Lynn released a book of poems called Nettle Tea.

It's available to purchase from her website either as a standalone purchase or as a bundle with her Saturn Return and Sacred Songs CDs:
https://lynnhilary.ie/store

It's been a long wait, but tonight, I finally got to see The Shamrock Tenors: Live from Belfast, recorded August 5, 2022 at Ulster Hall in Belfast.

The stage setup was pretty simple, with a couple of Celtic-themed drapes flanking the organ at the back of the stage. The lighting looked nice.

The Shamrock Tenors have a vibe reminiscent of The High Kings, so if you enjoy their sound, you'll love this too.

Acts like Celtic Woman and Celtic Thunder typically have the lead performers do a few solo numbers each. This show, all 5 leading lads were performing on stage together most of the time. There weren't any featured solos. The harmonies had a nice full sound.

Noteable participants were Mairéad Carlin, who was a guest vocalist in one song, and Darragh Murphy, who performed pipes and whistles throughout the show. Darragh was featured prominently in the arrangements.

I'm sitting in the center section, in the left isle seat of the front row. I'm easy to spot in a bright green t-shirt and an N-95, with a trademark slouch that's only gotten worse in the intervening years. 🤣 It was the start of a 2-week trip featuring a packed sightseeing schedule and 4 Celtic Woman concerts at a time when quarantining was still a thing, so I felt it would have been foolish not to take some precautions. Fortunately, they managed to keep me out of the frame most of the time. I do make an I was quite pleased with their editing work.

Track List:

1. The Wild Rover
2. Black Velvet Band
3. Bodhran Duel
4. Wild Mountain Thyme
5. Mary (original song)
6. Climbing Over the Mountain (might be original, I've never heard it elsewhere). Fun to listen to!
7. Fields of Athenry (featuring Mairéad Carlin)
8. Unity Irish Dance (tap-dance routine)
9. Red Is The Rose (with a bit of Loch Lomond)
10. Belfast
11. Danny Boy
12. Whisky In the Jar
13. Dirty Old Town
14. Ireland's Call
15. The Parting Glass (a cappella)

During Dirty Old Town, a bunch of people in the crowd got up and danced around the aisles. If you look carefully enough, you can see me dancing (badly) with someone during that song. You can't tell who it is from the video alone. This was one of the moments during the show when the lighting on the crowd could have been better, but it's still a cool memory to have.

Ireland's Call was amazing. The crowd shots of us all dancing, clapping, or swaying arm in arm, were fantastic.

This was a fun show and it turned out great! They really captured the buzz in the crowd, especially towards the end of the show.

Additional notes:
- There were clips of Irish scenery at times during the perofrmance.
- If you're watching on pbs.org: the volume seemed very low to me, relatively speaking. I had to crank the volume up at least 25% higher than usual even after maxing out the volume bar in the video player.

I highly recommend this one!

Aside from the PBS broadcasts / streams, I don't think you can get a physical CD or DVD right now aside from PBS's exorbitant pledge price. I'm not sure if there are any plans for the CD or DVD to be available through regular retail channels later. I haven't decided if I'm going to pledge for one of these bundles, especially with an expensive month of December travels coming up, because they really jacked the price up this time. You should definitely watch the PBS special though.

Given that it has now officially been 20 years since the first Celtic Woman PBS special was filmed at The Helix in Dublin, I thought it might be fun to celebrate other artists who have been inspired by Celtic Woman over the years and have put out covers of our favourite songs.

Here is a gorgeous piano arrangement of You Raise Me Up:
https://youtu.be/ydtCtvDjWm0?si=3PirhZb05xGkuy5l

And here's another:
https://youtu.be/QZ4vLAHttmY?si=1kH7qOeBOUc5Swnh

Celtic Thunder is releasing a new live album based on the Odyssey tour featuring Ronan, who is still filling in for Ryan Kelly (the Odyssey album had Ryan and the Odyssey DVD had Ronan).

The album releases November 22, 2024

Track List:
1. The Wellerman
2. Dublin in the Rare Ould Times
3. Past the Point of Rescue
4. Grace
5. Fields of Athenry
6. City of Chicago
7. Caledonia
8. Farewell
9. Sailing
10. Amazing Grace
11. Fare Thee Well Love
12. Step It Out Mary
13. The Earl's Chair / The Abbey Reel / Jenny's Chickens
14. Ireland's Call


The odd thing is the pre-order seems to be hosted on Damian's website, at least the links to socials at the time I looked route there:

https://damianmcginty.com/celtic-thunder-the-live-experience

I wasn't able to find it on the Celtic Thunder shop yet.

I got to see 2 of Máiréad Nesbitt's Celtic Spells show in California!

Before the first show, it got kind of chilly outside. Fortunately, they opened the doors a few minutes early because it started pouring unexpectedly outside a few minutes later. The venue was smaller than one that Celtic Woman would perform in, but larger than a venue Chloë would typically perform in. I had front row and the stage was below eye level. There was an array of speakers on top of the stage that impeded view a little (mostly of the footwork of the dancers). The performers were at least 20 feet from the front of the stage as well.

