, sail on, sail on ♪ With me a while [sings in foreign language] [continues singing in foreign language] ♪ Sail on, sail on, sail on ♪ With me a while ♪ Sail on, sail on, sail on ♪ With me a while ♪ Sail on, sail on, sail on ♪ With me a while ♪ Sail on, sail on, sail on ♪ With me a while [upbeat folk music] [upbeat folk music continues] - We're here in St. Patrick's Hall in Dublin Castle and I'm delighted to be joined by three incredible musicians, Zoe Conway, one of Ireland's most amazing violinists.

Fiddlers, violinists, what do we call you?

- Whatever you want.

- [laughs] Yeah, both.

- Yeah, yeah.

- And the amazing Shane Hennessy on the guitar, and John McIntyre as well on a gorgeous 1971 Martin guitar, I've just been told [chuckles], so it's great to see.

John, I'm gonna start with you because, obviously, we were on the road together years ago- - Indeed, we were.

Yeah.

- When you were in a rock and roll band called The Revs.

- In a different life.

- You were amazing.

[group laughs] - I know, I had the pleasure of playing with you guys a number of times.

- You did.

So what happened to you?

- I don't know.

[group laughs] Where did it all go wrong?

[group laughs] - You went acoustic, obviously.

[group laughs] No.

- Yeah, all acoustic.

I hardly ever play electric guitar now.

- Do you not?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

- No.

It's absolutely shocking.

It's disgraceful.

- And you don't miss it, really?

- I don't really miss it, no.

- No, it's been amazing watching your world since then [John laughs] because, obviously, I've run into you both along the way.

And it's amazing for me because I knew you first as a rock and roll player, an incredible rock and roll guitar player, but now you're an incredible traditional guitar player.

- Thanks.

- [Fiachna] You're gonna play something for us.

- Yeah, yeah.

So we've decided that what we will play is a tribute to Seamus Heaney- - [Fiachna] Hmm.

- That we both have kind of collaborated on.

It's a piece that we wrote together.

It's called "Omos Sheamuis", and it was written actually, we were really happy to play a whole load of gigs for Seamus Heaney at celebrations of his life just after his passing.

- [Fiachna] Yes.

- But we decided that we'll take this one out of the back catalog now for tonight.

- "Omos Sheamuis".

- [Zoe and John] "Omos Sheamuis".

[Fiachna speaks in foreign language] [soft traditional string music] [soft traditional string music continues] [soft traditional string music continues] [soft traditional string music continues] [soft traditional string music continues] [soft traditional string music continues] [soft traditional string music continues] [soft traditional string music continues] [soft traditional string music continues] [soft traditional string music continues] [soft traditional string music continues] [soft traditional string music continues] [soft traditional string music continues] [soft traditional string music continues] [fast tempo traditional string music] [fast tempo traditional string music continues] [fast tempo traditional string music continues] [fast tempo traditional string music continues] [fast tempo traditional string music continues] [fast tempo traditional string music continues] [fast tempo traditional string music continues] [fast tempo traditional string music continues] [fast tempo traditional string music continues] - That's beautiful.

Amazing.

- It was gorgeous.

- Oh, isn't it?

[Zoe chuckles] Tell me a little bit about composing a piece like that.

There are several moods contained therein.

Talk me through a little bit of, about when you, did you sit down together to write?

- Yeah, well, we, I had ideas for the second tune, actually, first of all.

- Yeah.

- And then we started messing around with the idea.

And I was playing something like [soft guitar music] and then sort of we worked- - [Zoe and John] Grew from there, yeah.

- And worked from that.

- What I remember, actually, at the time we wrote that particular tune, our children had just gone to sleep.

[John chuckles] So it was, we've been, we have an 11-year-old and a nine-year-old now, but this was a few years ago, so they were quite young.

And for them to actually have, there's a bedtime routine but like- - Of course.

- It doesn't often mean that they'll actually go to sleep.

- I know.

[laughs] - But they were definitely asleep and we had a bit of space to try and create something, so.

- [Fiachna] Yeah.

- And we were just inspired, I suppose, by Seamus Heaney passing away.

And what I remember from that time is that ordinary people on the street were moved by that.

Seamus Heaney appealed to so many people and us.

- Worldwide, yeah.

- As well as like my parents, and farmers down the road, and it's just amazing, his legacy.

So that kind of inspired, and I thought we, I think we wanted it to be an uplifting piece.

- Yes, yeah.

- That it wouldn't be too melancholic and- - That's great.

It's all encompassing.

It kind of captures how wide his net was cast- - Yeah, yeah.

- In so many ways, and it's gorgeous.

Shane, I'm gonna turn to you.

