Congratulations Dónal Lunny!

A great innovator

Dónal Lunny has been a major figure in Irish music since the 1960s, when his work with Emmet Spiceland led the band to number one in the Irish charts with ‘Mary From Dungloe’.  Since then he has played a central role as a performer and arranger with many bands, including Planxty, The Bothy Band, Moving Hearts and Mozaik.  He was renowned (with Johnny Moynihan and Andy Irvine) for the role he played in adapting the Greek bouzouki to Irish music.  Although still best known as a bouzouki player, he also sings and plays other instruments, including guitar, bodhrán and keyboards.  He is a fine composer and producer but, as an arranger and performer, he has been at the centre of many of the most exciting and innovative developments in Irish music for over half a century  

Here’s Planxty’s famous arrangement of the song ‘Raggle Taggle Gypsy’, with the wonderful transition into the old harping tune ‘Tabhair Dom Do Láimh’..

Growing up with Irish music

When I was in my teens, my brother Conor and I were fortunate to start spending long spells down in Carrick-on-Suir, Co. Tipperary where our uncle Seán O’Connell had a small hotel, the Tinvane.  He and his son, Robbie, as well as Bobby Clancy and other local musicians such as Barry Murphy, played a huge role in encouraging our growing interest in traditional music.  The 1970s was a very exciting time in Irish music, with groups like The Original Clancy Brothers and Clannad reaching audiences well beyond Ireland.  From those earliest days in the Tinvane, however, we also listened constantly to the wonderful music of Planxty and The Bothy Band.

Dónal Lunny was at the centre of so many of the most interesting developments in Irish music since those years, and not just through his part in the bands he played with.  His Mulligan Records brought out many fine albums, like Matt Molloy’s first solo album, Matt Molloy (1976) and Kevin Burke’s extraordinary If The Cap Fits (1978).  Dónal Lunny produced and performed on both of these albums.  Both Molloy and Burke played with The Bothy Band and Conor and I were thrilled to get to see this legendary group on their farewell tour of Ireland in 1979.  We couldn’t get tickets for Dublin, but did get to see them in Goffs of Naas where they blew the audience away with a powerful set of music and song.

The Planxty 1980 concerts at the Olympia

In the wake of the release of After The Break (1979) and The Woman I Loved So Well (1980), Planxty did an extraordinary series of concerts in Dublin’s Olympia  from August 18th to 23rd, 1980.  The first half of the night consisted of solo and duet performances from Christy Moore, Andy Irvine, Liam O’Flynn and Dónal Lunny.  Before the interval, these four original members came on stage together to perform a few early Planxty numbers.  In the second half of the night, the four came back and were joined by an array of fine musicians, including Bill Whelan (keyboards), Nollaig Casey (fiddle) and, if memory serves me well, Matt Molloy (flute) and Arty McGlynn (guitar).  It was a unique night for the way different individuals, duets and line-ups of Planxty were given a chance to perform.  Towards the end of the night they played a version of the Bulgarian dance tune, ‘Smeceno Horo’, which lifted the roof off the Olympia.

Moving Hearts   

In the early 1980s, Lunny played an electric bouzouki and keyboards with Moving Hearts, who played an intoxicating blend of music that was influenced by jazz, rock and Irish traditional music.  The National Stadium was the venue in 1984 for The Last Reel, which at the time was  the farewell concert of Moving Hearts as a fulltime band.  It was another extraordinary night of music, with Lunny in fine form and all three singers who had been with the band, Christy Moore, Mick Hanley and Flo McSweeney, taking part.  

One of the most popular Moving Hearts tunes, composed by Lunny and Declan Sinnott, was ‘McBride’s’, which they often built up to in live performance with a long section of improvisation.

Another Lunny/Sinnott composition which captures their exciting blending of different musical genres is ‘Category’.  As in McBride’s, the interplay of uilleann pipes and saxophone is brilliant and totally unique.  There is also something so joyous and exhilarating about this piece.  It never fails to lift my spirits when I hear it.  ‘Let the music keep your spirits high!’  

With Mick Hanley in Navan

Many years after  The Last Reel, on 30th May, 2018, Mick Hanley and Dónal Lunny came to play in the Central Bar in Navan, Co. Meath.  A group of us went along, relishing the opportunity to see two of our musical heroes in such an intimate setting.  As we waited for the gig to start, I suddenly felt a hand on my shoulder and heard a whisper in my ear: “I hope you have a whistle with you.”   It was the owner of the Central, Michael Gavigan, who’s children I had taught music to.  I looked around and Michael said:  “Yeah, I was talking to Dónal and telling him about you.  He said he’s going to get you up to play.”  I laughed and shook his hand and we chatted for a few minutes.  I thought he was joking about my being called up to play.

It was a great night, with Mick Hanley’s stories about growing up in Limerick and trying to make a living in music adding to the music and songs.  A few songs into the evening, Dónal Lunny said he’d been talking to Michael and believed there was someone in the audience who might get up and play a few tunes on the whistle.  When he called out my name, I just froze.  Eventually, I said “I don’t have a whistle with me”, but the response from the stage was “I believe you play guitar as well and we’ve one up here.”  

Mick Hanley handed me his guitar as I sat down beside Dónal.  He played along as I sang ‘Come By The Hills’ and then went into a tune called ‘The Humours of the North Strand’, which I’d composed back in the 1990s while working and teaching music in The Larkin Centre for the Unemployed in Dublin’s North Strand.  When the tune was finished, I handed the guitar back towards Mick Hanley, but the audience was still clapping and he said:  ‘I think they liked it, you’d better play another one.’  I glanced over at Dónal, who just smiled and nodded his agreement.  So, putting the guitar back on my knee, I introduced ‘The Banks of Sicily’, a lovely song about the mixed feelings of Scottish soldiers leaving Sicily during World War II.  It was an extraordinary feeling to be singing and playing with this amazing musician playing along beside me.  The two songs I sang were known to me from the singing of Bobby Clancy decades earlier in the Tinvane Hotel.  Like many of the nights in the Tinvane, the night in the Central had a real magic about it, the kind of night you feel you’ll remember forever.

Well deserved award

Since then I’ve seen Dónal Lunny play with Usher’s Island in the Seamus Ennis Centre in Naul, with Andy Irvine and a wide range of musicians from different backgrounds in Vicar Street and in the tribute to Tommy Peoples in the National Concert Hall.  All of these performances underline the extraordinary versatility and talent of a man who has been delighting audiences all over the world for decades.  His influence on Irish music in general, and on individual musicians, has been immense and he thoroughly deserves the Lifetime Achievement Award with which RTÉ honours him this week.