Fleadh is over – but not the feelings that it left us with! Wanting to continue? Yes.

Join Jimmy Clancy and myself tonight (Andy Lambert is coming…!) for more tunes at Cruises Bar, Ennis tonight at 8:30   https://www.facebook.com/cruises.bar/?fref=ts

🙂 🙂 🙂

Andrew Lambert on bouzouki

Áine Heslin (flute) and Jimmy Clancy (accordeon)

Session in Cruises Bar

Heavens above – what a fleadh! Ennis has just hosted the Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann 2016 and it has really been enjoyed by everybody from near and far. Many people of Clare who don’t follow music that much travelled in just to see the town looking fabulous and were amazed by the friendly atmosphere of all there. There were people playing music and doing Irish step-dancing on the streets from the ages of three or four to 99 I’d say!! And when the weekend storm arrived the atmosphere barely dampened at all.

I had an amazing time as, a couple of weeks before the fleadh my friends and I decided to get a group of us together to do a mini show on one of the gig rigs (outside stages giving free entertainment for the crowds). Mairéad Considine on concertina, Orla Coughlan on fiddle, myself on flute, Caoimhe Millar on accordion and vocals and Caitriona O’Gorman on keyboard accompaniment. ‘Siarlinn‘!!

We decided to include some dancing and Orla, being friends with a beautiful dancer from Lisseycasey, Sinéad Neylon – procured a dancer of very high calibre! World acclaimed and a member of the cast of the Riverdance show – Sinéad gracefully agreed to dance with our show! Mairéad then, being a member of a highly skilled set-dancing group Inis Cathaigh from west Clare, was delighted that they agreed to be part of the show too and on we went from there.

A few rehearsals later and we were on the Shannon Airport Gig Rig last Wednesday night performing to about 5000 people!! Great fun playing our music, lovely singing by Caoimhe and Lots of great reactions from our audience! The dancing was all beautiful (Mairéad included!) and I would watch it forever myself – a privilege to play for it! And we could hear how people were enjoying the music too of course. 😉

So, I hope to have some videos to upload soon for you to see but in the meantime…back to our regular sessions! Three of the founding members of Siarlinn (Orla, Mairéad and myself) will be in Crotty’s Kilrush tonight (Tues 23rd August) and we may possibly do a live stream during the session  – just for the craic! (We did a live stream of two of my own tunes a fortnight ago and got so many compliments and it was great because the two tunes were the reels I wrote for the girls; Mairéad’s Paradise and Orla’ Intent! You can find the notes for them here on my music page.)

I played in Myles’ Creek, Kilkee on Sun with Róisín Considine (accordion) and Matt on guitar/vocals and at the end of the night a gentleman from Co Galway but living in the UK most of his adult life, came up to us and played a few tunes on whistle! Lovely man called Ger James Lyons.

No photos of the last few nights but they were so good! In Myles’ Creek, Kilkee we played with Niamh Casey and had visiting musicians Pat Keating on accordion and Tim on tinwhistle so, mighty music. Little Amelia danced and applauded very prettily – I think she is two! We met many lovely tourists including a cycling group who were seeing a lot of the coast of Clare…plenty to see! I actually bumped into them yesterday in Miltown Malbay enjoying the buzz of the Willie Clancy (see last post).

Last night I played in the infamous Crotty’s pub in Kilrush with Orla Coughlan (fiddle) and young Tara O’Malley (concertina) and again had a lovely seisiún, meeting some great people from the States and from Dublin. Tara wowed all with her solo-playing (she has a gorgeous style and a steady rhythm to die for!!) 🙂 The seisiún is there now every Tues night for the summer.

See you on Thursday evening (7th) in Ennis at Cruises – all welcome. Same time – same place. Enjoy Miltown if you are there! 😉

We had a fine finish to the month of June in Cruises with the help of Jimmy Clancy’s son John on banjo, Pat Keating on accordion and a visitor from Germany (Wilfred I think?) on concertina – and on his way to his 25th year of Willie Clancy Summer School! I’ve given a couple of links to the summer school below for your information – I included the Wikipedia version as I particularly liked the paragraph ‘The Craic’. 🙂 Jimmy certainly has the craic with us every Thurs!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willie_Clancy_Summer_School

http://www.scoilsamhraidhwillieclancy.com/

Last night was our seisiún in Fitzpatrick’s pub in Kilkee. Matt, myself, Orla Coughlan on fiddle and also, Tara O’Malley joined us on concertina. It was so cool to play some of my tunes with the girls – tunes like ‘Walking the Dog/A Tribute to Michael Tubridy’ and ‘Eire Sign’ – and played better than myself too. If you feel like looking up the notes – click onto the ‘Music’ page above and then click on whichever name of tune you want – the notes should show up for you.

Tomorrow night (Sunday 3rd July) we’ll be playing with Niamh Casey in Myles Creek, Kilkee so be sure to pop in (8:30pm) before hitting Miltown for the week!!