IT IS fair to say that Irish singer-songwriter Alison O'Donnell's world grew bigger during lockdown. The folk and traditional singer met many new singers as well as club promoters around the globe which has led to her album launch for Hark The Voice That Sings For All at the Sunflower bar in Belfast this month.
The historic Union Street site which has hosted a public house for over 100 years is the perfect spot for an album that tells Ireland's complex story over three centuries.
Before we discuss that, Alison explains how the lockdown led to a connection with the Sunflower and other folk clubs.
"I took full advantage of that opportunity and made so many new friends around the world. With the Sunflower, two of the co-organisers came to Dublin and we arranged this event," she says.
It will be a spine-tingling experience for the audience to hear songs such as The Birds of Belfast Lough in such an intimate space.
"I have this other band, United Bible Studies, and one of the founders lives in Belfast," O'Donnell tells me.
"He said to me that nobody writes songs about Belfast any more. I said right, I'm going to write this for him. I did a lot of research about the birds and insects that visit the lough. I also visited the nature reserve.
"There's a bit about Henry Joy McCracken and Cave Hill in there, I wanted to touch upon a few things to do with Belfast history. It's an up-tempo and rousing track, and I've been doing it live."
Hark The Voice That Sings For All takes in a wide range of subjects including feisty Irish women, cheating wives, animal cruelty, the Irish Rebellion and the famine ship The Jeanie Johnston. It all helps to create an arresting collection written in the traditional idiom.
Among them Four Fine Females "celebrates four brave women of Irish history who were champions of woman's rights," explains O'Donnell.
"Peg Plunkett managed a brothel and went up against male domination and the gangs that raided her. Rosie Hackett was involved in the Dublin lock-out in 1913 and the Easter Rising – there is a bridge named after her in Dublin.
"Countess Markievicz was a leader in the Easter Rising and [investigative journalist] Veronica Guerin was another more recent brave pioneering woman who paid with her life when taking on an Irish cartel just 26 years ago."
As O'Donnell suggests, some might take umbrage to Countess Markievicz being included.
"She is a symbol of the Rising – she shot and killed a policeman and that is a terrible thing to do, but within the act and theatre of war it's fair game. She wasn't put to death, she survived."
One man who was put to death was Edinburgh-born James Connolly, who features on The Man Who Taught The Nation one of the most haunting songs in the collection.
"The lyrics are very passionate – it's about Patrick Pearse, and Connolly is mentioned in the last verse. With many heroes being Protestant and Connolly coming from Edinburgh, no-one batted an eyelid despite their country of origin or religion.
"He is remembered weekly here by singers in the clubs and is very important in our country. It's a bit strange there is only a plaque for him in Edinburgh.
"The Kilmainham Gaol tour is one of the most interesting tourist attractions. I have a lot of English blood as well and I shivered when I stood where they were executed."
O'Donnell has a fascinating family history which is featured on the BBC television series Family Ties. Winifred O'Donnell, her loving grandmother, had kept a secret that was revealed long after she had died.
"My Scottish family descended from her first husband; she had to keep her first marriage quiet which is why she came to Ireland in 1946," explains O'Donnell.
"She had to get away from her past in Britain. Winifred married into a musical family and managed to keep her first husband and two children a secret. He was Chinese and that was a problem [in those days]."
Had the news broken it would have been a national scandal – Winifred's second husband Major Percival O'Donnell was part of a triumvirate of military musicians touring the world with his two brothers.
"They were very famous conductors and composers in the 20s, 30s and 40s and were very sporty, and one of my great uncles played football for Fulham FC for a while. Another played at the Potsdam Conference where Churchill and Stalin were in attendance, they toured the world with kings, princes and generals."
It's 50 years since Alison O'Donnell released her first record as part of Mellow Candle. Their cult long-player Swaddling Songs has found a new generation of fans despite a lukewarm response when the record was first released on Decca Records in 1972.
The young Irish band were using the same studios as the likes of David Bowie and Marc Bolan. "Clodagh [Simonds, co-founder of the band] remembers Marc Bolan coming out of the lift.
"I remember Suzi Quatro holding us up when we were scheduled to use a rehearsal room. She was very rude to us."
O'Donnell suggests the band were perceived as being "too rocky for the folk clubs and too folky for the rock clubs; we fell between two stools. One of the reasons we felt very despondent about it is the fact we couldn't play enough, we played all the major venues and festivals but it just wasn't enough".
She recorded Swaddling Songs with Mellow Candle when she was still just a teenager, moving in the same circles as Clannad, Thin Lizzy and The Dubliners, playing in venues such as Slattery's Bar.
"Andy Irvine and Dónal Lunny used to organise recurring residences [The Mug's Gig] and we often used to get asked," recalls O'Donnell.
"We were playing one night and Luke Kelly came in and checked us out – he was noticed loitering behind a pillar listening on his own."
Wider recognition for Mellow Candle was better late than never.
"It's nice. I heard that in the late 1980s there were kids in Philly passing the album around on cassette tape, it started to take hold in the folk community and has had a second wave with much younger people, which gave me the impetus to forge ahead with my new material."
:: Alison O'Donnell will launch Hark The Voice That Sings For All at the Sunflower, Union Street, Belfast on September 15. Hark The Voice That Sings For All is available online now.