You've been exploring traditional music.

I never knew you were a traditional musician going right back.

- Oh, yeah, yeah.

I started off in the concertina when I was I think four years old.

- [Fiachna] Wow.

- And I got a concertina for Christmas, and I started working at tunes in the kitchen on Christmas Day just by ear, without any tuition.

And then I kept on in school, and at one point, my teacher said to me, "I think you need to go to somebody else," 'cause I think she saw that I had a flair for it.

So I used to go up every, I think it was every Monday night, up to Kildare where Micheal O Raghallaigh was teaching concertina at the time.

And I went to lessons with him.

- Only the best.

- Only the best, right.

[group laughs] And it was only that I saw him again for the first time at Tradfest last year, in January.

But yeah, I went to Micheal then for lessons.

And I would only play the concertina from age four until age 12, and then discovered the guitar then around that time, and I put down the concertina for a long time.

And because the guitar brings you in so many different directions, it's not that I ever felt that I didn't have any love for Irish trad music anymore, but I wasn't focused on it, and I'd never tried to arrange too much of it or play too much of it as a soloist on the instrument.

So it was only during the period of lockdown where I decided to go back over my old, like I had Micheal O Raghallaigh CDs, and Niall Vallely, and Noel Hill, and Tim Collins, and people like that, and I just decided to, okay, I'm gonna try and work this out and see if I can put my own spin on it now, because I've been doing the finger style guitar thing for so long, but I've never actually tried to go back to kind of the original music that started me off on it.

So it was a nice way to kinda spend the COVID lockdown, I suppose, rediscovering that.

- I mean, I remember picking up a concertina I think when I was about 12 and putting it straight back down.

[group laughs] Forget it.

There was a one note going on, and back, it's a different note.

Yeah, it's just not- - Well, with the a concertina, I mean- - Six holes and a tin whistle.

[group laughs] - The whole experience of learning the concertina gave me my understanding of music as I know it today.

I mean, when I picked up the guitar, it was James Taylor who inspired me, but I would work out James Taylor tunes the same way as I would listen to trad tunes.

I'd pick out the notes, listen for the patterns.

- [Fiachna] Yeah.

- And so it's like my blueprint, or like my musical true north is still Irish trad music, and I still relate everything back to traditional music.

- Yeah.

You're gonna do a piece for us.

Tell us a bit about it.

- Yeah, so this is a piece I composed during the summer.

- [Fiachna] Mm-hmm.

- From my album, Idircheol.

And this is piece called "Summer Anywhere".

So this is kind of my attempt at musically describing what lockdown was like in Carlow, where I live, in the town.

And I noticed that for a long time after March, the St. Patrick's Day, the bunting and the storefronts were still green, and leprechauns, and flags and stuff everywhere.

So I decided that I was going to take the traditional tune or the set on St. Patrick's Day and start messing with it a bit- - Okay.

- To try and kind of give a sense of what that lockdown is like.

So we start off kinda gentle, and then everything kinda takes a bit of a nosedive in the middle, and then we come back to it at the end.

[laughs] - Right, right.

[laughs] - [Shane] It's called "Summer Anywhere".

- [Fiachna] Brilliant.

[upbeat traditional guitar music] [upbeat traditional guitar music continues] [upbeat traditional guitar music continues] [upbeat traditional guitar music continues] [upbeat traditional guitar music continues] [upbeat traditional guitar music continues] [upbeat traditional guitar music continues] [upbeat traditional guitar music continues] [upbeat traditional guitar music continues] [upbeat traditional guitar music continues] [upbeat traditional guitar music continues] [upbeat traditional guitar music continues] [upbeat traditional guitar music continues] [upbeat traditional guitar music continues] [upbeat traditional guitar music continues] [upbeat traditional guitar music continues] [upbeat traditional guitar music continues] [upbeat traditional guitar music continues] [upbeat traditional guitar music continues] [upbeat traditional guitar music continues] - [Fiachna] Wow.

- Whoo!

- Can I take a look at your hands?

Just the five fingers on his hand.

[group laughs] That's amazing.

- Oh, thanks very much.

- [Fiachna] That was an amazing- - Thank you.

- Suite of tunes as well, lovely different flavors going on within it as well.

- That's exactly what I wanted to kind of create, in that the lockdown was so uncertain.

There were high points, low points.

- Yeah.

- And then messing around with the time signatures and stuff as well.

It kind of, for me anyway, it encapsulates that experience, at least in Carlow.

- Zoe, you're gonna play something for us.

Tell me a bit about what you're gonna play.

- This is one called "Ealodh na Muc", and it's, I suppose, just a progressive traditional tune like in the style that we love to play.

