The Winning Hand

Episode 80-The Winning Hand
How family treasures trump trends
This Irish Music Stories episode aired December 19, 2024
https://www.shannonheatonmusic.com/episode-80-the-winning-hand

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Speakers, in order of appearance
>> Shannon Heaton: Boston-based flute player, singer, composer, teacher, and host of Irish Music Stories
>>> Mary MacNamara: East Clare concertina player and educator, and author of Sundays at Lena’s
>> John Tunney: Ulster born, Clare based singer, songwriter, writer and Heritage Studies lecturer
>> Nigel Heaton: Young announcer for Irish Music Stories

———

>> Shannon: I’m Shannon Heaton. And this is Episode 80 of Irish Music Stories, the show about traditional music, and the bigger stories behind it. 

[ Music:: “Free the Heel,” from Kitchen Session
Artists/Composers: Matt & Shannon Heaton ]

I began this show in February 2017. For each episode I’ve focused on a totally different topic. I’ll chat with people about it through an Irish music lens. What emerges usually pans much wider than traditional music. With the IMS catalog, there are plenty of goods for Irish music nerds and for listeners who know nothing about trad music.

And now. At the end of year eight, I’m going out—family style. In one of the places my musical life began, in my Grandma Murphy’s kitchen, listening to KXLY on the Catalin table radio. 

When we came to visit, my Grandma would set up the table with playing cards. And then she’d tune into one of those Irish American music hours, and sing along with Delia Murphy.

[ Music: “If I Were a Blackbird,” from The Spinning Wheel 

Artist: Delia Murphy ]

[ Music: “John Naughton’s,” from Open Hearth

Artists: Mary MacNamara & Andrew MacNamara ]

Concertina player Mary MacNamara also remembers her mom Ita singing at home in East Clare. That’s how Mary learned her first tunes.

>> Mary MacNamara: My mom was Ita MacMahon from Ennis. She came up in a very, very musical house. While all her brothers were given the opportunity to learn an instrument, it wasn’t considered that she would play traditional Irish music. But she turned out to be the most musical person in the house. And she’d all this music in her head.

Every tune I learned as a very, very young child, I learned from her diddling. She would diddle the tunes and we would play them. 

[ Music: “Little Pack of Tailors,” from Celtic Mouth Music

Artist: Elizabeth Cronin ]

>> Shannon: Mary and her brother Andrew would hear their mom lilting the tunes, like Elizabeth Cronin here used to do. And hey’d hear their Uncles Tony and Brendan who played accordion. They worked the tunes out at home in Tulla, and eventually they took them out to Lena Hanrahan’s pub in Feakle, in the next town over. 

Feakle (F-E-A-K-L-E) means ‘the tooth’ in the Irish language. And every Sunday morning after Mass, musicians from all around East Clare would bite into jigs and reels at Lena’s Bar. 

[ Music: “Patsy Hanly’s” from February 2024 session at Lena’s

Artists: Charlie Harris & Mark Donellan and friends ]

The weekly session that Lena started in 1970 is still running. The new official name is Shortt’s Bar. But Ger Shortt who runs the place now kept everything the way Lena had it.

https://clarechampion.ie/celebrating-40-years-of-music-in-feakle/

https://clarechampion.ie/marys-labour-of-love-honours-east-clares-musical-heritage/

http://www.clondanaghcottage.com/music.html

>> Mary: This all happened in Lena’s, you know? This is where my father brought us as children. And Lena herself was such a big part of it. 

When we got a little bit older, my father brought us in the direction of Joe Bane, Bill Malley, and all these musicians. We fell in love with that music naturally.

[ Music: “The Rollicking Boys Around Tandragee” from The Flax in Bloom

Artists: Mick Gallagher ]

>> Shannon: John Tunney was introduced to his family’s songs in Donegal, before he was even singing himself.

>> John: I remember being a small, small boy. So small I could climb up on my Uncle Mick’s knee. I remember he was wearing blue overalls, and I’d fall asleep on him. And more than once I remember waking up and you know a singing session had  already broken out. So, my father and granny, and my Aunt Annie. And they were all beautiful singers. And literally you’d wake up, and this singing would be happening. 

[ Music swells ]

>> Shannon: If you sing regularly in blue overalls, with your tiny nephew on your lap … or you daiddle tunes to your kids in the kitchen… or you warble along with songs on the radio when your grandkids are visiting… or you know just two lullabies that you sing off key to your baby: you never know what music is gonna stick for the person hearing it.

[ Music: “G# Chimes,” from  from Production Music Made for Irish Music Stories
Artist/Composer: Matt Heaton ]

So.. there’s this song, The Mountain Streams where the Moorcocks Crow. I first heard it on a cassette recording that my mom had made. She’d recorded John’s Dad, Paddy Tunney singing it when she’d visited the Tunney family, back in 1985. 

My mother is not a song collector. She just has this cassette recording as a keepsake from her visit to the Tunneys in Letterkenny, in Donegal. She presses record halfway into the first verse. She bumps the tape recorder a few times. It’s a sweet and very muffled souvenir. Fortunately there are much cleaner recordings of the song, like the one on The Man of Songs, Paddy Tunney’s incredible album from 1962.

