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The Alec Finn (left, back row) De Danann includes Ringo McDonagh (left) and Eleanor Shanley (centre)
mous and very heated prime time RTE radio phone-in on the Joe Duffy Show (in which Gavin refused to participate) when the gloves really came off and a lot of mud was slung across the great divide.
W
And now there’s Frankie Gavin & De Dannan and, er, the other De Danann – spelt the original way – featuring Finn with a selec- tion of former band members, including Ringo McDonagh on bodhran, Eleanor Shanley on vocals and Mick Conneely in Gavin’s old fiddle spot. Frankie’s line-up has Michelle Lally singing, with Damien Mullane (accordeon), Mike Galvin (guitar, bouzouki) and Eric Cunningham (bodhran, flute). You pays your money and you takes your choice as both have shiny new albums bursting forth… Jigs, Reels & Rock n’Roll by Frankie Gavin & De Dannan and Won- derWaltz (see what they did there?) by De Danann. Frankie’s De Dannan do, however, produce a joker from their sleeve in the shape of Frankie’s old friend Ronnie Wood (yep, him of the Rolling Stones), who plays lap steel on If You Love Me – an old hit for Kay Starr, also sung by Edith Piaf – and electric guitar on Gasolene Alley. “Ronnie was at the house one time and heard me playing viola while Michelle sang If You Love Me and he said ‘I could fit into that like a hand in a glove’. I thought OK, let’s see if he still thinks that in a day or two. I got a barrel of Guinness and we pol- ished it off in three days and when he left I said, ‘you know that song If You Love Me and you said you’d like to play on it, did you mean it?’ And he said sure, so we did it. It’s a lovely seal of approval to have him on the album.
All good juicy gossip, but Frankie quite understandably thinks we’ve debated the big split far too long and is in too good a humour to dwell on the past.
“For Alec to try and stop me making a living playing jigs and reels is very sad but I’m not bitter, I’ve put it all behind me and that’s that. I have a new band now and it’s the best team I’ve ever played with. For us it’s all about the music and as far as I’m con- cerned we’re doing it for the right reasons and taking the music to another level.”
Indeed, the last time we’d met a few years ago, the man con- sidered by many to be the best fiddle player in Ireland was in des- perate straits. He had no band, his marriage was falling apart and, by his own cheery admission, he was a grumpy bastid. “Oh, I was in ribbons then,” he concedes. “My self-esteem was in the gutter and I couldn’t see any way out but my life has turned around remarkably since then. I still can’t quite believe it…”
He spent a while in the States – in Virginia – and it was there he was contacted by another Irish exile who heard that he collect- ed recordings by PJ Conlan, the great Irish melodeon player who helped keep the music alive in America in the early 1900s. She was, she said, PJ’s great grandniece, and sent him a cassette of the material she had. Frankie said thanks and politely asked if she played too; she said no, but she sang a bit. That would have been that except, domiciled back in Ireland three years later, he was playing a concert in Galway with Paul Brady and Arty McGlynn when he was approached by a young woman who introduced her- self as PJ Conlan’s great niece and his email pen pal, Michelle Lally.
The instrumental artistry of the classic De Dannan line-ups has always been woven around great female singers and when he heard Lally sing, Frankie decided he’d found another one and his new band began to take shape from that point. “I think she’s bril- liant and a great personality on stage. She’s not Dolores Keane. She’s not a sean nos singer. She’s very influenced by Mary Black
hen Frankie started using the De Dannan name again, things turned ugly and lawyers started got involved. The argument divided the Irish music com- munity, with former band members falling in behind one side or the other and there was an infa-
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