Thousands of people are flocking back to the ballrooms as the 'country and Irish' music forgotten during the Celtic Tiger era, makes a comeback, writes Brian O'Connell
YOU COULDN'T GET more Italian really. The setting was a 13th century castle, 30km outside Florence, in the heart of the Tuscan countryside. It was my brother's wedding, and the day was punctuated by wine-tasting tours, smoked meats and teary-eyed renditions of That's Amore and O Solo Mio. A few of us even wore fedoras. We had gone European, as they say. And then it happened.
It was late in the night and people were beginning to wane. Someone slipped the disc jockey a CD. A trumpet and twangy country guitar second later, and the floor was full of twirling, swirling bodies giving it welly. Forget the 1960s medley. Never mind the Abba classics. If you want to get a rustic wedding roused, then "country and Irish" is the only way to go. And while Declan Nerney belted out Stop the World and Let Me Off to the bemusement of local staff, I made a mental note. When I got back home, I was going to scrape the muck off my wellies, get myself a Stetson and jump on the country and Irish bandwagon.
It's Friday night, a few kilometres outside Newtwopothouse, near Mallow in Co Cork, and the Hazel Tree bar is jammed. Declan Nerney is in town. Owner George O'Dwyer has been running the venue for 30 years, and boasts that his is the only public house in the country which has a card game two nights a week, and country and Irish dancing all weekend. He was here for the last days of the showband era, witnessed the folk revival, and kept going during the disco revolution. All the while, the venue stayed loyal to country and Irish music, when many others amalgamated and crossed over.
Singer Maura O'Connell once remarked that the one thing country music and Irish music share is sentimentality. Acts such as Ray Lynam, Philomena Begley, TR Dallas, and Big Tom and the Mainliners were the early pioneers exploring new musical frontiers, by taking a distinctly American sound and crossing it with an Irish shuffle. But it's not just about the music. It's also about people of similar mindset, some in happy relationships, others single or separated, meeting and identifying with one another. In recent years, Daniel O'Donnell, Jimmy Buckley, and, of course, Declan Nerney, have continued to facilitate that tradition.
FOR A WHILE though, in the 1990s, it looked like the music was on its way out. Celtic Tiger Ireland was no place for sentimentality. And where did all the lonely hearts go? They did brunch and called their mushy peas guacamole, finding temporarily, at least, that money helped make lonely hearts less lonely. But it didn't last. "The whole scene went quiet for a while," says O'Dwyer, "but then other factors came into play. With the advent of divorce legislation, society was beginning to accept that people do separate, and 'country and Irish' music, like we have here, just caught on again."
By the time we arrive at 10.30pm, the support act is in full swing and the floor is already heaving with couples. Unspoken protocol means that to the left, inside the entrance door, ladies who are available to dance usually sit. Beside the bar is where the men position themselves, sizing up their prospective dancing partners. The balcony is for couples, either married or recently met. No one is refused a dance, while drunkenness or inappropriate behaviour is not tolerated.
"You'd be surprised the amount of loneliness there is in parts of Ireland," says O'Dwyer, "I hear all the stories outside of the bar. Apart from the dance nights, you could have anything from 300 to 900 people here playing cards. And these are all pre-television people so they are a dying breed actually. So that's the reason why I built the hall out the back where we are now, to accommodate people perhaps not being accommodated elsewhere. I started out with a small bar here and built this over the years. I closed that bar a few months ago. There was no point keeping it open, the rural pub trade in somewhere like this is gone. But the dancing and the music will always be there."
Backstage, Declan Nerney looks fresh for someone on night 14 of a 16-night tour. Tonight it's Mallow, but it could just as easily be Glasgow or Boston. With four DVDs and eight albums out to date, Nerney may never earn critical kudos from the "muso" brigade, but he's not bothered.
He speaks with an honest confidence, makes a comfortable living, and has been on the road for over two decades, playing to a fiercely devoted following. He's not afraid to dig beneath the surface either. "For some reason or other, Ireland back in the mid-1980s to mid-1990s had become a very hip kind of a place and people wanted to forget about this old country and Irish thing," Nerney says, "At least that was the feeling. They wanted to forget about the mother crying or the dog barking. Basically, people lost the run of themselves in a way. Not them all, and not the majority, but there was a new culture in the building. My father used to have a great saying, 'enough is as good as a feast'. When times are bad, music flourishes because people have nothing else to turn to in a way."
HISTORICALLY, THE POPULARITY of country and Irish music was helped by a number of factors, including emigration and changing cultural reference points, facilitated by the advent of radio and TV throughout the 20th century. Dispossession, a sense of loss, and the ability to tell a yarn, were integral to the Irish ballad tradition. In country and western music - folksongs of the rural Americans - those sentiments found a natural ally.
"The country and Irish thing is sentimentally similar, yet musically different to country and western," says Nerney. "There's a different flavour and beat to country and western, and it has a different rhythm really. The country and Irish music has got a jiving aspect to it, as you'll see in this hall tonight. Intertwined with that is old time waltz songs, and a foxtrot that's of a very standard speed. It has to be of a certain speed - it's not like the four time tune you would hear in America. It's actually that little shade faster. The American rhythm wouldn't suit the Irish person, because the rhythm in their boots are different."
Familiarity, too, breeds devotion and a sense of belonging, and, for an audience hearing their own lives and landscapes expressed through song, kept them coming back. "You're singing about the pretty little girl from Omagh. You're singing about four roads to Glenamaddy. You're singing about the marquee in Drumlish, or the gallant John-Joe," says Nerney.
"In other words, you're singing about your own people. The people who ploughed the field here - you cannot turn your back upon the past. The thing about our music as well is that there are a lot of people out there tonight that can be lonely people. You'd be aware of the fact that they are waiting around all week maybe for this dance. Merle Haggard recorded a track once, Someone Told My Story, and that's what those people out there tonight are listening for."
Padraig Heron travelled 267 miles to attend the Hazel Tree dance, leaving Co Fermanagh almost 12 hours earlier. A country and Irish fan, he says it's his first time down this side of the country. "I came to see a lady, so it was well worth the long drive. She's here tonight, herself and a crowd of lassies. So we'll see how things go," he says.
Heron sees an upsurge in the music, helped by younger fans and performers, particularly in the midlands and north west of the country. "I like the fact that after the dance is over you can go and you can talk to the musicians," he says. "They'll chat to you and have a bit of craic with you. They are ordinary down-to-earth fellas. People might think they have an easy life. God bless them, it's a tough life I'd say, travelling all over the country. But I'm glad we have this."
Sixty-three-year-old Dan Cremins, from Castleisland, Co Kerry, also travelled up for the dancing, as he does most weeks. What is it that brings him back? I ask. "I was married for 33 years and my marriage broke up four years ago," he says, "I'm living on my own now. But I just love being out and meeting people. I reckon if I keep coming here for another few months, I might find true romance here. Of course, the music's not bad either!"