[Song: “Mountain Streams,” from The Man of Songs

Artist: Paddy Tunney ]

This is an old song. There are Scottish examples. And when Sam Henry included it in his Songs of the People, he said he’d collected it in Coleraine in 1924, and that it had been written around 1854.

But Paddy Tunney got his special version of the Mountain Streams Wfrom his mom Brigid Gallagher Tunney.

Who’d learned it from her Auntie Mary Gallagher

Who’d learned it from her mom Biddy Travers

Who’d learned the song by 1830, in the Blue Stack Mountains, in the south of Donegal. 

John Tunney, Paddy’s son has taught it to his son Conall. 

[ Music: “Moorcocks” from Lovers’ Well

Artist: Matt & Shannon Heaton ]

No flies on my Grandpa Murphy. But a song on its sixth generation might have the upper hand over all the games of Kings in the Corner that my Grandpa won, when we played cards together. Especially with all the care that John has taken to tell the story of his great, great Grandma Biddy Travers.

>> John: Biddy Travers grows up in the Blue Stacks, above Lough Eske, where her father was a hedge school master. She teaches in that hedge school with him, in that pre famine period. And then is forced out of that area. She was denounced off the altar. 

>> Shannon: In the late 1830s in Ireland, being denounced from the altar was a serious public shaming.

[ Music: “Dark Low Jig,” from Production Music Made for Irish Music Stories

Artist/Composer: Matt Heaton ]

It was how Catholic priests would punish people who violated social norms. Biddy was a literate young woman (unusual enough at that time). And she was helping her dad at the hedge school while a big opposition movement was growing against church tithes. That’s where everybody had pay high taxes to support the Church of Ireland—and if they didn’t have the money, collectors would take their crops, or animals, or they’d kick them out of their homes.

Biddy may have been involved in the anti-tithe campaign. Which may be why she and her new husband Big Paddy Gallagher, had to leave their home parish and move eight miles south.

(The landlords and the church held all the cards in pre famine Ireland.)

And it was cards—playing cards—that my Grandpa Murphy held 150 years later. Unlike the Tunney family in Donegal and Fermanagh who sang together… and unlike Mary Mary MacNamara and her family who played tunes together in Clare… my Grandma and Grandpa Murphy played Kings in the Corner with me and my sister…. and talked about Ireland.. and  listened to Spokane Washington’s oldest radio station.

[ Music: “Galway Bay,” from Arthur Godfrey Presents Carmel Quinn 

Artist: Carmel Quinn ]

We played cards on this bright red formica table. It matched the little red radio. And as we’d hum along with songs on KXLY, and lose game after game to Grandpa, the kitchen would start to smell a little hazy.

[ Music: “Pipe on the Hob,” from Swimming Against the Falls

Artist: Joey Abarta ]

It was this sweet, chemical smell. I always thought it was my grandpa’s shoes or something. But later I learned that the little kitchen radio was covered in Bakelite plastic, which contained formaldehyde resins, carbolic acid. Asbestos was in the mix, too, until 1974. I’m sure my grandma’s radio was way older than that. And it would start to smell really weird as it warmed up. 

Even with the off-gassing those were really great afternoons. 

[ Music: “Modal Travel Theme,” from Production Music Made for Irish Music Stories

Artist/Composer: Matt Heaton ]

My sister and I would each get a roll of quarters at the start of the week, and the goal was to win rounds of Kings in the Corner and walk away with more coins. Which never happened. Because my Grandpa Murphy cheated. All the time. He’d hide cards in his lap, he’d tuck them in his sleeve. And the red table was so clean and shiny, he could probably see our cards.

[ Music: “Heartstrings Theme,” from Production Music Made for Irish Music Stories

Artist/Composer: Matt Heaton ]

Kings in the Corner is a simple solitaire style game that you can play in a group. There was a packaged  Kings in the Corner game at some point. But we played it the way it was first conceived in the early 1900s, with just a deck of cards. Apparently this family, the Grey family, made it up while sailing aboard the SS Suevic, somewhere between England and Australia, and sometime between 1901 and 1907.

The Suevic was built in Belfast by The Harland and Wolff company.  Edward James Harland, who founded the company with Gustav Wolff, died in 1895, so he missed the Suevic steamship. He also missed Kings in the Corner. And the Titanic, which was another Harland ship.

By then, the Mountain Streams song had been in the Gallagher-Tunney family for three generations. John Tunney’s old Uncle Mick would have grown up hearing it—he was the farmer with the blue overalls, in whose lap John would nap.

The Mountain Streams might have even been sung in the Tunney kitchen on the night the SS Suevic crashed into Stag Rock off the coast of Cornwall. The singers in Donegal and Fermanagh wouldn’t have known at the time, but over in Southwest England villagers on the Lizard Peninsula heard distress calls. They rowed out on these boats and showed up just as two big Suevic lifeboats were heading into treacherous narrow channels. The locals knew the reef pretty well, so they were able to help maneuver. They shuttled the passengers through the night, until the last person was safely ashore.

There were no casualties. (Nor were there any surviving playing cards.)

