Entertainment

Trad/roots: Dundalk fiddler Gerry O'Connor is keeping up the family tradition

Dundalk man Gerry O'Connor's mother Rose made sure he and his siblings were 'competent in all the basic necessities of life' – sowing, knitting, cooking and fiddle playing

Dundalk fiddler Gerry O'Connor
Dundalk fiddler Gerry O'Connor Dundalk fiddler Gerry O'Connor

I DON’T know if music can pass from person to person via DNA but the O’Connors of Co Louth would be prime candidates for a scientific study to find out.

Gerry, like his siblings, learned the fiddle from his mother, Rose, while six of his aunts also played the fiddle. They in turn would have learned from their father, John.

Gerry’s sons are all traditional musicians so there’s definitely something happening on the deoxyribonucleic acid front I would say!

This Tuesday – a few days before his 60th birthday – I asked Gerry if he agrees, about the influence his mother Rose had on him as a person and as a musician?

“Well my mother was a very skilled food maker, a gardener – she was raised on a farm so she knew how to make ends meet on a very tight budget. She taught us all how to sow and stitch and knit and to cook, so she made sure we were competent in all the basic necessities of life.”

However, perhaps her biggest contribution to the family was via her music. It seems that was also considered a vital necessity and the O’Connor’s two-up, two-down in Dundalk was full of it.

Rose O’Connor took classes from 4pm-6pm each day for 45 years and early on her children were so used to hearing the lessons going on that they almost learned the fiddle by osmosis.

Gerry played in a selection of céilí bands from a very early age before going through the various rites of passage for traditional musicians, winning all-Ireland titles, playing in sessions and with groups, always learning but having fun at the same time.

“I was an eight-year-old playing in the under-18 céilí band in 1967 and we would head down to Enniscorthy for the Fleadh for a weekend and we’d ride on horses and sleep in big farmhouse beds,” Gerry fondly recalls.

“A big priority of ours for making the All-Ireland céilí band final was that we could all go swimming in Ballybunion on the Monday afterwards and then on to Tralee for Siamsa for a bit of learning and then home on the Tuesday.”

Gerry was also involved in what was called community music before the term music therapy became widely known.

“We would travel to hospitals in the midlands and play for kids who had growth problems from birth, for example, and we would be jumping around while these kids were strapped into frames to help them develop so that gave us a joy for life as well as an appreciation of what was going on around us,” he says.

At that time, very few people knew anyone who was a professional traditional musician. The main place where trad was played was Mark’s Bar, across the way from the Town Hall and it was where Gerry was exposed to musicians from all over the country.

He “went back to school” between 1982 and 1985 to study violin making; through that he met Dolores Keane, Jackie Daly and Jimmy Crowley, and it was then that Gerry’s career as a professional musician began, with a group called Kinvara back in '85.

Early on, Gerry got to know Eithne Ní Uallacháin, the wonderful traditional singer from Oriel and together the pair formed Lá Lugh but that wasn’t their first name.

“Early on, we had a line-up but we were do disorganised that we didn’t have a name,” Gerry recalls. “Tommy Sands asked us if we wanted to do a festival in Scotland and asked us if we had a name. 'No' was the reply so Tommy baptised us as The Mark’s Bar Band, because that’s where we were playing.”

Gerry and Eithne went on to marry and make four highly regarded albums, including Brighid's Kiss which was voted album of the year in 1996 by readers of Irish Music Magazine, and doing their own projects until Eithne’s untimely death in 1999.

Another well-known band that Gerry was involved in was Skylark with Len Graham, Garry Ó Briain and later, Máirtín O’Connor (no relation) and Oirialla with Nuala Kennedy.

However, it’s now been 14 years since Gerry produced his first solo album, Journeyman, a self-deprecating title that says much about the Dundalk man’s lack of desire to hog the spotlight despite his superb playing, either solo with a band, but O’Connor has just released a new solo fiddle album, Last Night’s Joy.

Not that the 14 years were fallow for Gerry. He worked on The High Hills of Largy featuring the music of Fermanagh fiddler Sean Nugent; Jig Away The Donkey, Music And Song Of South Ulster with Gabriel McArdle and Martin Quinn, a song project with Cathal O’Connell and other projects, so Gerry’s attention was rarely on producing a solo album.

However, the new solo offering has been worth the wait. Its an album full of light and shade (mostly light) with tunes not everyone would be familiar with, many from his native Oirialla, the ancient kingdom that included what are now parts of counties Armagh, Monaghan, Louth, Fermanagh, Tyrone and Derry.

Produced by son Donal O’Connor, Gerry called up a number of old friends, including his namesake Gerry 'Banjo' O’Connor so the two of them could play on a track called Stereo Connor (ouch!).

Máirtín O’Connor was called upon although the pair hadn’t played together for nearly 30 years. Dervish’s Seamie O’Dowd adds guitar to Last Night’s Joy and the brilliant young singer Niall Hanna also appears on the album of jigs, reels, polkas, a hornpipe and an air for a beautiful mix of mood and rhythm.

Not only was Donal producing and playing numerous instruments on the album but now Gerry is working with another son, film-maker Feilimí and a third son, Finian, is also making a name for himself as a piper in Belfast.

What’s that I was saying about DNA?

:: Last Night’s Joy is published by Lughnasa Music and can be got from gerryoconnor.net