Year In Review: 2021

2021

2021 started for many with a sense of optimism: that the tour would return and that some sense of normality would be restored. It got off to a rough start, as on January 7, the 2021 spring tour was postponed until 2022 due to the ongoing Covid 19 pandemic.

Chloë, with a shorter, smaller tour, was still able to venture to the US for a few shows.

On January 13th, the dominoes kept falling, as Mairéad Carlin announced she was leaving Celtic Woman to pursue solo projects.

On June 4, 2021, Muirgen O'Mahony was announced as the new member of Celtic Woman.

The Postcards from Ireland CD released near the end of October 2021. It was for some, a different experience: recorded in the shadow of the pandemic, with a new musical director (Daragh O'Toole), and an apparent emphasis on individual voices rather than group harmony. Their ability to rehearse and record together was hampered severely by pandemic restrictions. It's become extremely difficult to view the Billboard World Albums chart without a premium account, but I believe this may be the first Celtic Woman studio album ever to not make the World Albums chart, a chart now dominated by K-Pop.

The Postcards from Ireland PBS special began airing around the US Thanksgiving holiday. It was visually stunning and the music seemed to work a lot better in the context of the spectacular scenes. The special was recorded music-video style at various locations across Ireland.

There were also a few solo albums and EPs of note released this year:
- Wildflower (Éabha)
- Motherland (Edel Murphy)
- Wild Red (Lisa Lambe)
- Lynn (Sacred Songs)
- Celtic Lands (Tim Janis, Lynn Hilary, Mairead Nesbitt) ... it was basically a mash-up of Celtic Heart tracks and previous Tim Janis songs

There were some noteworthy contributions to albums as well:
- Alex recorded tracks for Bound: A James Barry Musical (Charli Eglinton)
- Alex and also recorded some Christmas tracks with Jenny Oaks Baker and Family Four
- Éabha was on the track "Everyone" on Karl Nesbitt's album "Return"
- Chloë recorded "Someone You Loved" on the first "Ivory Sessions" album

Chloë, Éabha, Lynn, and Sarah Rebecca, Megan, and Lloyd Butler / Heather Fogarty all released excellent singles.

Here are some of the solo single releases this year:

Lynn Hilary:
Blessing
Follow the Heron
Vale of Avoca
Always
Stars Flung Like Diamonds

Megan:
Maybe

Sarah Rebecca:
Roll of the Dice
Roll of the Dice (Duet Version)
Tell Me
Lose It All Tonight

Lloyd Butler and Heather Fogarty:
Gravity
You're Still You

Glenn Murphy:
Dear Harp of My Country

Lisa Lambe:
A River Rolls On

Eabha:
Summer in June
Creep
Silent Night
Auld Lang Syne

Chloë:
Time After Time
Written On My Heart
Follow On
WB
Across the Miles (from Fáinne Óir)
On My Own
Somebody Just Like You (with Brian McGrane)

Most of the performances I got to see in 2021 consisted of online shows (I'll be posting the highlights of those separately). I did get to see The Fitzgeralds once during the summer at an outdoor concert (I know them since they've previously performed on Nathan Carter's tour along with Chloë). I wasn't expecting to see any other live concerts before the end of the year, but after about 19 months, the Canada-US land border re-opened to non-essential travel and expecting things to get worse again at the start of 2022, I decided to go for it while I had the chance. I got to see 2 Christmas shows with The Gothard Sisters in Portland, Oregon and even got to meet them after the shows! I also got to see two Chloë concerts (albeit on the same day) in Duluth, Georgia.

Megan followed Éabha's example and started a Patreon page, where she holds Meet and Greets and shares exclusive content with subscribers. It will be interesting to see what she does when touring resumes: behind the scenes from tour? Zoom M+Gs from hotel rooms? I'm just thankful for the opportunity to support her.

Have a safe and happy holiday season everyone and here's to hoping for a 2022 that exceeds my expectations.

The Year Ahead

The rest of the wrap-up is about predictions for 2022. I think it's a realistic forecast, but a pessimistic one. Sorry about this.

If you're going into 2022 hopeful, that's ok. Sometimes hope is more useful than practicality. I hope that your hope shines through and that we all have a happy new year and enjoy lots of live performances in theaters. But this may be the time to stop reading.