One reporter wrote about SS Suevic Captain Thomas Johnson Jones. “Was there any suggestion of a panic? None whatever… One must remember the Captain’s cigar. If anything could stop a panic it would be a man who could keep the ash on the end of his cigar in a gale and an emergency.”

[ Modal Travel theme reprise ]

If there was anything, anything that could stop my Grandpa Murphy from cheating at Kings in the Corner it would be my Grandma who could keep a spoonful of seven bean soup in the ladle while walking from the stove to the kitchen table, while also swatting Grandpa’s card-holding hand.

My sister and I never liked the seven-bean soup. But we loved hanging with Grandma in the kitchen while she made it. And while she cleaned the table with hot soapy water and just a little vinegar, so that the cards wouldn’t stick. The sunlight (and the cards) would reflect off the surface of the red formica.

We’d play cards.

And we’d listen to music,

[Music: “Walking to Missouri,” from I’ll Get By

Artist: Sammy Kaye ]

John Tunney had a different childhood with his grandparents. Instead of traveling to Spokane for an annual week of card games and radio shows, the Tunney family would drive from Letterkenny in Donegal to Garvary in Fermanagh, to visit Granny Brigid Tunney.

>> John: At a minimum once a fortnight, the six of us would be piled into an Anglia (a small Ford car back then). My parents in the front. And after Sunday dinner, we would drive to Garvary. And it would always finish up with a couple of songs. And Granny was quite old then. In fact, she had a rug look just like that. And she used to sit beside the fire when she was late in life, and she’d wrap that rug across her knees.

>> Shannon: They’d sit around the fire and listen to their Grandma sing. And in the Tunney-Gallagher family, if you played your cards right, you also got a song or two to sing for yourself. But you had to work for it. Granny Brigid kept her favorites—like the Mountain Streams—close to her chest.

[ Song: “The Mountain Streams Where the Moorcocks Crow,” from The Flax in Bloom

Artist: Brigid Tunney]

recording made by Peter Kennedy and Sean O’Boyle in 1952 (BBC 20022)

>> Shannon: John and his siblings were always hearing their grandmother, and their father, and their uncles and aunties and neighbors sing.

>> John:  So I don’t remember a time when there wasn’t these songs. 

[ Music: “Heartstrings Theme,” from Production Music Made for Irish Music Stories

Artist/Composer: Matt Heaton ]

Wasn’t a time when I wasn’t listening to them. It was just how it was. Each of those singers had go-to songs. You know, so Joe would sing The Mountains of Pomeroy, and Mick would sing the Rocks of Bawn. And Granny, well her go to songs—As I Roved Out, and the Lowlands of Holland was her warmer upper, as it were. And even as an elderly woman she could still hit those high notes.

Now, in a previous time, if somebody sang a song and it was their song (in a house dance, or even in my own family), you certainly didn’t sing that song in front of them. That would just rank bad matters. It wouldn’t happen, right? Because you knew whose song it was, even within the family. You knew whose song it was. 

>> Shannon: Before Brigid and her brother Mick—and Brigid’s son Paddy—sang for Seán O Boyle and Peter Kennedy at the the BBC and Ciarán MacMathúna on Raidió Éireann, the Gallaghers and Tunneys were the gatekeepers of these songs. They chose what to sing, how to sing it, and what to share and pass on. Brigid wouldn’t even teach her son Paddy a song until she thought he was ready to sing it.

[ Music: “G Chimes,” from Production Music Made for Irish Music Stories

Artist/Composer: Matt Heaton ]

John Tunney wrote about the time that his Grannny Brigid had heard her son Paddy (John’s dad) on Ireland’s National Radio. Apparently she said “ Son, I heard you grunting on the radio the other night!’  And then she went over the song he had performed, and corrected the things she didn’t like. Then she taught him a new song, and made sure he had every detail just right.

Paddy was probably about 30 years old by then.

John said his dad spent four years singing The Mountain Streams before ever singing it in public. 

And John says it took him and his son Conall much longer than four years. But what’s the rush with a family heirloom?

[ Music: “Modal Travel Theme,” from Production Music Made for Irish Music Stories

Artist/Composer: Matt Heaton ]

There are other versions of the Mountain Streams. But none with this melody…  that came from Biddy Travers from the Bluestacks almost two hundred years ago. Here’s Biddy’s verse three, sung by three of the six generations of singers who’ve carried the song.

[ Music: “Mountain Streams” from The Immigrant: A Stone on the Cairn of Tradition

Artists: The Tunneys ]

Biddy Travers was born in South Donegal in 1820. Pre famine. Pre partition (all of Ireland and Great Britain were one united state at this point). By the time Biddy was in her late teens, those mass demonstrations against the tithe system had begun.

(That was where people were supposed to support the church, no matter what religion they were.)

More and more people were refuing to pay—some were put in prison or killed. So in a way, John’s great great grandma Biddy and her family got off easy, with garden variety banishment. The family held onto this story of Biddy and Pat leaving the parish.

[ Music:“Tir,” from Live at Cwmyoy Church 

Artist: Rhodri McDonagh 

>> John: It is really interesting that a family in that very conservative context would preserve the account of how they were essentially disgraced. Frequently those kinds of stories are buried. But actually that story of Biddy Travers was cherished and passed on, not to be forgotten. 

