The Clancy Legacy

The Clancy Legacy


There's both an openness and connection that lives through the music when Irish music is shared with friends and family. Those are gifts that cousins Robbie O’Connell, Aoife Clancy, and Donal Clancy have translated well in the recording of their first album together as a group.

They’ve chosen songs and tunes from the tradition, both familiar and lesser known ones. Robbie takes the lead voice on the opener, the happy story of man and maid and reminiscence told in Jug of Punch. Aoife steps to the fore with a gorgeous job on the lament Ho Re Ho Ro, and Donal’s guitar leads the way through a set including Breton Tune, Lillies in the Field, and The Limestone Rock. Love songs, story songs, songs with a twist of humour, and additional tunes comprise the rest of the set on the recording. Top notch singing, very fine playing, and well chosen songs and tunes, and the warmth of that family connection, mark this as a collection that rises to the top of current traditional recordings.

Not that you’d expect any less, really, from O’Connell, Clancy, and Clancy. Each of them has excellent solo albums out. Robbie is well respected for his songwriting, Aoife is known as a top notch singer, and Donal is rated as one of the best guitarists working in Irish music. In their individual careers, they’ve worked with top artists and bands in traditional music, symphony orchestras, heritage centers, television programs, and festivals across the world. They are also each part of one of the best known families in Irish music.

It has been nearly five decades since the Clancy Brothers, white sweaters, theatrical humour, Irish ballads and all, burst upon the world stage. They brought Irish music into the folk music revival in the United States. Their work influenced folk revival superstars including Bob Dylan and Carolyn Hester, and brought Irish music out of the pubs and back rooms and in to the festivals and arts centers. Robbie was for a time part of the group with his uncles. Aoife and Donal at one time or another shared stages with their famous fathers (Bobby and Liam, respectively) as well.

Several years ago, the three musicians were invited to get together for a show called The Clancy Legacy. It was meant to be a one off thing, but it went over so well that there was demand for more gigs, and over time, calls of “when are the three of you going to record an album together?” The recording is well worth the time it took for them to get to it.


Side note: the production is just enough to frame the three artists’ music gracefully. Those who sit in include George Keith on fiddle, Erik Wendelken on bass, Derek Pisano on keyboards, and two artists you’ve met before here along the music road, Oisin McAuley on fiddle and Shannon Heaton on whistles and flute.

you may also wish to see

Music Road: Aoife Clancy: Silvery Moon
Music Road: Voices: Donal Clancy
Music Road: The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem at Carnegie Hall
Music Road: Another Fine Winter's Night: Matt & Shannon Heaton

-->Your support for Music Road is welcome and needed. If you are able to chip in, here is a way to do that, through PayPal. Note that you do not have to have a PayPal account to do this. Thank you.

The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem at Carnegie Hall

The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem In Person at Carnegie Hall



Saint Patrick’s Day forty six years ago: in March of 1963, John Kennedy was in the White House in America, the folk music revival was in full swing, and in Ireland, nobody had heard of Bloody Sunday or the Troubles. The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem played Carnegie Hall. The men from Carrick on Suir and the bard of Armagh found a happy, receptive audience for their songs, stories, and well planned banter. They were, you might say, the Riverdance, High Kings, and Celtic Women of their day all rolled into one, and indeed without the Clancys none of those mega quick hit on Irish culture events may have come to pass. Today it is sometimes forgotten what these men did , and how creative they were about it. “They were kind of innovators of Irish music in the sixties,” Donal Clancy, son of youngest Clancy Brother Liam and himself a professional musician, says. “They blended the old Irish folk song with what they were hearing in America at the time from the likes of the Kingston trio, and put a beat behind it, and added guitar and bass and banjo to some of the old traditional songs.” It was a sound that became as popular in Ireland as it was in America, as well.

This two disc project is the first time the entire 1963 concert has been released on record, though a wildly popular LP comprising eleven songs came out later in that year. This time around, though, there all the twenty eight songs in the order sung, as well as the talk and jokes and tales the men told between the songs, and the audience’s laughing appreciation of words and music. Times have changed, music has changed, and many of the songs that were so crisp with new arrangements then have been overdone and overlistened since But. as Liam Clancy writes in the notes, “How fresh these songs were then -- morning bread from the oven -- new lamps for old, making their magic.” That comes through very clearly here, on songs including Irish Rover, Kelly, the Boy from Killane, Galway Bay, and Brennan on the Moor.


two videos, from a PBS special in 1962, to go along

They did not sing Rising of the Moon on that night, but it’s a song I’ve known so long I don’t remember not knowing it. Oro Se Do Bheathe Bhaile, a song of hope, among other things, is what closes the collection on this project, and you may hear the audience singing along there, as the people do in this video.





you may also want to see

Voices: Cherish the Ladies

Aoife Clancy: Silvery Moon

Irish music, Irish landscape

-->Your support for Music Road is welcome and needed. If you are able to chip in, here is a way to do that, through PayPal. Note that you do not have to have a PayPal account to do this. Thank you.

