Beautiful Affair. Mike Hanrahan

us to a whole new world of music and emotions through blues, gospel, rock, trad and American country. We discovered Mahalia Jackson, Richard Thomson, the Mills Brothers, Mississippi John Hurt, John Coltrane, Robert Johnson and Lightnin’ Slim. None of these artists were available at local record shops, so I bought most of my music from a Welsh mail order store called Cob Records, and my order sheet grew with each visit to PJ’s cottage. Cob stocked thousands of albums and sent out weekly catalogues of old and new releases, all sold at discount prices. It was my brother Ger, an avid collector, who had originally discovered Cob, and when the latest brown package with the green par avion sticker arrived, we’d tear it open to give it its first spin on our turntable as fast as we could. Many years later, while on tour in Wales with Ronnie Drew, I went in search of Cob Records. I found it in Porthmadog, where I met an old man who remembered sending lots of records to a house in the west of Ireland. He said he loved to see our catalogues arrive back with some of the oddest of requests. I think Ger and myself kept his international business going for a few years.

      PJ would go on to record some of the great Irish albums of that era with Scullion, Freddie White, Maura O’Connell, Sean Keane, Mary Black, Altan, Dolores Keane, Mick Hanley, and of course two great albums with Stockton’s Wing, including our two big hits. These days PJ splits his life between Clare and Spain. He has been part of my music life since the early days, and I owe him thanks and respect for his constant support down all of these years. He saw something in myself and Maura O’Connell way back in the day, and gave us both great encouragement to get out there and fly. When he heard my songs for Stockton’s Wing he built a wonderful platform so that the world could listen.

      Maura’s salmon chanted evening

      Serves 4

      Maura O’Connell is an exceptional cook, dedicated to good produce and great recipes – and she always hosts a mighty fine shindig. She spent most of her youth handling and selling fish at her family shop, so you are always guaranteed a tasty fishy dish.

      2 large fillets of salmon, with skin (about 300g each)

      120g baby spinach leaves

      150g crumbled feta cheese

      Oil, to grease

      1 tsp lemon zest

      4 large tomatoes, finely chopped

      4 cloves of garlic (not a bulb!), crushed

      Boiled rice and salad, to serve

      1 Preheat the oven to 170°C/150°C fan/gas 3.

      2 Wash and dry the salmon on kitchen paper.

      3 Blanch the spinach by plunging it into boiling water and removing immediately. Place it in a colander to drain. Coarsely chop the drained spinach, and mix with the feta cheese and lemon zest.

      4 Place one salmon fillet skin side down on an oiled baking tray or oven-safe dish. Spread over all the spinach mixture. Place the second salmon fillet on top, skin side up.

      5 Mix the tomatoes and garlic together and spread over the salmon, completely covering the top and sides.

      6 Bake in the oven for 40 to 45 minutes.

      7 Serve with boiled rice and salad.

      ON TOUR WITH BETSY

      TV owned a beautiful 1965 black Morris Minor with wing indicators that flicked out like a pair of hands when engaged. Maura christened the car Betsy prior to our first tour around the folk clubs of Ireland. After months of writing, learning new songs, rehearsals, planning, playing support gigs and sessions, we were now out there on our own, with our names on our posters, playing our music on our very own stage. It was a very exciting time. We played in Carrick-on-Shannon with a very young Charlie McGettigan, and we also played at the famous Clonmel Folk Club, still going to this day with Ken Horne at the helm.

      BOBBY CLANCY

      Bobby Clancy and his wife Moira ran a folk club in the basement bar at their hotel in Carrick-on-Suir in Tipperary. Bobby and Moira loved our music and sat with us for hours after the show Maura and I played, passing on some hard-earned experience from Bobby’s days with the Clancy Brothers. ‘Guys, it’s not just a performance, y’know; it’s a show as well. You can both sing and play well enough, but you need to tidy up between the numbers. There’s far too little going on, and you need to keep the audience’s attention. Talk to them, and have a little fun. In the early years of the Clancys we learned to keep the show going by adding little snippets of poetry, or a few funny stories.’

      ‘And you, my dear Maura. You need to stop looking at your feet. Look up, and smile at them.’ Such a lovely man.

      THE NATURAL DISASTER BAND

      On St Stephen’s Day 1978, Tumbleweed played a one-off charity gig at the Green Door Youth Centre with a full band aptly named the Natural Disaster Band, for very obvious reasons. The gig was a nightmare to set up, with so many obstacles put in our way, PA problems with cable issues, not enough microphones or stands, amps breaking down, all sorts of buzzing sounds, electricity failure and no time at all for rehearsals, but we got through it – and I think most of the musicians in Ennis participated in some way or other to make that a very special day. On the back of it, PJ Curtis encouraged us to start putting songs down on tape so that he might spread it about the Dublin music scene, where he worked as a producer with a couple of record labels. A month later, TV set up a recording studio in his parents’ house and we made our first demo cassette recording. I found the old cassette sleeve only recently, which was drawn in multicoloured crayon by my then girlfriend Bebke Smits of Doolin Hilton fame. Bebbie designed individual sleeves for many of our friends, and this was called ‘The Sea of My Imagination’. Nothing much came from that particular demo, but we did enjoy a few great gigs around the country and one in particular at Smokey Joe’s Café in Galway.

      SMOKEY JOE’S CAFÉ

      In the late 70s the Students’ Union set up Smokey Joe’s Café as an alternative lunchtime eatery for the Students’ Union in a prefab building behind Ma Craven’s coffee shop, close to the popular Aula Maxima at University College Galway. It was run by student activist Ollie Jennings, an energetic, selfless promoter of the arts who later created the Galway Arts Festival, put De Dannan firmly on the popular map and introduced us to the wonderful music of the Saw Doctors.

      Smokey Joe’s really caught the imagination of the students. Lunch was simple fare: homemade soups with large chunks of red and white Cheddar on brown bread baguettes from Griffin’s bakery in the city, all served by the students, and occasionally grains and pulses made an appearance on the menu as our generation began to embrace vegetarian and macrobiotic diets. Although I distinctly remember one particular ‘chef’ at Joe’s, a real character who I discovered had a different slant on the menu. One day I plucked up enough courage to approach him, hoping for some tips on cooking. ‘You seem very dedicated to this food yourself. It’s really beautiful. Any tips?’ ‘Ah Jaysus no, Mike,’ he spluttered, surprised. ‘I only sell the feicin’ stuff. I’m purely a burgers and chips man meself.’

      The music was cool, with the likes of Emmylou Harris and Gram Parsons regularly featured by spinners Tom Prendergast and Mike Kilduff, and the UCG Arts Society set up a weekly Sunday folk club from October to March. Admission was a mere 50 pence and the café seated 200 people. The sale of alcohol was prohibited, so the audience usually arrived with their flagons of cider from nearby Kelehan’s bar. For those who came without, there was always the house special, a potent and highly illegal wine punch, served in discreet paper teacups. If discovered, the college authorities would certainly have closed down the folk club.

      Our first Smokey Joe’s gig was well received, and Ollie invited us back again and again, on one occasion to support a Loudon Wainwright III gig in Galway city. Loudon toured Ireland quite a lot in those years. His hallmark, apart from being an excellent songwriter, was his ability to ad lib songs, reacting to issues in the news or those people