>> Shannon: But holding onto that story proudly, I mean not only is it a story of getting kicked out of your home, being persecuted. But it’s a story of you stood up to corruption and greed. Let’s have that on the record. 

>> John: That’s right. If she was involved as a campaigner with the tithes, she was a young woman. She might have been 20. Well here, this active campaigning “woke” woman of her time. This is an interesting thing, you know? And I think on the women in our family has had quite the impact. You know, steeliness and standing up for yourself. Seems to me to be interesting.

>> Shannon: It is an interesting thing. And it’s a risky thing to stand up to people in power. The tithe system gave the clergy healthy salaries. And it kept landlords in a position of power over their tenants. So it was pretty bold to shake your fist at the Church and the rich landowners, and insist on equality, fairness, and rights. You could get arrested, or banished. And when the government brought in troops to help the police collect tithes, things got bloody.

But those pesky tithe campaigners had some success. They managed to eventually change the tax system so landlords had to pay more. 

Of course the landlords put up a good fight. People in power do not like critics. So they build little alliances with fellow rich and powerful organizations. And then they manipulate people. And probably one of the most effective and probably inexpensive ways to build and keep power is with rhetoric, right? Just use or invent terms for the protestors, and turn them into insults. Whatever the term of the day might be, wherever you are—campaigners, suffragettes.All the top dogs need to do is lean in to the guys who are doing okay, and make some nasty jokes about freedom riders and peaceniks. Or feminists and radicals. Or wokeists, Libs. Belittle them, punish them. Spread a few rumors, fan the flames. And then when things get good and hot, just smile and make a few vague promises, so that all your early supporters feel really good. And they pull along all the other people, who just want to avoid conflict or change. Or aren’t really paying attention. And the culture war games escalate. The citizens fight each other. Until everybody loses. Except the oligarchy.

Well, Biddy and Big Paddy Gallagher lost. Sort of. They had to leave their home parish of Tawnawully. Just a few years before the Great Famine of 1845, they crossed the Blue Stack mountain range and settled in Teamhair, bringing Biddy’s version of the Mountain Streams with them. 

>> John: She arrives down there. And luckily enough they rent a wee place there, and their neighbors are the Meehans who are also singers. And the Monaghans who are also singers. And so that’s where all the songs are.

>> Shannon: So if the church hadn’t been in cahoots with the rich landlords—if it hadn’t been for public shaming and deportation and exile—maybe I wouldn’t be telling the story of this song and this family of singers. 

[ Music: G Chimes ]

Greed and tyranny can tear families apart. And it can also bring communities together. Biddy and Pat Gallagher’s new home was in Teamhair  or Tamur. They met a bunch of singing neighbors there, and they’d have them over. Or they’d go to a little thatched cottage at the top of nearby Rushen Hill. These were two little townlands, brimming with social and musical action. And then the Tunney family moved into a third nearby townland.

>> John: The Tunneys came in the 1880s in the townland of Mallybreen, which is further south, and in Northern Ireland. And you literally, as you go round the loch fishing (we used to fly fish off the shore), you cross the border twice.

>> Shannon: There’s no actual border from the Republic of Ireland to Northern Ireland. It’s free passage. But before the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, there were security barriers and British military checkpoints at main border crossings. 

Well, of the three townlands, all within a kilometer of each other, the Mallybreeen house had the biggest kitchen. And the Tunneys had an in-house tune player, John’s great Aunt Biddy. So it was the go-to spot for dances. 

[ Music: “Miss McCleod,” from An Mileoidean Scaoilte

Artists: Johnny Connolly & Charlie Lennon ]

And it was here, in this hilly, boggy, seriously rural area, where this micro-community kept songs like the Moorcocks alive, before the BBC collected them and shared them widely. 

>> John: Quite a lot of people lived there, this lovely hillside. People used to come to sing and play music and dance.

>> Shannon: So the Gallagher, and Meehan, and Tunney teenagers are meeting each other at the house parties. Michael Gallagher—the son of Biddy and Pat (from the Bluestacks)—met Mary, one of the Meehan girls. They sang together. They got married. And they had three boys and three girls. 

In the spring of 1897, Mary died in childbirth, in the cottage at the top of Rushen Hill. After her death, her sister-in-law—also named Mary, and also a very talented singer—offered support and songs to the kids. Especially to the eldest daughter Brigid. That’s John’s granny.

Auntie Mary taught Brigid the Mountain Streams in the early 1900s.

Just before WWI, Brigid moved to Glasgow. There she ended up marrying Patrick Tunney from back home. Brigid and Patrick started their family in Scotland. And after the birth of their son Paddy, they moved back to the old Tunney family farm in Mallybreen. Then they settled in Garvary, which by December 1922 was part of Northern Ireland.

That was before Paddy joined the IRA, and before he was caught with explosives in 1943, and before he was incarcerated at Her Majesty Prison, Crumlin Road for four and a half years. It’s a museum and concert hall now; but for 150 years, Crumlin Road was known as Europe’s Alcatraz, a grim Belfast prison that detained suffragettes, political prisoners, and children from poor families.

