In order to drown out my infant cries my parents resorted to playing records of The St. Peter’s  Ceili Band and Lonnie Donegan. The crying stopped so the records became a nightly routine. My parents were keen ceili-goers and my grandfather was a great singer and melodeon player, so it wasn’t long before I got involved myself. First singing at family parties I then graduated onto the tin whistle, melodeon and finally the button accordion and duly took my place in the local Green Velvet Ceili Band.

Over the years I’ve been through a series of ceili bands, folk-rock bands and  Irish trad groups but there was always a pull from another side. I also played, and sometimes sang, with rock bands, country and bluegrass groups, jazz, western-swing, cajun and blues musicians. When I eventually started to write my own songs these genres influenced me a great deal though there was always something indelibly Irish that remained.

Tracing back through the roots of these other musics and inspirations such as King Oliver, Leadbelly, Woody Guthry, Robert Johnson, Paul Brady, Bob Wills, Nathan Abshire, Gerry Rafferty,  Mick Hanly, I’ve come to realize in recent years that these paths, form British and Irish folk music on the one one hand and the African influenced blues and jazz on the other, all meet at one point- skiffle!

So now, in some ways, I’m back where I started - hardcore traditional Irish music and a mixture of old Irish songs with a skiffley mix of my own and collected songs. It’s been a long and winding journey  to find my musical identity but now I realize it was there all the time. Now, musically speaking, I’m back home.

Over the last couple of years I’ve appeared solo and with my own trad formation, The Ceol Flies, guested with Ostrava based folk- rock band, Ostrá tráva and been involved in a number of musical projects of varying styles.