Joe Byrne Piper and Traditional Music in Athy

Last week’s release of local uilleann piper Joe Byrne’s CD ‘Uilleann Piping from County Kildare’ prompted me to look back over notes I wrote in 1996 after a visit to the weekly traditional music session in Clancys. That night’s session was marked by the appearance of 14 musicians, singers and the unique monologist Ger Moriarty. Ger, who came to Athy from Mullingar to work in M.G. Nolan’s drapery shop in Duke Street, was a regular at the weekly sessions with his witty monologues. I was presented some years later with a CD of Ger performing a number of his monologues which is a wonderful memento of a man who in his younger days acted in many of the plays put on by the Social Club Players in the Town Hall and St. John’s Hall. Others noted on that night 26 years ago were Mary Smith, singer and her husband Niall, a singer and guitar player. Dinny Langton and John Hayden were also singing that night, as was Ger Gibson whose Uncle Ned Whelan played the tin whistle. While I can’t now recall the ballads they sang that night, I do remember that their contributions were in the narrative ballad tradition which was and still is an important part of traditional Irish music sessions. I was told that Ned Whelan who was from Barrowhouse previously played the banjo, but I have since learned that he was an uilleann piper of note. Indeed, Ned had the unique honour of sharing many an uilleann piping session with the legendary uillean piper Johnny Doran and his brother Felix when they called to Ned’s forge in Barrowhouse whenever they were in the area. Uilleann piping was very much to the fore during the Clancy sessions, with piper Toss Quinn leading the session, assisted by fellow piper Seamus Byrne. Jimmy McDonnell from Skerries played the piano accordion, with Conor O’Carroll on tin whistle and Jack Dowling on button accordion. Conor has since made the transition to the uilleann pipes, following in the steps of many uilleann pipers including our own Brian Hughes who is a master piper and whistle player. Two other musicians who enlivened that night’s session were Tony Byrne on fiddle and Martin Cooney on banjo. Tony, a retired National school teacher, came from Glencolmcille in County Donegal to a school just across the county boundary in Laois in or around 1954. He was a great favourite of the Thursday night session in Clancys which today still continues after many decades. The earliest Clancy sessions may have been linked to the establishment of Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann in 1951. I am unsure of this but certainly it seems that public house sessions replaced the private house sessions which were a regular feature of social life in rural Ireland up to the 1950s. Sadly many of those mentioned in this article are no longer with us but the memory of that night remains with me as I look forward to the musical career of the young Athy man Joe Byrne whose uilleann piping has now been recorded for posterity. Music has been an integral part of everyday life in Athy and South Kildare for many decades. Several pipe bands based in and around the Athy area had been noted in the early part of the last century. Fife and Drum bands were also a feature of life in Athy over many decades, helping to sustain the music tradition which would in time give rise to the local dance bands of the 1940s and the show bands of the 1960s. I have often wondered what part, if any, Athy’s music tradition played in shaping the extraordinary carer of Henry Phillips who was born in Athy in 1866. Phillips was the man who over a 60-year career as an impresario and owner of the world-renowned Carl Rosa Opera Company brought the world’s leading musicians and singers to venues in Northern Ireland, including Enrico Caruso to Belfast and John McCormack and Paul Robeson to Derry. Whatever about the Athy born Henry Phillips and his enormous contribution to the music scene in Northern Ireland over many decades, Athy has earned for itself over the years a very notable music tradition. Athy, the town where the legendary piper Felix Doran died, has now provided to the world of Irish traditional music two young pipers of exceptional merit. Athy man Brian Hughes, a master musician, has already reached out to a nationwide audience and indeed to an audience beyond this island of ours with his CDs of pipe and whistle music. He is now joined by Joe Byrne, another young Athy man whose recently launched CD of pipe music from County Kildare is Joe’s first venture into the Irish traditional recording scene. We wish him well.