While Paddy served his sentence he’d tap out jigs and reels with other prisoner. They’d share tunes by tapping on the water pipes in the cells. 

[ Music: “Little Bird Lullaby,” from Production Music Made for Irish Music Stories

Artist/Composer: Matt Heaton ]

All this music that Paddy had learned from his family—and from the community that surrounded them in the three townlands—got him through. Music was a balm, a coping tool. And it still is. People with hearts full of songs can be awfully resilient. Enduring songs can help us endure heaps of dissonance.

When Paddy Tunney was released from prison in 1948, Kings in the Corner was around 35 years old. And this special version of the Mountain Streams song was on its fourth generation of singers. That’s when the song catchers showed up.

>> John: BBC Northern Ireland literally put ads in the paper saying if you think you’re a folksinger, come and be tested. And then my father sings three or four songs on the radio. And Sean O’Boyle hears him. And he comes later that summer and he records them. And now the songs are everywhere. 

[ Music: “Dark Low Jig,” from Production Music Made for Irish Music Stories

Artist/Composer: Matt Heaton ]

And in a sense, the songs were liberated you might say. But they also passed out of the control of the carriers. 

>> Shannon: Once the radio shows aired the family favorites—and once Paddy presented them himself in his 1979 book, The Stone Fiddle—these songs were no longer up the families’ sleeves. Now anybody could learn the Tunney versions of Mountain Streams, Craigie Hill, May Morning Dew, As I Roved Out.

>> John: We do hear our songs being sung in all sorts of places. And I think this is a good thing. Even if sometimes we’re listening to them going, “Ooch, ouch.”

>> Shannon: Yeah, I can really appreciate that. I can really hear that. How tough it must be to give up your family treasures. Because after that, it’s out in the world.

>> John: It’s exactly that. It’s an interesting thing. 

>> Shannon: Because the Mountain Streams is out in the world, it has also become an important song in my singing repertoire. Because of my mom’s cassette tape, and the BBC and Smithsonian recordings, and Paddy’s books, I’ve sung it … with guitar and foot percussion, which is obviously not how the Tunney-Gallagher family carried the song. 

I also play tunes that I’ve learned in East Clare. 

[ Tune: “Old Man Dillon,” from Sundays at Lena’s

Artist: John Naughton ]

When I play this jig, Old Man Dillon, I don’t sound like John Naughton, who taught it to Mary MacNamara. But I learned a few of these East Clare tunes from her, and from the players who played around Tulla and Feakle, at Lena’s old Pub. 

And in case you can’t make it out to Feakle, or even if you can, Mary’s book Sundays at Lena’s is a really generous way to bring these tunes to outsiders like me. Just like Paddy Tunney’s Stone Fiddle and his second book Where Songs Do Thunder, it’s this way for us to learn about a particular body of music, from a particular part of Ireland. These are incredibly intimate snapshots of a very local community that has carried and shaped melodies, with distinct versions and accents.

>> Mary: I wanted to share it with the people who wanted to know. Who would be interested in knowing who the people were. 

First of all I was born not in Tulla. I was born in a place called Clondanagh, which is just three miles outside Tulla. So it’s between here and Feakle, basically. We moved into this house here when I was five. So this has been my home for most of my life. 

So growing up here in Tulla was a lovely experience, because Tulla has a very famous name for music, as you know. And so there was always people coming through. And this was the house where a lot of people would come. It was music, music, music all the way.

There’s something very, very homely about the whole place. It’s kind of cozy when you go up those roads, because the trees are close by you. The roads are narrow, the ditches are near you.

>> Shannon: Yeah, and also getting around! When you’re talking about these little hilly roads, in a place where the sun sets pretty early. At times it’s just quite dark and quite quiet. Has a little bit more of a… a different rhythm.

>> Mary: Yeah

[ Music: “Slip Jig Dreams,” from Production Music Made for Irish Music Stories

Artist/Composer: Matt Heaton ]

>> Shannon: It’s really very sweet to try to bring just a little bit of East Clare to a podcast. And to make some creative connections between kids steeped in generations of music in rural Ireland, and an American kid who played cards with her grandparents.

Each episode of Irish Music Stories has been quite a puzzle. And it’s always fascinating and challenging to fit it together, and then share it. Thank you to everybody who’s listening. And thank you so much to my supporters who’ve helped me keep this show going for eight years. I am so grateful. I never could have made 80 episodes without your contributions and encouragement. And without the amazing help of my family.

Before I carry on with how music has been carried on for the MacNamaras and the Tunneys, here’s my son Nigel to offer thanks to our current sponsors. Thank you, Nigel, for doing this for the last eight years.

>> Nigel: Thank you (said age 8-13)

Thank you to Sharon Murphy, Michael Craine, Jackson Galloway, Karin Kettinring, David Vaughan, John Ploch, Adele Megann, John Sigler, Randall Semagin, Mike Voss, Isobel McMahon, Heather Carroll, Ian Bittle, Rick Rubin, the Irish & Celtic Music Podcast, Chris Armstrong, Jonathan Duvick, Susan Walsh, and Bob Suchor.