Voices: Donal Clancy

The guitar is a relatively new instrument in traditional Irish music, and that's one of the things Donal Clancy enjoys about it. The tunes on his solo album Close to Home
are ones that he's been playing for years, "ones that I can't even really remember learning," he said. They were melodies he at first heard on the pipes or the fiddle or the whistle though, and found a way into them through guitar. "There's a lot of music for fiddle, or pipes, or whatever, in Irish music, so those people are always wanting to find something new, something that hasn't been recorded before," he said. "With guitar, all your tunes are there."

Those tunes include the slow air An Buachaill Caol Dubh/ The Dark Slender Boy, the hornpipe Kitty's Wedding, and the jig Helvic Head. Helvic Head is in southeastern Ireland, near where Clancy grew up in the Gaeltacht area of An Rinn. He was not born in Ireland though. "I was born in Alberta, in Calgary," he said. "My father was a musician and he was doing some work out there. We lived there for a couple of years, and then moved to New Hampshire, and then to Ireland when I was seven."

Donal's father is Liam Clancy. "He was one of the Clancy Brothers, who were kind of innovators of Irish music in the sixties"Donal said. "They blended the old Irish folk song with what they were hearing in America at the time from the likes of the Kingston trio, and put a beat behind it, and add guitar and bass and banjo to some of the old traditional songs." That take on the updating of tradition went over well on both sides of the Atlantic and paved the way for many popular groups and singers. Donal found music on his own though. Though his cousins include well respected singers Robbie O'Connell and Aoife Clancy. none of Donal's brothers and sisters play. "We were never pushed into it," he said. "So they went off and did other things. I don't think I ever had the thought of doing anything else."

When the family moved back to Ireland, Donal started learning the tin whistle, and then picked up the mandolin, but by the time he was about eleven, guitar had claimed his attention. "Most of my friends were in to music, so it was handy, we'd get together and play and try out things," he said. "It appealed to me, what you could do with the guitar in Irish music. You could be very creative. One chord change could change the whole mood of the tune. I was very interested in the possibilities of that, what you could do rather than just playing tunes, how you could add rhythmic accompaniment or harmonic colors."

That's an interest he has continued. He played in the trio Clancy, O'Connell, Clancy, with his dad Liam and his cousin Robbie "and it was great to see how they worked, you know, the veteran musicians, nothing could surprise them,"he recalled. He was one of the founders of the traditional band Danu, and also worked for some years with top Irish American group Solas, whose members have included Seamus Egan, John Williams, John Doyle, and Winifred Horan. "They're a hard working band with a lot of rehearsal, arrangements that are fairly complicated," he said, "and it was good because I'd never really done much preparation for a tour. It was great too because the band was held in high regard by the fans and it's exciting doing shows like that, with the audiences really into it." He continued to have his share of that experience in other circumstances, too: he joined fiddler Eileen Ivers' band for a time, and then, as he was thinking of making a change from that, he got the call that his old band Danu needed a guitarist. "It was like coming home again, bringing it all back home," he said, laughing.

He's still a mainstay of Danu, and at breaks in their schedule has done recording and road work with top artists including Kevin Crawford, Cherish the Ladies, Aoife Clancy, The Chieftains, Niall Vallely, and Cathie Ryan. All that may explain why it has taken him a while to get to making an album of his own: Close to Home is his solo debut. It might also help explain why he chose a rather quiet way to do it.

"I went about it the old fashioned way," he said, "went into a studio for a couple of days and played. Most of the tunes I just put down, left then the way I played them on the day, and I probably will never play them exactly the same way again." The result is thoughtful stories well told, clarity of tone and touch, and new light on old tunes. "I like to think about the mood of the piece, to have that come through, rather than make the tune fit my playing," he said. "No flashiness or anything like that, the arrangements are kind of straightforward, a relaxed and laid back tempo. I wanted to make a very traditional Irish sounding recording" As to what's next? "I have a bunch of tunes written," he said, "but I'm not sure I'd call them so traditionally Irish. You'll have to wait until the next record to find out what they sound like!"


listen to excerpts of the music on Close to Home

-->If you'd like to support my creative work,
here is a way to do that, through PayPal. Note that you do not have to have a PayPal account to do this.Thank you.