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aoiri (it’s pronounced ‘Derry’ by the way) sounds like one of the classic Irish performers he reveres so much. He says his two favourite albums of all time are Christy Moore’s Live In Dublin (with Donal Lunny and Jimmy Faulkner, on which he first heard Bogie’s Bon-

nie Belle – his version’s on this issue’s fRoots 62 compilation) and Paul Brady & Andy Irvine, which he bought with his Communion money when he was seven. Hardly surprising, then, that the names of Moore, Brady and Irvine spring so readily to mind when you hear him sing; while Donal Lunny is an obvious reference point when he goes into turbo charge on his primary instrument of choice, the bouzouki. Yet he’s no imitation – going out of his way to discover and deliver lesser-known versions of traditional songs and ramp them up until they are embedded within him.

“When I sing I close my eyes and think of the situation in the song as the story evolves. I can see it happening in front of my eyes when I sing and I can’t see or hear anything else going on at that time. There could be a fight going on in front of me and I wouldn’t notice it. It would take an awful lot to break my concentration when I’m singing.”

An effervescent character bubbling over with passion for the music and accomplished at delivering it, you could be forgiven for imagining that he’s just appeared, fully formed, from nowhere. The reality, of course, is very different. He’s been grafting away at it for a very long time without initially harbouring any ambitions to turn it into a profession. It’s not like he was born into the music.

“Well, me grandfather played a bit of concertina and harmoni- ca, maybe when he’d had a few pints taken. I don’t remember him playing and my parents don’t play, though my uncle had a few bodhrans and tipped away on them. But me father had records and tapes in the house and played them non-stop… Christy Moore, Bothy Band, Planxty… stuff like that he was always playing in the car.”

When he was about eight, Daoiri saw Christy Moore singing The

Well Below The Valley and playing bodhran on Irish TV’s fabled The Late Show and promptly announced to the family that this was what he intended to do. That Christmas his dad bought him a bodhran and so it began. He got a guitar and had lessons… until musical dif- ferences set in.

“The teacher wanted me to learn classical music but I wanted to play Nirvana and Oasis and stuff so I said there’s no point in giving me lessons. At that time it didn’t occur to me to do any Planxty or Christy songs.”

Instead, he took up banjo and mandolin and trained – and qual- ified – as an electrician. That was it – his life plan was established and music was confined to the realms of enjoyable pastime. In a weak moment he lets slip that his nickname in those days was ‘Elvis’ (“I’d love to have met Elvis, I even had a guitar like his”) so a future as a folk star was a long way off.

On his 21st birthday when he was three sheets to the wind in a

pub, Daoiri’s mates pushed him up on stage and he attempted to sing the Christy Moore classic, Ride On. “I was really plastered and I was too drunk to sing properly so when I got off they were really slagging me and had me in headlocks and all this. I didn’t care because I was an electrician, not a musician. But when I started thinking about it I realised that even though I’d made a complete arse of myself, I really enjoyed it.”

And when he was laid off from his day job as an electrician, he started thinking about music more seriously, taking himself off to Dublin’s Ballyfermot College of Further Education to study Irish tra- ditional music. And he soon realised he couldn’t stop there, getting a degree in Applied Music at Dundalk, followed by a Masters in Music Performance at the University of Limerick’s renowned Irish World Music Centre. Gradually the confident, accomplished and exciting performer we see before us now began to take shape.

One of his tutors, flute player Paul McGrattan, organised a per- formance at Dublin’s Cobblestone and informed him that, apart from playing his usual banjo stuff, he had to sing a song.

“I’ll never forget it. I got up and got massive stage fright. I start- ed to play the intro to the song and tried to sing and the words wouldn’t come out. I couldn’t do anything. So I stopped and said a rude word. The crowd just burst out laughing. They realised I was human and I realised they were listening. So then I regrouped myself, sang the song, finished and they gave me a big round of applause and that was it… I’d got the bug and wanted to be on stage.”