[ Music: “Little Bird Lullaby,” Production Music Made for Irish Music Stories

Artist/Composer: Matt Heaton ]

>> Shannon: Hearing my kid grow up, and learning from him, this is a big part of my inner life. It motivates me. It shapes me and my approach to daily life. And it affects my music: the way I play, how I learn, what it all means to me. 

[ Music: “The Caves of Kiltanon,” from Boston to Tulla

Artist: Mary MacNamara  ]

Yes, the musicians who have taught me, and the towns where I’ve learned tunes and songs are huge influences. 

So is walking with my kid around the streets and woods of Medford, Massachusetts.

John Tunney talks about how his dad Paddy’s music welled out of his experiences and memories of Teamhair Casey, Rusheen and Mallybreen, John calls these three little townlands the inner landscape of his dad’s imagination. All the people and memories he had growing up there—and then raising his own family there—were probably baked into his experience of his music. 

And then there are particular contours to the melodies themselves that feels like they could be shaped by the local surroundings. Like, those Ulster melodies that Paddy learned from his family have different twists and turns than the tunes Mary was raised on, all around Magherabaun. Glendree, Feakle, and Tulla.

>> Mary: I do think that the music of East Clare has been somewhat affected by the landscape that’s around here. And I think you think differently as well when you’re in this space. There is peace and you start to reflect on things. And certainly if it’s music you’re thinking about, or if you’re trying to even remember a tune, there’s no better place to go than one of these roads and just walk and diddle away in your head. I think that’s how a lot of the musicians actually recalled some of their tunes in the day. 

>> Shannon: What I love about the book is we get to meet these people who really have shaped your music, and shaped your life.

>> Mary: I suppose I wanted to say that in the book about how the music affected me. How I learned it, and who the people were: 

>> Shannon: Sundays at Lenas is a collection of tunes—it’s a music book. But really, it’s a book about the people who carried these tunes: Bill Malley, Joe Bane, Martin Rochford, John Naughton, Paddy Grogan, Mikey O’Donoghue.

>> Mary: Mikey O’Donohue, actually. He’s Cyril’s grandfather, Mikey is.

>> Shannon: Mikey O’Donoghue of Ballinahinch lived in this beautiful stone house overlooking Lough Bridget. There’s this photo of him in the book, he’s playing the concertina in front of his kitchen fireplace wearing his signature top hat. Mary talks about how the atmosphere in the house was relaxed, and how Mikey spoke in a tone of voice that was kind.

Mikey’s grandson Cyril was also kind, and quirky. Though I never saw him in a top hat.

>> Shannon: How did you decide what to put in there,

>> Mary: I picked the tunes that were interesting. I also focus on tunes where they have rare versions of them. That was a big focus of mine, to pick the tunes that were played differently. Because that’s what I love about the tunes, that they have little different twists. And they bring great pleasure to a musician who’s listening and knows. And they’ll hear something. They’ll hear you playing a tune, for instance, Cooley’s Reel from Mikey O’Donoghue. And it’s quite different to the regular version.

>> Shannon: Mikey O’Donoghue’s version of Cooley’s reel is quite different from the one that I know. For starters, he plays his down a step. But if I play my version down a step, for a better comparison,  here’s how I know Cooley’s Reel:

[Shannon plays standard version of Joe Cooley’s reel in D]

And then here’s Mikey’s version.

[Shannon plays Mikey’s version of Joe Cooley’s reel ]

>> Mary: It’s worth picking out the tunes that matter. And that have a good impact.

>> Shannon: Yeah, so if what you’re looking for is the 50 most essential Irish tunes of all time, played the way they might be played all around in different locations. And you saw in the index Cooley’s Reel, the Star of Munster, you might have a big surprise in store.

>> Mary: Exactly. 

>> Shannon: Bill Malley’s Star of Munster is one of my favorite surprises in the collection.

[ Music: “Star of Munster,” from Sundays at Lena’s

Artist: Bill Malley ]

>> Mary: I thought it was very important  that I wrote in every breath that Joe Bane took. Every note that John Naughton missed, every C-sharp that he played instead of C-natural. 

And they always made it sound beautiful. Because they brought so much of their own atmosphere, personality, and love, and landscape into their music that it just became a music of the area. So nothing was wrong. It was all right. And it was all very beautiful. And it was played with love and passion.

[ Music: “Pianto Per Nonna,” from Living Room

Artist: Laura Cortese ]

>> Shannon: Like Sundays at Lena’s, Paddy Tunney books shine a light on beautiful melodies that welled out of a place, and a community. On music that came out of three townlands, from generations of singers who survived excommunication, and famine, the Troubles, and loss. 

Paddy also took creative liberties. He adapted songs. He added new original verses. He translated songs from Irish to English very liberally. And then he put the music—and stories about the countryside and the community that surrounded the songs—out into the world. This is a lot of precious and personal stuff to give away.

Donegal singer Lillis O’Laoire wrote about singers on Tory Island, in his book “On a Rock in the Middle of the Ocean.” He’s got these detailed accounts of different singers and their special songs, all from this tiny, remote, Irish speaking island off the north-west coast of Donegal.

>> John: In “A Rock in the Middle of the Ocean,” he writes about, you know, almost a sense of hurt that the Tory folk have that other people have got their hands on their songs, and don’t even acknowledge where they came from. Won’t even acknowledge where…

>> Shannon: Don’t know? 