And a few, not that last summer during lockdown, but the one before, we traveled a lot in the west of Ireland.

So we were at Milltown Malbay, and we were in Westport, and we were in Donegal, and all over having a lovely time with the kids.

And we actually saw a dolphin just outside Spanish Point, a beautiful dolphin.

And it was right beside us, and the children were with us, and it was just one of the most incredible moments.

And then as we moved north and north and north, every day, we started to see dolphins 'cause we just kept looking for them.

We were totally obsessed.

And we just had this amazing few weeks of seeing dolphins all the time, so I was crazy about trying to write something that might represent that.

And when we were in Malin Beg, where John's father is from, I asked him, he's a fisherman in that area, and I said, "Are there anything, is there any like name to do with the dolphin here?"

And he said, "You know, the little island, Rathlin O'Birne, there's a wee kinda slit in the island and a little sliver of water.

And that's called Ealodh na Muc, which is-" - Say it again.

- The pass of the dolphin, of the sea.

- Ealodh na Muc.

- [Fiachna] Ealodh na Muc.

Wow.

- Yeah.

- So muc mara is the dolphin.

That's where the name comes from.

- Beautiful.

[Zoe chuckles] That was very evocative already and we haven't even heard it.

[group laughs] - It's half the battle, half the battle.

[upbeat traditional string music] [upbeat traditional string music continues] [upbeat traditional string music continues] [upbeat traditional string music continues] [upbeat traditional string music continues] [upbeat traditional string music continues] [upbeat traditional string music continues] [upbeat traditional string music continues] [upbeat traditional string music continues] [upbeat traditional string music continues] [upbeat traditional string music continues] [upbeat traditional string music continues] [upbeat traditional string music continues] [upbeat traditional string music continues] [upbeat traditional string music continues] [upbeat traditional string music continues] [upbeat traditional string music continues] - What a tune there.

[group laughs] That's a tune.

Amazing.

- Thank you.

A bit of crack, really.

- How long did that take to write?

[John laughs] Did it all come out all in one go?

[group laughs] - You know, it nearly did.

It nearly did, yeah.

I don't think we spent very long on that.

I mean, it's difficult to get time [John laughs] in our house, but we come up with it one day I think when the kids were coming home from school.

And then we forgot about it, and then we kind of came back to it a couple of months later and worked a little bit more.

And I suppose there's lots going on in it.

We're inspired by so much music from all around the world, so we're taking influences from everywhere, so.

- Are you writing many lullabies?

[group laughs] Does that work ever?

Doesn't really, does it?

- Never.

- No.

[laughs] And tell me a bit about the, just the writing for you.

Where does it come from?

Where does it- - The main thing for me is that I don't write any of the music on the guitar 'cause I don't want the guitar to influence me at all.

- Okay.

- Because I think that if you write on the instrument that you play on, your hands tend to want to do what they know how to do rather than maybe the expression that you want to get out.

So for me, it's usually something like, I could be walking down the road, I could be in the shower, I could be anywhere, but my phone is never too far from me, and voice memos is the handiest thing- - Yeah, amazing.

- That has ever been invented from musicians.

- I know.

[laughs] - So it's usually, I listen back to my voice memos, and it's usually me going [vocalizes].

But eventually, that makes sense only to me.

And I'll take an idea like that.

It seems to break down to D. And I'll find out where it is on the guitar.

So I'll listen.

[vocalizes] [soft guitar music] Okay, it's somewhere there.

And then I start thinking, okay, what would I direct the band to do?

What would I get a bass player to do?

What would I get a guitar player to do?

What would I get, and I try and fit in as much as I can on my own.

And then if I hear certain ideas in my head, I don't really know where they come from.

They just sort of appear.

- Yeah, yeah.

- I think you can probably relate to that as well.

They just come out of nowhere.

- Yeah, yeah.

- I try and get as close to the sound in my head as possible.

- While we're, seeing as we're talking about tunes and where they come from and how they kind of appear out of nowhere and so on, it'd be a shame not to take the opportunity to play something together.

What do you think?

- [Shane] Yeah, let's do it.

- It's not every day I get to play with three guitarists.

[group laughs] It's my lucky day.

- It's a dream come through.

- Zoe, you say the nicest things.

- "The Crooked Road to Dublin", do you know that one?

[upbeat traditional violin music] - John, what are the chords?

[upbeat traditional string music] [upbeat traditional string music continues] [upbeat traditional string music continues] [upbeat traditional string music continues] [upbeat traditional string music continues] [upbeat traditional string music continues] [upbeat traditional string music continues] [soft bagpipe music] - [Announcer] "Tradfest: The Dublin Castle Sessions" are funded in part by the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sports and Media.

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