Seán Tyrrell

Chapter Six (page 103):

Seán Tyrrell - Twentieth-Century Bard

"For we are the stars. For we sing.
 For we sing with our light.
 For we are birds made of fire.
 For we spread our wings over the sky.
 Our light is a voice."
          Passamaquody Indian

During the summer of 1989, I worked as producer with Davy Spillane on his Shadow Hunter album, and, having agreed on the idea of featuring a guest singer on the album, we sat down to discuss who that singer might be. Many singers were short-listed, but after long discussions about what choice to make, we unanimously agreed that it just had to be a man whose praises as an instrumentalist and more especially as a singer we had both been singing for several years. That man was Sean Tyrrell, who is, quite simply, the most intensely moving, soulful and talented singer of ballads and traditional songs in Ireland today. (If you doubt that, take a listen to his contribution to the album mentioned above or endeavour to witness one of his live performances.)

At the actual recording sessions, during which Sean recorded Tbe Walker of tbe Snows, a poem by the nineteenth-century Poet CD Shanley, and WB Yeats's Host of the Air-both of which Sean has set to music-I sat again, utterly enthralled by the man's supreme command of his art and music. I had, of course, seen and heard Sean Tyrrell in noisy pub sessions in County Clare and had thrilled, along with all who listened, to his songs, delivered with great passion laced with a soulful melancholy. Now, in the clinical atmosphere of a Dublin recording studio, Sean wove again his magic spell as he faced the mike to sing Yeats's Host of the Air. Sean's delivery, his total command and control, his utter understanding of the piece being sung, imbued the dream-poem with an otherworld aura and quality of magic which transcended that already inherent in the piece. It was a moment I will never forget. The fInished product would have, I've no doubt, pleased the poet very much. His performance of the ghostly Walker of the Snows, his other contribution to the album, had the same effect. I had no doubt, as I sat in that studio, my . spine tingling with the power of his spell-binding performances, that here was an artist of rare quality indeed. I have heard Sean Tyrrell sing on several occasions since those studio sessions, yet each time I am wholly and utterly captivated by that strange current of electricity which passes from his heart and soul directly to his audience. It is a gift which few musicians or singers possess. Sean Tyrrell possesses this gift in abundance.

Sean Tyrell was born in 1943 into a musical family in Galway city and learned music at his father's knee. The Sixties saw him, along with Jack Geary, Henry Higgins and the now-famous songwriter Johnny Mulhern, performing regularly in the city's premier folk club-the Folk Castle. Here Sean and his fellow musicians honed their instrumental and vocal skills, rubbing shoulders with such legendary club visitors as Rambling Jack Elliot, Davy Graham and a shy young singer-songwriter who was to go on to greater things-Paul Simon. Eventually, in 1968, after a year's teaching in Belfast, Sean's itchy feet brought him to New York, where he became immersed in the Greenwich Village scene, playing in clubs such as the Bells of Hell, the Lion's Den and the Bottom Line, not to mention the interminable sessions in the Irish bars with such musicians as accordion master Joe Burke and fiddle virtuosi Paddy Cronin and Andy McGann.

Soon, the West Coast beckoned and Sean found himself in San Francisco in the early Seventies, playing banjo and mandocello alongside such Irish music greats as Joe Cooley, Kevin Keegan, and Melissa Lundy, to name but a few. In the midst of the sessions there were songs and few singers, if any, had the courage to follow Sean Tyrrell­who could silence a noisy room with his dark, rich, resonant voice. (It is a power which Sean carries still.) Those who heard him then would never forget this young Galway man, and so Sean TYrrell's reputation as a singer of talent began to grow. 1975 saw Sean back on the East Coast-in New Hampshire , where once again he became immersed in the music scene there. During this period he became a founder-member of the group Apples in Winter, along with Jack Geary (guitar), multi-instrumentalist Tommy Mulvihill, John Tabb (bass) and Bob Emmett Fitzgerald (guitar/vocals). Together they recorded one album for Onyx, a small East Coast independent label. The album, as Sean recalls, was "not very well produced or recorded. I don't really know if it sold anywhere."

In 1975, Sean returned to Ireland , where he continued his writing and composing, although he rarely played publicly. 1978 found him working for Galway University and living in the Burren in County Clare , where he began to play on a regular basis with the legendary fiddler Tommy Peoples, Breton flautist and uilleann piper Michel Bonamy and Clare flautist Michael Hynes and guitarist Shane Holden. From time to time, uilleann piper Davy Spillane would join their sessions in Kilfenora. Once again, Sean's power and authority as a singer stamped itself on each and every session. Once again" his rendering of songs such as the anti-war song, The Twelfth of July, Johnny Mulhern's Mattie, or the old chestnuts Tbe Isle of Inisfree and The Red River Valley, could bring a noisy, often inattentive pub or club to a standstill. In Sean's hands, even the old, well-worn songs, such as Red River Valley and Inisfree, begin to live and breathe again with new life and soul. His unique sense of rhythm, coupled with his ability to inject a song-any song-with a special kind of magic which only he can weave, signifies clearly his place as a singer with few peers.