>> John: Well, don’t know. But actually don’t even know enough to know that it makes a difference. It just doesn’t enter their mind to something that’s of relevance.

>> Shannon: If you know that by putting these songs out there — on a CD, in a book, you know record them for the BBC. If you know that you’re gonna be kind of giving up your family goods, why would you do it? 

>> John: Songs are songs because people sing them. That’s it. You need people to sing them. When the song resonates in the air, when the singer’s voice is making that happen, suddenly the song is present. And actually, if it’s well done, the singers who are long dead are all present, too. And you can hear them

Well on top of that, Shannon, I mean you’re a musician and you’re a singer. When one embraces a song, it becomes us. And we it. And so it should. So it should. So everybody should have their own way of, of ‘living’ the song.

[ Music: “Lament for Lost Friends, from Live at Simpson Street Studios

Artists: Alex Cumming & Nicola Beazley ]

>> Shannon: No matter what you’re doing, of course you can (and probably want) to do it your way. And ideally, if you’re learning some kind of music, or doing a task, or playing a card game, you’ll learn some rules first. Like how in Kings in the Corner, Jacks and Queens are worth two points, Kings are worth ten. Everything else is one point. But then some players say the winner is the one with the most corners at the end of the game. It depends.

Well, you learn some rules. You learn some common exceptions. And then maybe you take it your own way. Maybe you play with tenderness and hum during the game, like my Grandma Murphy. Maybe you try to tease and distract your grandchildren while you shove a King card in your shirt, and play the whole thing for laughs, like my Grandpa.

Playing your own game and singing the songs your own way is part of the sport. But it’s also sporting to know where the songs come from—the places and the people that held them, before dealing other people in. Knowing the history of the music ups the ante. It’s another way of living the songs. 

>> Shannon: You know a lot of these tunes from this area. And you love them. 

>> Mary: Oh yeah I do. 

[ Music: “Martin Rochford’s,” from Live at Seattle

Artists: Martin Hayes & Denis Cahill

>> Shannon: Do you find as the years go on, is it a consistent experience playing these tunes? Does it go deeper? Does it change since making the book?

>> Mary:  Doing the book has made it all much better for me, because it has given identity to the whole thing now. People are more aware of the tunes. Up to now, up to the time I did the book, it was a very small group of people playing these tunes and these versions. But since I did the book, I’ve started relearning more of the tunes myself. And I’m actually sharing them with people now. 

And you know what, I’m enjoying it more myself. After writing them down, and spending all that time putting in all the little nuances into the tune that matter, I grew a new love for the tunes again. I’m having more courage to play them out. For instance if somebody asked me to play a tune, I’m not afraid to play a weird version of The Mountain Road. If I do play one of those tunes, someone might say, “Well, that’s interesting, where did you get that?” I say, “It’s my book, Sundays at Lena’s. Go and get it!”

[ Music: “The Lacaroe,” from Sundays at Lena’s

Artist: Mikey O’Donoghue ]

[ Music: “Grupai Ceoil Memories Reprise ]

>> Shannon: When Mary and I spoke, I was in the middle of musical trip. I’d been reacquainting myself with tunes that I used to hear, back when Matt Heaton and I would spend winters in Clare. It was great to remember some of that music, and play it with such fine players and people like Mary. And we have great tunes and great players here in Boston, But we don’t have this distinct focus on this particular body of tunes, like Mary and her community do.

>> Shannon: We don’t really play all those tunes back in Boston. And I want to keep some of them alive. There’s gotta be some way to…

>> Mary: I think we’re depending on each other to when we meet, that you’ll come up with something that I’ve forgotten about. And vice versa. It’s lovely to go out and play music, for that reason alone. Just to come home and say God, I didn’t play that for ages.

 >> Shannon: Yeah. remembering it collectively, isn’t it? It’s very nice.

>> Mary: Oh yeah. It’s lovely.

>> Shannon: It IS so lovely to meet and share music: to play tunes at a session in East Clare … or hear a few generations of singers in the backroom of an Ennis bar… or learn a new jig in my friend’s kitchen in Massachusetts.

It’s also really great to have access to Irish music online: it’s SO easy now to find lyrics, history of songs, settings of tunes. But I think it’s especially important to offer some context. That’s what Mary captures in Sundays at Lena’s: this human context. Society. Memory. It’s what Paddy Tunney offered with The Stone Fiddle and Where Songs Do Thunder. He shared his songs, and his inner landscape.

And that’s the same horizon that has surrounded John Tunney, from the time he was napping on his uncle Mick’s lap, while the family sang in the kitchen. 

[ Music: “Kind Friends and Companions,” from The Immigrant

Artistst: The Tunneys ]

John and his siblings have kept these songs in circulation. And now they’ve set up the Tunney Song Tradition Trust to reprint Paddy’s books. In the summer of 2024, 22 years after Paddy’s death, they launched the new edition of The Stone Fiddle with photos, maps, a proper index and a meaty introduction by John. Even though it might be tough for the Tunneys to hear their songs out in the world (with guitar, and foot percussion, and all sorts of interpretations), that doesn’t prevent them from showing the family hand and Restringing the Stone Fiddle.