In the band, they had a keyboard, guitar, drums, and the usual assortment of Irish instruments, including the harp, bohdran, whistles, and uillean pipes. They were spread out wide across the stage. There was a video screen at the back, showing scenes of Ireland throughout the show to help set the mood. Dancers came out onto the stage every few songs. There were also a couple of singers.

Máiréad was on stage for most of the show, sometimes off to the side, sometimes center stage.

Between Máiréad, the band, the singers, the dancers, and the video screen, there was a lot to take in at once.

The music worked really well live, with some of the tunes sounding even better than they did on the album. The drum arrangements were engaging and the percussive tapdancing during Dance of Destiny was epic!

Máiréad tossed in There Is No Night, the gorgeous slow air from Raining Up and Hibernia. It's overwhelmingly beautiful and it had me mopping my face in appreciation.

I wasn't too high on the vocal arrangements, which didn't achieve much harmonic synergy between the singers. That said, The Ballad of the Perfect Storm was incredible live. Máiréad played tin whistle during that song. The melody is captivating and the lyrics, as those who listened to the album will know, are phenomenal. It's soooo good and the percussion in the live show made it even more amazing.

Most of the tunes in the set list were from the album, slightly re-ordered, with a few additions including what was possibly my favourite arrangement of Shenandoah.

The show closed with a variation of the David Downes Paring Glass, concluding each verse and chorus on a major chord instead of a dreary minor chord.

The second show was in a theatre on a high school campus. It was surprisingly large. It probably had a capacity of a few thousand people. Infortunately it wasn't filled up. When introducing the show, they pronounced Máiréad something like Merida or Meridith.

The crowd the first night was pretty good. The audience was engaged in the show and clapping along enthusiastically when appropriate. The crowd for the second show was quite a bit more reserved, preferring to sit and enjoy the production, rather than participate in the energy.

The show has a story to it, but I'm not sure how easy it would have been someone to follow who didn't know the story or song titles in advance, even with the video screen. For instance, Star Crossed Lovers was performed with a starscape on the screen. It was pretty, but unless you knew the tune was called Star Crossed Lovers, it wouldn't have meant much beyond looking and sounding nice. It was pretty clear early in the show that the two dancers were lovers getting married and Máiréad did a pre-recorded voiceover explaining that they were from different backgrounds and that their union was forbidden (to elaborate, the story took place in the early 1900s, starring a protestant from the north and a catholic from the south, and their families disapproved of their union, so they married in secret and left for America). I'm a bit worried that the average audience member would just think they were listening to separate stories, or just random songs and tunes, albeit very good ones.

Overall, the show was highly enjoyable and worth the lengthy flights.

Speaking of flights, I'm not sure how much it was on the news outside of California, but the traffic at LAX the day I returned home was horrendous. I made unexpectedly good time from Glendora to LA. It only took about an hour to get to the rental car return lot. Things went downhill from there. The trip from the lot to the airport was only a few miles, but traffic was crawling the entire way due to poorly planned lane closures. They closed 4 out of 5 lanes in multiple places. It took over 90 minutes just to get off near the start of the terminal, over 2 hours in total on the bus. On the way, I started seeing people with their suitcases walking towards the airport at the side of the road (some between cars). There were people on an overpass that got out of their cars to take photos because traffic was dead stopped on the highway too. Closer to the terminal, there were streams of people hurrying frantically on foot with their luggage. I've never seen anything like it.

There are about 6 or 7 terminals arranged in a huge multi-mile horseshoe. Mine was #6. I ended up getting off the bus around terminal 2 and booked it on foot, because if I had stayed on the bus in that nightmare, there was 0% chance I was making my scheduled departure time. Thankfully security was quick (probably because nobody could actually get to the airport). I got to the gate mid-way through boarding around 10-15 minutes before they were going to close the gate. They completely boarded the flight, then we sat around on board, eventually being notified that the flight crew was also stuck in traffic and hadn't arrived yet. We took off around an hour and a half late. It was a very long beerless St. Patrick's Day, but certainly worth the trip.

Tara did a great interview on the Cello Sherpa podcast. It's available on various platforms, including Spotify, Apple podcasts, etc.

Or you can listen through the link below:

https://www.buzzsprout.com/1727007?client_source=large_player&iframe=true

Near the end of February, Hannah posted she was recording in Windmill Lane Studios. She tagged Sorcha Fenlon, Morgan Brothers, and Lorna Breen.

Jake Morgan posted that last week (ie. end of February) they were recording "The High King's Daughter."
https://www.instagram.com/p/C4LBaueMCvY/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==

It's been a long time since there was a music-related Hayley update.

Today, Delaney Davidson released a new track (and associated music video): "Heaven Is Falling"

Hayley co-wrote the song, although she doesn't sing in the track.

It's a "trippy" / surreal / strange video. Enjoy:

https://youtu.be/aCYCBYZtyf8?si=HiI9fvzt3K6u5fQG