But what kind of singer is Sean Tyrrell? Is he a traditional singer in the pure sense of the word? A ballad singer? A contemporary singer? "I'm all of those, I suppose," is Sean's reply, "but first and foremost, I'm a singer of songs. While all my influences come directly from Irish traditional music and song, I don't sing songs from the usual ballad or traditional repertoire. I look to the great Irish poets for inspiration-such as Louis MacNeice, Jean Frazier, John Boyle O'Reilly and Charles Lever-and put their words to music; and, of course, I write songs and music myself. The. words are the essence, as far as I'm concerned. But what category of singer is Sean Tyrrell? Am I a ballad singer or traditional singer? Well, somebody described me recently as an Irish blues singer. Blues is not just a black music form, it's universal. I sing the blues, I sing the Irish blues."

Some time in the early Eighties, Sean Tyrrell became fascinated with the idea of putting Brian Merriman's classic nineteenth-century poem, The Midnight Court, to music. The 1,206-line poem, written in Irish by the Clare poet Brian Merriman some time in the late 1700s-banned by the Catholic Church and the Irish censors for most of that period-had long since been regarded as one of the great works to sUIVive from that century. It has been described as one of the most exuberant poems ever written in Irish or indeed in any other western European language. The poem, which has been translated many times since the first English version (by a Michael O'Shea) was published in Boston in 1897, is a celebration of the rights of women to wholesome sex and wholesome marriage. Written with a powerful mix of earthy, bawdy humour and a keen insight into male and female relationships, the poem offers us an authentic glimpse of eighteenth-century rural Irish life. It is a timeless work which strikes just as powerful a chord in modem times as it must have done when it first appeared in the early 1800s. Sean's long-held dream was to marry the David Marcus translation of the great poem to traditional music, using traditional instruments and male and female voices.

For as long as he can recall, Sean Tyrrell has been fascinated by Merriman's Midnight Court poem. "I was inspired by the musicality of the metre," he explains. "I felt that by putting Merriman's words to traditional music it would add another dimension to the poem. It was a dream of mine for a long while. Finally I decided to get down and do it." That inherent musicality sensed by Sean in the poem may well have stemmed from the fact that Brian Merriman was both poet and musician. In his excellent essay on Merriman, Muiris Ó Rόcháin writes of him, "One manuscript says, 'He was a wild and pleasure seeking youth but an accomplished performer on the violin. '"

Sean Tyrrell's dream came true when the Druid Theatre staged Tbe Midnight Court -his traditional music opera­featuring Sean alongside some frne Galway singers such as Rosie Stewart, the great traditional singer from County Fermanagh and the equally talented traditional singer and flute player Sean Keane, brother of the more famous Dolores Keane, country-singer Bernie Mahony and Mary McPartlan from County Leitrim -as part of the 1992 Galway Arts Festival. The response, from critics and public alike, was nothing short of ecstatic. As one observer commented, having seen The Midnight Court, "Brian Merriman would be a delighted man if he could be here tonight to witness what has been done to his poem." Following a sell-out three-week run at the Druid, a highly successful tour of Belfast, Limerick and Cork and two historic performances in late August 1993 on the shores of Lough Graney (the original setting of the poem), The Midnight Court, as envisaged by Sean Tyrrell, now seems destined to run and run.

Given that Sean Tyrrell is now generally regarded as a singer with few peers, with his regular pub and club gigs crammed with committed fans, his reputation the length and breadth of the land approaching cult status, the question has been asked why there was not one record label in or out of the country with the wit or vision to sign this man to a recording contract. It is, as one reviewer put it, an impenetrable mystery, but one which is about to be resolved as this book goes to print.

After decades of life as a working musician and singer, Sean Tyrrell released his first solo album, Cry of a Dreamer, in March 1994.

In all civilisations of the world, the song has served as a mirror to society, reflecting the human condition. Through song, man has expressed his innermost feelings, his joys and sorrows. Through song he has sought through song to interpret his place in the world, his fears, his hopes, his dreams and his longings to transcend the mortal state. Throughout history, the bard, songwriter and singer has played an important role in society as historian, as poet, as artist and even as entertainer. The singer's role as visionary-as seer-allows us to see the fertile ground in which such imaginative possibilities grow. These days, there can be few singers in traditional, folk or rock music who can claim to be all of the above, delivering their message with simplicity, honesty and directness in the face of the tidal wave of twentieth-century pop commercialism. In Sean Tyrrell we witness such a singer/songwriter in the best bardic tradition-as historian, poet, artist, musician and entertainer.

Prepare to hear a lot more about, and from, this extraordinary singer. After over twenty-five years working as a singer/songwriter/musician and composer, Sean Tyrrell-Irish blues-ballad singer-looks set to become an overnight success. And not, it must be said, before time.

Discography: