The Dubliners - the oldest boyband on the block

[MacRua]

Folk forever
Lew Baxter talks to The Dubliners - the oldest boyband on the block
Oct 6 2006
Daily Post

Full URL<blockquote>
AT A passing glance, they could be mistaken for a bunch of elderly, raggle-taggle archeologists on a dig, yet they have performed alongside U2, with the saintly Bono genuflecting before them, while Glasgow's "King of the Cutthroat Comics" Billy Connolly reckons there isn't a band on earth who can compete with the mighty Dubliners live on stage.

Even John Lennon was once spotted at a gig joining in a rowdy rebel song while James Galway, Kate Bush, actor Peter O'Toole and the classical violinist Nigel Kennedy are wildly enthusiastic fans.

Way back in the 1960s - when The Rolling Stones were first cutting a dash in Richmond and The Beatles were hammering out their riffs in Hamburg's dingy night clubs - The Dubliners were tagged as the rowdiest bunch of young hooligans on the Irish folk music scene, their raucous sound fuelled by feral fiddle and rattling banjoes.

Forty years ago they stormed the British charts with Seven Drunken Nights, a bawdy folksong about being banjaxed on booze, and were flashed triumphantly across the pages of the popular music press in tandem with Jimi Hendrix, Cat Stevens and Frank and Nancy Sinatra.

Despite the novelty of that hit - and the follow-up, Black Velvet Band - few pundits would have wagered a punt the lads could stay the course and even fiddle player John Sheahan, these days the band's spokesman and acknowledged leader, agrees that he figured they maybe had a few good years ahead. "And then I planned to go back to my day job," he laughs down the phone line from Rotterdam where The Dubliners are performing three sold-out concerts.


"We are in our 44th year of touring, and it is staggering to realise we are still around," says the mildly-spoken Sheahan who, at 67, reckons, half jokingly, it's about time they said no to the hundreds of requests.


"I thought about cutting down our working schedule but we've got about 30 shows before Christmas and we're averaging about 70 a year," comments John and then guffaws as he recalls banjo-picking Barney McKenna's remarks that, "Sure, it's too late to stop now".


In fact, that's the title of their new album, which has been released to coincide with this latest European and British tour.


Over the years, the line-up has changed, due to circumstance, ill health and worse misfortunes; the legendary Luke Kellydied of a brain haemorrhage in 1984, aged 43. He was replaced by Galway singer Sean Cannon, an old friend of the group, who is now an integral part.


FELLOW founder member Ciaron Bourke had also suffered a brain haemorrage a decade earlier and retired, eventually passing on a few years after the flame-haired Kelly, who is now hailed as the ultimate Dublin Minstrel in song and poetry.


Indeed, John Sheahan reveals he has recently taken to writing verse himself and penned a poignant tribute to Kelly to mark the 21st anniversary of his death last year.

Two decades after they'd trampled over society's sensitivities - the Irish clergy were enraged with the raunchy smash hit ditty about rolling home from the pub to find another bloke in bed with the missus - the buckaroos turned up trumps again when they linked up with the punk-world's latest idols, the London-based Pogues.

Together in 1987, they unleashed a furious version of the Irish Rover that hurtled to number eight in the charts; and saw the by now middle-aged"Dubs" back on Top of the Pops.

The snaggle-toothed Shane McGowan had actually modelled himself on Luke Kelly, whose powerful and raw interpretation of traditional songs - meshed with the gravelly tones of Ronnie Drew - gave The Dubliners such a distinctive presence; a sound perfected by Sheahan's flowing fiddle and Barney McKenna's weathered fingers rippling through the banjo strings.

A few years on from that rollicking hit with The Pogues, they almost snuck in again with a charity recording of Bette Midler's The Rose, in collaboration with the highly esteemed Dublin rock band, Hothouse Flowers. The song was leapfrogging to the top only to be pipped by U2, whose single was released the same week. Later, a mortified Bono admitted he was hugely embarrassed at whupping his lifelong heroes.

Another health scare sent fans in a flat spin about four years ago when Barney McKenna suffered a heart attack.

But he recovered, and, according to John Sheahan, is in grand form these days. "Sure, he's not exactly an athlete but the spirit is great and he's still knocking the audiences out with his bloody banjo solos.

"He's the only one I ever saw who can get a standing ovation for a solo in the middle of a gig," laughed John, whose fiddle playing is also highly regarded, as individual recordings of his own compositions demonstrate.


Today's line-up includes Barney, John Sheahan, the evergreen Sean Cannon and Eamonn Campbell - himself recovering from an inconvenient health problem - and the fabled Dublin singer and musician Patsy Watchorn. He fills the gap left by Paddy Riley who, after a decade in what John Sheahan laughingly likes to term "the oldest boyband on the block" said farewell last year to chase the sun in Florida.


THE Dubliners appear at the Liverpool Philharmonic Hall on Wednesday, October 25, as part of Cains Liverpool Irish Festival. Full details: http://www.liverpoolirishfestival.com </blockquote>
----------------
© owned by or licensed to Trinity Mirror North West & North Wales Limited 2006