Thanks to Mick Moloney

I just did a gig in New York with a whole gang of people and I wanted to write a thank you note to Mick Moloney for putting it all together.
Mick of course has his own peculiar and particular fashion and is from the old school of organizing. You know words like arrange, put in order, sort out, assemble, categorize and systematize come up when you check the thesaurus, but Mick did none of this by the way. He is one of the few men I know who can get an awful lot of the musicians in N.Y. together in a few weeks for two gigs in the Irish Arts Centre with practice space for two days beforehand in the Landing Tavern, with lovely food, sandwiches and more food at the gig, the beautiful Maria who actually did sort out our clothes and faces all along with a film crew available to record it and make a DVD for PBS for next March, from a few phone calls. Does he rule the world? If only.
So John Doyle and Seamus Egan were there and it was just fabulous to sit between the two of them and sing a song and for them to tell me again that I wasn’t coming in right. I was right of course. What struck me was the ease and I was like a pig in shite for want of a better term. It was just wonderful and they just made my day. I’m sure it made Frank Harte’s day too as we did his King’s Shilling song. Well, it was written by a man called Iain Sinclair but I got it from Frank. But anyway it is a great anti-war song and I could feel Frank being happy. For the cream on the cake for my own songs Liz Carroll was there and she is my hero. She played beautifully on Éirigh suas a stoirín and corrected us all on our timing, as is her wont!
So for most of the rest of the other two days I got to be a fly on the wall. The set between Liz Carroll, Eileen Ivers, Athena Tergis, and John Doyle was electrifying. John Doyle is a mighty woman altogether! Athena the goddess has the most dotey little baby called Vivian who I got to hold every now and then. Her knitted purple suit and pink booties made by her granny were fantastic. I would like to put in an order myself. And her smile..ah well. I love babies.
Anyway the practice - for want of another better term - with myself and Mick and Robbie O Connell and Mac Bedford, for the “Leaving of Liverpool” was something else. We started out in A which was too low so someone said we should go up so then we went to Bb and then to B, but someone else decided that this wouldn’t be good for the musicians so then we went to C and then Mick heard a tune he knew being played next door so he went off playing that and then Robbie said “well that’s that”. And then at the gig we discovered it was too high! Holy Mother of God, so that is why I will be shouting on the television next March.
I did finally get to spend some decent time with Robbie O Connell. He is such a tender soul and he sang me some lovely songs and we had a great chat about Frank and talked about how lonesome we are for him. Susan McKeown did some beautiful singing as well and it was pity it was all so short as I would have loved to have had more time with her and the other singers, who were Mac Bedford and Rhys Jones.
One of the most amazing people there though was Josephine MacNamara who is eighty-five years old. Josephine did a sketch with Mick and he could be an actor as well as everything else, but everybody should watch it next March just for this. Josephine also danced which is quite something to behold. It was one of the most moving things I have ever witnessed. Josephine’s hair is bright red and she looks a bit like Maureen O Hara only much better but she is tiny and it really felt like Josephine would break when she danced but that seemed to be the last thing on her mind. I hope when I am eighty-five I will be as fiery and brilliant as her.
Other people who rounded out the night were Tim Collins on the concertina, the wonderful Mike Rafferty on the flute, Niall O Leary and Darragh Carr the dancers, Billy McComiskey on the box, Jerry O Sullivan on the pipes and Brendan Dolan on the piano who I used to be in a band with and then all the behind the scenes people for the film along with Paul Wagner and Ellen Wagner who were making the film. Well they are probably the most famous but...
The not so quiet woman who I am so fond of was there too. Joanie Madden played her slow air wonderfully the only problem was that she didn’t go round again. I had a dream later on in the taxi to the airport where I was Karan the Irish Oprah and I was interviewing Joanie. Karan the Irish Oprah was asking Joanie to relax and to think back on her life in N.Y. And then Karan the Irish Oprah asked Joanie gently if she could remember when was the last time she had bought her a pint…And then no, no, to think back further … further…
Joanie did thank Mick Moloney at the end of the gig and became quite emotional as I think she knows how great he is. Mick was behind all the scenes, working away quietly sometimes and not so quietly at others like he has been for years. He is our fearless leader and yet a very gentle guide who has managed to direct and document so much of our lives. He is forever offering people songs and the look of delight on his face when he watches people playing is extraordinary. His very blue eyes become more blue and he has a sort of mad look in them when he is happy with us. Mick has been in my own life for nearly thirteen years now because he gave Solas our first gig in Georgetown University and he didn’t tell me before I went out on the stage that there would be 400 people there. I nearly died. And ever since he has been tremendously kind in helping me find songs or suggesting ones that would be good and also in giving me very sound personal advice. I am very fortunate to have met him, as I know I will always come away from him having learnt something worthwhile. He said to me that our sense of community was our strength and that was why we were all there.
I have to say that the gig was long. Mick had twenty-two items on the set list and I did notice that he had 6a and 6b in each set so maybe he was trying to trick us. The gig was nearly three and a half hours long and so the two shows ran back to back but it didn’t feel like that to be honest and as ever all of the parts were necessary to give the full picture. Mick also spoke in between the songs and as I said on the night he gave us the whole history of Ireland in about an hour. He really should have a spoken word CD to go with the DVD.
There are loads of other people behind the scenes who made this gig happen like my good friend Bob Donnelly and Bridín from the Centre and all who work there and the whole crew who stuck us all for hours on end and probably people I have forgotten. But it is Mick who I set out to thank. When I started out this thank you it was going to be small but like most things with Mick they are never small. So I just wanted to really thank you Mick Moloney for being Mick Moloney.

