Vin Garbutt ‘Teesside Troubadour’
CATHAL D
uring one of his frequent house moves a few years ago Cathal McConnell rather nervously asked me if I would store some of his belongings, in particular his precious collection of cassette recordings of various friends and musicians that he himself had made over the years. I had just moved into a fairly large property up north, so space was not a problem, especially since I knew that Cathal was not a great hoarder. I drove around to the flat in Leith, which for a while he had shared with piper Alan McDonald, to find Cathal standing outside the door with a cardboard box at his feet anxiously looking out for my car. “Is that it Cathal?”, I asked, encouraged by the apparent meagreness of the task in hand. “Yes”, he replied, disappearing back through the doorway, “…sort of, anyway. There’s another five boxes upstairs!”
I drove the entrusted cargo back to my house in Cullen and set about the task of sifting through the collection of cassettes (which numbered well over a thousand) each carefully labelled and titled in Cathal’s unmistakable handwriting. What I discovered after a few hours of rummaging was truly astonishing, an amazing musical miscellany featuring singers and players of the very highest calibre from Ireland, Scotland, Shetland and beyond – Johnny & Mickey Docherty, Tommy Peoples, John Joe McGuire, John and Valerie McManus, Sean Kean, Sean McGuire, Boys of the Lough in rehearsal, Boys of the Lough in concert, the list was endless – mostly captured by Cathal himself using a small hand-held recorder, some of it dating back to the 1960s. A number of the cassettes were of Irish radio programmes, sent to Cathal by his devoted late sister Maura, classic recordings featuring everyone that was anyone in Irish traditional music over the last thirty years or so. And what tunes and songs, played and sung at source and which Cathal later popularised through his work with Boys of the Lough. Herein was a history of the man through his music, the friends he made, the people he met, the songs he sung, all humbly contained within half a dozen fragile cardboard boxes.
McCONNELL
Cathal McConnell was born in 1944 to parents Sandy and Mary, the third of five siblings which included his sister Maura, older brother Cormac and younger brothers Mickey and Sean. His father, a shopkeeper by profession, came from a long line of talented musicians stretching back at least to the 19th century to Cathal’s great-grandfather, Mickey McConnell, or ‘Stuttering Mickey’, who was himself a flute player. By all accounts Mickey was a rare character who lived to a ripe old age. He played on a boxwood F flute, a Nicolson, which Cathal still owns. Cathal’s father, known for his sharp natural wit, wrote poetry and songs and, being involved with the Gaelic League, was a strong champion of the Irish language. His mother, a school teacher, was described as quiet and genteel. All three of Cathal’s brothers became eminent journalists and his sister Maura (d.2007) was an avid collector of Irish folklore.
The family home in Bellenaleck, County Fermanagh, was a famous gathering place for musicians and Cathal quickly fell under the influence of the many talented people who passed through its doors during his early years. At the age of eleven he took lessons in tin whistle from a neighbour and close friend of the family Peter ‘Pee’ Flannaghan, but other
The Man Behind the Music by Duncan Wood
The Living Tradition - Page 34
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