root salad Seamus Begley
The accordeon player and singer is Irish folk royalty these days. Colin Irwin catches him in Connemara.
“Y
ou want to interview me? Is it for Playboy? I’ll only do it if it’s for Playboy magazine. But I’m not taking my
clothes off…” The word ‘incorrigible’ might have been invented for Séamus Begley – singer, box player, storyteller and, until recently, Kerry farmer – whose status as one of Ireland’s best-loved musicians has been recently cemented by unexpected developments. Named 2013’s Traditional Singer Of The Year in the prestigious TG4 Awards (“the Irish Grammies”, as Séamus calls them), he’s toured to great acclaim with the likes of Tim Edey and Jim Murray, and now – at the age of 64 – become a full-time member of one of Ireland’s finest young bands, Téada.
Pinning him down for a chat, though,
is a trickier affair as, even in the small town of Clifden in the remote outpost of Connemara – where he plays a magical set with Téada on the makeshift stage erected in the square for Clifden traditional music festival – he’s an elusive figure. One minute he’s wisecracking his way around town, suddenly popping up to hold court amid a bemused group of French tourists but blink and he’s gone again.
Finally cornered over morning coffee in one of the local bars, the anecdotes, indiscreet asides and unprintable jokes come thick and fast before he explains how he got involved with Téada. Every December, it seems, they do an American Christmas tour with a guest singer – a role previously assumed by Karan Casey, Cara Dillon and Muireann Nic Amhlaoibh. A couple of years ago they asked Séamus and it worked so well, they asked him to do it again the next year.
“They asked me in January, could I do it in December. Jesus Christ, I could be dead by December! I don’t do a year in advance! In the end they just asked me to join the band and I thought why not? I’ve got nothing better to do. I’ve sold me cows and my sheep and I don’t farm any more, so the next best thing is to join a boy band. I haven’t looked back since. These boys call it work! To me music isn’t work. Work is nursing sick calves and milking cows!”
“Joining Téada is the best thing that’s happened to me. All I have to do is show up at the airport with my passport and be chauffeured round the world. Is that work? I am the first Kerry farmer old age pensioner with an i-Pad, which is the best thing since sliced pants – I can sit in the air- port learning songs. Before I’d be sitting in tractors for fifteen hours with a pain in my neck from looking behind me and a pain
in my heart waiting for something to break and make me a poor man. I’d work nearly 24 hours a day, seven days a week; I had 40 cows, 100 sheep and five tractors and I’d be broke for Christmas. Now I’ve given up all that shite and I actually have money in the bank.”
Back in the day, he’d be laughed at in Kerry for being a musician – and there are still those who’d ridicule him on the basis that you’re not a real man unless you have a shovel in your hand. For Séamus, though, music was always a part of his lifestyle.
“My father played accordeon and sang and my mother was a beautiful singer and there was singing in the house all the time. We didn’t have a radio, there was no TV then, no electricity, so there was nothing else to do but sing. My mother would sing to the cows when she was milk- ing them. I think they liked it.”
By the age of 12 he was playing box with a ceili band in the local dance hall, citing Finbar Dwyer, Joe Burke and Paddy O’Brien as his main inspirations. “I’ve spent 50 years trying to play like Paddy O’Brien but if I tried for another 50 years I’d never be as good as him.” As for singing, his hero remains Luke Kelly.
H
is first language is Irish and his reputation as an outstanding box player and delicate singer grew in similar proportion to his home town, Dingle. Now one of Ireland’s busiest tourist spots courtesy of Fungi the dolphin, Dingle was tiny when Hollywood invaded to film Ryan’s Daughter in 1969, with Séamus (and most other locals) as extras. “To us that was like winning the lottery. Fellows then would be earning 50 pence a day – half a sovereign as we called it – but when Ryan’s Daughter arrived fellows were getting £25 a week. That was the old Celtic tiger – it made Dingle.”
Now, Begley is Irish folk royalty – albeit a highly irreverent member. He has three new albums in the pipeline – including one with Téada – and is itching to do more playing with Tim Edey – “a total genius”. Two eccentrics together, you daren’t won- der what their life is like on the road. “Edey is out of this world. He could play that guitar with one finger and then he picks up the box and plays tunes I wouldn’t even think of doing. He’s a full band sitting beside you. Mind you he’s a total nut and a pain in the hole – you can print that. I can never get him when I want him!”
www.teada.com F 19 f
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