Karan Casey, 9 May 2007

Frank Harte

So I can’t believe that my beloved Frank Harte has passed away. I am sitting here looking at pictures of himself and myself laughing and singing away together at a festival in America. I think it was the one in Wolftrap, The Washington Irish Folk Festival. He would be very cross with me for being so full of self-pity and he would tell me to celebrate his life because he was brilliant!
I met Frank in America, ten or eleven years ago this summer at the Irish week up in the Catskills in N.Y. and he said “come here to me you, young one” and then he quizzed me up and down about what songs I knew and what was I going to do with my life! This was just in the first half hour. He then marched me off and bought me a double c.d. of Luke Kelly and told me to come back to him when I knew all the songs on it. I spent the rest of the week following him around and going to his classes, even when I was supposed to be teaching my own. I just took them to Frank’s class as I figured we all needed to be beside him and to hear him.

We went from there really. I was living in America at the time and so I would visit him when I went home. In the beginning I didn’t speak very much (if people can believe that!) as I was too over awed by him. I was amazed at the amount of books he had in his cottage up in Dublin and how many old tapes and recordings he had. There were paintings everywhere, most of the walls were covered with old clippings from newspapers and pictures of old singers that I had only heard of. Beautiful sculptures, especially the one of Jim Larkin that he was so proud of. And reel-to-reels, dozens of them that he had made himself from all the sessions that he went to, things I had never seen before. And the books, Jesus I had never seen so many books. I thought, Christ, he must be an intellectual!

Frank always had time for me. He was always delighted to see me. He sang me such lovely songs and I would put them on tapes. He also recommended different song collections and was forever giving out to me for not reading the song books enough. I would say but sure I have you and he would sigh. Of course I know why he was sighing now. He was particularly fond of the Sam Henry collection and would often just browse through it, as anyone else would read a book. He was always reading poetry and he would often ring me up and read me a poem. He was a romantic at heart and adored Yeats; he used to say he was like himself, very fond of the women.
Most of the songs that I recorded with Solas I got from Frank. He was mad about Solas, and was forever teasing them, telling them all to stand back from the mike when I was singing! His good friend Mick Moloney gave us our first gig in Georgetown University in Washington and we were almost like their babies the way the pair of them would go around boasting about us.

Sometimes Frank could be cranky, I think mostly because he knew what he had, or indeed what he would always stress was what the Irish people had, and I knew it weighed heavily on his heart whether the songs would survive or not. He did ask me last year “who will sing these songs when I die if you don’t?” I often felt frustrated as if I wasn’t doing the songs justice and also felt the burden of being a traditional singer. We would spend hours talking about what would become of the songs or how we were going to get them out there. When I would despair he would remind me that I live the life people dream of living. I know he is right. I think if anyone wants to honour Frank now that they could sing a song and he would be pleased. He just simply loved songs.

Over the last few years I became very close to Frank, he became like a father to me. I am really blessed to have had Frank Harte in my life. He would ring me up and sing me songs late at night. Ask me how my head was and give out if I didn’t have a new traditional song for him since the week before! I would go up to Dublin to chat to him and to see him more than to get songs and we would drink wine, order in a Chinese, (Frank would have Colman’s mustard with the spring rolls!) and he would read me poems and sing me songs and get me to read him poetry and sing him songs and we laughed and cried and sang.

I am so glad that I did get to spend more time with Frank and it is one of the things in my life that I know I did right. Times that I will always treasure the most. I am deeply proud to have known Frank and deeply grateful to him for all the time he gave me. I also know how lucky I am and how precious that time was. And oh, what I would do to be able to pick up the phone and talk to Frank Harte tonight.

Karan Casey, 5 July 2005