Ciúnas brings Niamh to Feakle once more

NIAMH Parsons is to headline a special concert on Friday, February 1 at Feakle Community Hall in aid of the Ciúnas Centre. She says she is delighted and honoured to be asked by Tommy Hayes to return to the East Clare village.

 

The Dublin singer has a number of other connections with the county, in particular Kilmihil where her mother, Máire McNamara Parsons was born.

“Mammy was born and reared in Cahermurphy, Castlepark, Kilmihil,” Niamh explains. “She did a degree in teaching in Mary Immaculate – she will not let me say Mary I – and she got various jobs up in Dublin and then she met Daddy, who lived in Shannon. He was a Dublin man from the Northside. So they met and they lived in Shannon. He was in the Met Office and he got a transfer to Dublin so they’ve been living in Dublin all my life. I was born and reared in Dublin and I’m very very proud of my Dublin heritage but I’m equally proud of my Clare heritage.”

With a strong West Clare bias in their Dublin household, it’s no surprise that music and especially dancing was a prominent feature of the young Parsons’ upbringing. She says Clare’s always been a spiritual home in no small part because of the music. “My mother, she doesn’t sing – I definitely got the love of the music from her and the dancing. I used to teach set dancing in Dublin.”

While her mum was the dance influence, Niamh got the voice from her dad, the late Jack Parsons. In fact all the Parsons sing and she says, they can all hold a tune and this family have the same type of voice. “I was so blessed in getting something from both of them – getting both of their hobbies, their loves and then be able to make it into a career.”

Singing wasn’t an immediate career choice for Niamh Parsons, although she had a relatively early start, singing since she was eight-years-old when she and her older sister, Ann, were regulars at the folk club at Old Shieling Hotel in Dublin run by Shay Healy and Dolly McMahon. There she heard and learned songs sung by the Johnstons – who she would later sing with at their reunion concert in 2011 – Ann Mulqueen and Emmet Spiceland. After many years of not singing in front of anyone, it was in her late 20s that she found her voice again along with discovering a love of performing. She kept her interest in traditional music and dance under wraps. She explains, “Up in Dublin, traditional music was a total no no”. None of her peers at that time knew she even sang trad. It was while she was singing in church as leader of a folk group that it occurred to her that she liked performing. Along with that, the uninspiring New Romantics of the 1980s, if anything drove her back to the traditional path.

“I discovered the altar was a stage and the congregation was an audience that I thought maybe I shouldn’t be singing so much in the church and maybe I should transfer it a bit. I started going into the Brazen Head and that’s where I met people like Frank Harte, Gerry ‘Banjo’ O’Connor.” It wasn’t too long after that that O’Connor suggested her for the part-time band Killera with whom Niamh sang until they decided to go full-time. She left because she had “no intention of becoming a full-time singer – no intention of leaving my good pensionable job”. All that was to change when she met her husband. She moved to Belfast and started a band called the Loose Connections with whom she recorded her first album in June 1992. Around the same time, again as Niamh was to later find out, Gerry ‘Banjo’ O’Connor again suggested her as singer with another band. The band was Arcady, headed by Johnny ‘Ringo’ McDonagh and she was to replace Frances Black. Niamh continued to perform with Arcady until 1998 when McDonagh left to join Riverdance.

In 1999 Niamh met Dublin guitar player (and Ennis resident) Graham Dunne, and also recorded her first solo album, Blackbirds and Thrushes, that same year.

“My singing never got as good as when Graham accompanied me – I don’t have to think about what key I’m singing in or the rhythm I’m singing in – I just go Flower of Magherally and he’ll play it absolutely perfectly. I’ve been absolutely spoiled with him. We do have an uncanny connection and when we go out as a duo, we certainly are equal,” she says of her music and life partner of almost 14 years.

The duo are currently recording a new album, although Niamh is unsure when it will be ready not least because she has so many songs to choose from for the CD. “I have a stupid amount of songs that I know I want to sing and know I want to record. I’ve just under 200 songs collected over the last five years. I could make an awful lot of CDs.”

It’s quite an impressive number of songs to have especially as Niamh says her two main criteria for putting new songs on a record are “would Jack Parsons love it and would Frank Harte have heard of it”. Indeed, the legendary Dublin singer and collector of songs, Frank Harte, was a huge influence on Niamh and launched her first solo album. “I would have considered him a friend,” she says of the late Harte. “My thing with Frank was find a song that Frank wouldn’t have found, which was a big deal because Frank was very widely travelled and as he got older, he had so much respect that people would give him songs.”

While Frank Harte may be somewhere in the hereafter singing songs about Bonaparte, two more great songsters – and Clare men – are no doubt somewhere close by. Robbie McMahon and Peadar McNamara were both very supportive of Niamh throughout her career. But while some the legends have passed on in the last few years, Niamh is confident there are many more like them to collect and keep the great tradition of singing alive. This is in no small part helped by the proliferation of singers’ clubs around the country which Niamh cites as a great and constant source for new material. In addition, the songstress says her friends, such as Declan Fay, are also a source.

As well as collecting songs of old, the Dublin singer values songwriting, which for her is as important as is keeping the old songs. “Some of the songs I sing may seem to be old but in fact they’re old airs with a newer lyrics. Sometimes brand new songs are written that whatever way they’re written, they’re written in the traditional mode so there is still as much value as ever, if not more value, on songwriting now than there was in the old days,” she explains.

Along with her usual touring and gigging schedule, Niamh is continuing to teach and mentor in the diploma in traditional Irish music performance at Ballyfermot Senior College, which she’s been doing since the late 1990s. In addition, her Skype teaching sessions, where she teaches live by webcam, have been gaining momentum around globe. She has imminent plans to expand the venture into a dedicated teaching website. She loves teaching people “who want to sing traditional whether it’s in their bath or on stage. I help them find songs, I help them sing songs. I work on their breathing, their singing but most importantly I think I work on the tradition because I know it.”

2013 promises to be a busy year for Niamh Parsons. She’s currently working on the new album with Graham, which will be out sometime this year. There’s also a special project on the go with her sister, Ann but that’s under wraps for the time being. In addition, there’s a new band, an all-female vocal group called Sí Van comprising Niamh, Mary Dillon (who was lead singer with the band Déanta) and Tíona McSherry of the well-known musical family from Belfast.

In the meantime, Niamh Parsons and Graham Dunne will perform at Feakle Community Centre on Friday, February 1 at 8pm in aid of the Ciúnas Centre in Feakle.