>> John: And then we’re going to do “Where Songs Do Thunder,” and then we’re going to do “Sing Another Story,” Dad’s third book, which was in his papers as a rough typescript. There’s stuff in it people have never heard! So he left this typescript in fairly rough form. Wonderful, wonderful material. Sounds like it stumbled out of the 18th century. You know of sailors, and mermaids, and nets, and all sorts of stuff. Beautiful, beautiful translations. I mean just shockingly beautiful translations of classic Irish songs. And then there’s material that he has written, you know, from scratch. About 50 songs are there.

>> Shannon: In John’s sunroom we looked over the cover art for the three books: on one, a lark. On the second, a linnet. And on the third, a moorcock. On the body of each bird there’s a different portrait. 

>> John: That window is where the window would have been in Tunney’s house in Mallybreen. 

>> Shannon: That’s gorgeous.

>> John: In fact, if we zoomed in there, that is the gable of the house Michael Gallagher and Mary Meehan lived. 

>> Shannon: That’s beautiful.

>> John: Well, there in the body of the of the moorcock is a mountain stream. 

>> Shannon: These songs and these images have surrounded John, since he was tiny, on his uncle’s lap.

>> Shannon: The only way that we can top this is if we get somebody with the overalls. And you can just take a nap. Hahaha! 

>> John: Haha! Exactly! 

>> Shannon: Paddy Tunney and Mary MacNamara’s books bring to life the land and the characters who carried a very very special kind of music. When I dive into these collections, it’s like I’m walking into a different time, a magical place—like I’m walking into Lena’s Bar, on a Sunday.

[ Music: “Down the Broom,” from Sundays at Lena’s

Artist: Joe Bane ]

>> Mary: Sundays at Lena’s, I think it has been a really good name for the book. Because it has given it a bit of personality. 

>> Shannon: Well it gives it context. It’s an image.

>> Mary: An image, exactly. And of course the picture on the front of the book—it’s in the front bar of Lena’s.

>> Shannon: It’s beautiful. And it’s such a neat thing to get a chance to learn about a very particular body of tunes; a very particular community that surrounds and that shared and created that body of tunes. We definitely have our favorites in Boston. But you know, it’s a pretty wide repertoire, and it’s a pretty wide range of styles. So it’s very alluring to come somewhere where there is this definition. It’s very inspiring for me, and it makes me think of like, what is it that we have in our town that is something to start to notice, maybe. 

>> Mary:  I think what you have in Boston is amazing. I call it the Feakle of America, to be quite honest with you. I love being there. And there’s such community in the place, from a musical point of view. And I feel I’m at home when I’m there. And you can feel that vibe of pure musicality in everybody that plays music there. I think it’s a great place. 

>> Shannon: I do too. And it’s pretty cool to come somewhere like this though. You know, there’s a magnet. So thanks for shining a light on this beautiful part of the world. 

>> Shannon: This episode of Irish Music Stories was produced by me, Shannon Heaton. Thank you so much, John Tunney and Mary MacNamara for sharing personal treasures from your families and communities; for carrying tunes and songs with such care; and for helping me appreciate what’s special about MY town of Boston, and all the characters here.

[ Music: “Fun with Colin,” from In Transit

Composer/Artist: Jamie McClennan ]

Thank you Rick Rubin for helping me identify the Spokane radio station I used to tune into with my Grandma. 

Thank you Carol Zall and the Sonic Soiree for helping me early on with my podcast writing, and to Matt Heaton for listening to so many rough drafts of all of these episodes. And thank you for all the beautiful production music. Your creativity, kindness, support, humor, and patience are boundless. 

Thank you, Nigel, for acknowledging our supporters every month. And for your amazing production ideas. You inspire me. And you are hilarious.

Thank you to everybody who’s listening. And thank you so much to all who have donated to keep me going for eight years. 

It’s been eight years.

When I launched my first IMS episode in February 2017, we’d just entered a new presidency in the United States. Producing this show was a creative, immersive distraction during a tumultuous political administration. At times it felt useful, helpful to try to be somewhat of an ambassador. To try to be kind and reasonable with people outside of this country. And in it.

Through early Covid days, Irish Music Stories offered comfort and connection. And then when the U.S. ushered in a new administration, and as we began to repair relations with international allies, and as new conflicts broke out, I kept making these episodes.

Now here we are again, with the same guy from 2017, getting ready to once again villainize and deport people…  and to decimate public health and education, and international alliances, climate agreements, and environmental regulations because, as he put it, “the ocean will rise. And who the hell cares?”

Well, I’m stacking the deck with big, bright creative endeavors. I’ll be curating the archives on IrishMusicStories.org, as I prepare for a print edition of podcast highlights. I’ve also got a words and music manifesto in the works, and a big original tunes project, and a follow-up music collection to Matt & Shannon Heaton’s In Harmony. I’ll keep going with my Tune of the Month series and the Virtual Guided Session. And I’m sure I’ll also produce special IMS programs from time to time.

If you haven’t heard all 80 episodes, I hope you’ll give ‘em a spin, and share them with friends and family.

Thanks again for listening, and good luck with your own projects for 2025.