As Fleadh Cheoil 2024 takes place in Wexford, Maxi chats to the much-loved County Clare traditional music virtuoso about her forty-year career.

 

It’s appropriate that Sharon Shannon’s current box-set release is entitled Now and Then because the journey she has made from Then, growing up in Co Clare, to Now being a world-renowned musician, is extraordinary.
Today she is a leading lady in the music industry with a freewheeling style of playing and writing. She has been packing fans into venues for over thirty years. She has recorded thirteen studio albums, five live albums, four Best Of compilations and three live concert DVDs. As well as numerous awards, she is also the recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award from Meteor. In 2018 she was awarded an honorary doctorate in music by NUI Galway.

Sharon is one of our country’s most loved multi-instrumentalists, playing button accordion, fiddle, tin whistle and melodeon, and has performed solo on the stages of the world, and with the crème de la crème of globally respected men and women of music. Names like Steve Earle, Shane McGowan, John Prine, Nigel Kennedy, Bono, Imelda May, Wallis Bird, Liam Ó Maonlaí, Mary Black, Dolores Keane, Eleanor Shanley, Maura O’ Connell, Eleanor McEvoy, Frankie Gavin, Paul Brady, Kirsty McColl, Sinéad O Connor, Jackson Browne and Willie Nelson, are all on her curriculum vitae.
This summer she continues to bring her music to the masses but bearing in mind the title of her box set, Now and Then, I wondered if she would take me back to then, the young Sharon with a love for music and an eye on an instrument on a high shelf in her aunt and uncle’s house, which changed her life.

“I am from Ruan/Corofin, County Clare. I grew up in a musical family. My brother Garry is the oldest and I have an older sister Majella and a younger sister Mary. We went to Corofin National School and Mary and I also went to Ruan National School for the final few years. My auntie Kathleen and her husband Éamonn lived in Liscannor and every time we would visit them, Éamonn would take the button accordion from a high shelf and play tunes for us. I was absolutely fascinated by the instrument and mesmerised by the sound. I thought it was magic.

“When I was around eight years old my parents sent Garry to tin whistle lessons in Corofin. He taught the rest of us at home. He was and still is a great teacher. It was his idea that we all learn different instruments, and when our parents agreed, he named off all we could choose. When he said button accordion, it suddenly brought me back in my mind to the years of Uncle Éamonn playing the accordion in Liscannor, and the idea of ever having one myself was like a little fantasy come true for me and I was really excited. I was eleven when I got it.

“We started to go to céilís in a neighbouring village called Toonagh every Friday night. These céilís were run by an amazing local man called Frank Custy who was also the headmaster of Toonagh National School. We used to play on the stage with the Senior Toonagh Céilí Band and we loved every second of it. We also learned how to do dances such as The Caledonian Set, The Haymakers jig, The Walls of Limerick and the waltz. Frank Custy was a fantastic musician and teacher. He invited my sister Majella and me to join the Under 16 Toonagh Céilí band to play at the Clare Fleadh. We rehearsed in the school.
We were amused and delighted to see jigs, reels and polkas written up on the blackboard instead of geography, maths and the like. This was like a huge breath of fresh air to us. Meeting Frank Custy was a massive part of our lives.

“From the time we started going to Toonagh and going to the amazing céilís every Friday night, we went from knowing a handful of tunes to knowing hundreds.
“We didn’t even have to sit down and learn them, we would just absorb them being at the céilís dancing or getting up on stage to play with the band. They just went into our subconscious.”
Next to play an important part in shaping her future was a man called Gearóid O Halloran. Gearóid was and still is an amazing man. He gathered some of the most accomplished young musicians in County Clare to be part of a new band. Some of the musicians in this band were absolute heroes to us so we were very honoured to be asked to join.

“The band was called ‘Dísirt Tóla’. Dísirt is the Irish word for an area called Dysart which includes, Corofin, Ruan, and Toonagh. We played concerts and céilís every weekend and we saved all the money to make an album. He took us to Windmill Lane Studios in Dublin to record and I remember it so well. Gearóid brought us to America twice as very young teenagers and we also toured England and did festivals in Europe. I was only fourteen and my sister Mary was twelve when we first went to the USA. When I think about it now I am thankful that our parents trusted Gearóid so much. He was not only a great musician but a very keen academic, as was my brother Garry. My parents loved that about him because he was such a huge influence on Garry academically; I suppose she was hoping that it would rub off on the rest of us too.”

Continue reading in this week’s Ireland’s Own