It will be interesting to see what happens with touring and international travel in 2022. The virus will keep getting more contagious over time, unfortunately. The hope of course is that the ability to minimize severe cases will offset the significant increase in transmissions, so that restrictions can be relaxed. Hopefully at some point we have a more effective means of stopping it from spreading (not just mitigating its severity). However, we may yet be a long way off from that type of stability and there will be inconsistency between locations for quite a while.

Maybe they could do daily testing for everyone, but that hasn't been enough in the NHL recently. If anyone on the tour gets sick, pretty much everyone will be sick within a couple of weeks. They may be days or weeks into a tour before that happens, but it's practically inevitable. Hopefully it would all be mild symptoms, but what do they do when so many people are under the weather at once? Operate with skeleton staff? Power through it like it's a cold? Have a "taxi squad" of staff and performers to fill in? How would they handle a situation if a particular state requires someone with a positive test or close contact to quarantine? I don't think there's an easy answer that keeps the tour running and if management realizes that, I'm not sure if they'll even try it. It would be a logistical mess, at best.

I want to hope we'll see Celtic Woman return to tour at some point in 2022, maybe as early as spring. But realistically, it's going to be extremely difficult to keep a medium to large tour operating under the conditions that may persist for the foreseeable future. Hopefully I'm wrong. If a tour does go ahead, it will be a nightmare for me to try to get to shows and back without having to quarantine outside my country, but I'll probably try at least once. They mean too much to me.

In-theater solo shows are more likely to go ahead and that's certainly a cause for optimism.

I hope that if any of the girls need our help to get through this time, they will let us know and give us the opportunity to be there for them as they have been so many times for us. Éabha, Megan, Mairéad Carlin, and Alex have really gotten involved in offering paid virtual content and hopefully more of the girls will do the same.

Concerning 2022, you raise some valid concerns.

One of the reasons I fell in love with CW was due to the Meet & Greets.  I've spent a lot of money over the years traveling to shows where I could get a M&G ticket.  And, over the years, the girls recognized me.

My belief is we have seen the last of the M&G's.  The risk is too high for the crew and cast.  I went to a show the other day here in Tampa, and you had to either show your vaccination card or a current test.  Does that really mean anything?  No.  A couple of the Tampa Bay Bucs got 3 game suspensions for fake vaccine cards.   

There are maybe ways the tour can proceed, although what happens if someone gets COVID?  I don't know if there really has been a plan if someone gets sick.  I was at a show years ago when Ray Fean did not come out after the intermission.  Someone filled in, but it was more of a keeping time drumming.  And that was when they did the back and forth druming on Mo Ghile Mear. 

I would guess that the Ontario Canada show is not going to happen.  Crossing the border is still going to be tough, especially for 1 show.

Since they have typically started the tour here in Florida, I've got tickets to 2 shows.  I tend to believe I will get to see these.  I have tickets for 2 shows in mid-April.  I'm holding off making non-refundable travel arrangements until a lot closer to the date.

Merry Christmas, Tom!  Thanks for posting the summary of everything released this year.  It's a very efficient way for me to find out what has been released.  I'm looking through and seeing if there's anything I missed that I want to buy.  I never got to listen to Wild Red so I think I'll go ahead and buy it.

I think the 2022 tour probably won't get shut down like it did in 2020, but I do have some tickets for the first two weeks of the tour so your pessimism makes me more likely to go see those shows instead of waiting for later ones.

Added notes about Mairéad Carlin leaving the group and Muirgen joining in 2021.

Some things to look forward to in 2022 (if I'm forgetting anything important, please mention):

- Release of Postcards from Ireland DVD (hopefully a Blu-ray at some point as well since DVD quality is not going to do justice to the visual beauty of this production): January 21, 2022
- Celtic Woman: Postcards from Ireland tour in the US and Ireland (scheduled to start February 24, 2022)
- Trinity (debuts on PBS in spring 2022)
- Mairéad Carlin EP
- Máiréad Nesbitt: Celtic Spells live show, Rock Me Amadeus live show
- Éabha's expecting a baby

Some other things we may see progress or released in 2022:
- Megan's EP
- A second Éabha solo album
- Hayley album???
- Chloë's 2nd album from her Indiegogo fundraising campaign