Buncrana's best loved masters of mayhem are set to return to the town at Christmas to release a brand new CD and play a concert at the Plaza Ballroom. Incredibly this is the first CD for the popular band who have been together for more than quarter of a century. Over the years the individual band members have gone on to work on successful solo projects and play with other bands.
Ciaran Tourish has a successful solo career and has travelled the world with Altan. He has played and recorded with everyone from Vince Gill to Bonnie Raitt. Kevin Doherty has worked with Four Men and a Dog, has appeared on a CD by the legendary Band and has just completed another solo CD called Telegraph. Paul Rodden continues to live in France and play with his band Mister Midnight and has appeared in a futuristic cowboy movie called Blueberry as an Irish rapping banjo player. Michael Gallanagh became the driving force behind the successful Ar Ais Aris festival in Buncrana and is now playing with his own new band Dalltacht. Laurence Doherty has travelled the world with fellow Pyros and played and recorded with the likes of Ted Hawkins, The Whisky Priests and former world champion boxer Barry McGuigan. John Cutliffe also worked with McGuigan for 2 years before moving to America where he produced the Hands Across The Water CD for kids who were orphaned by the South East Asian tsunami. The album featured music legends like John Prine, Jackson Brown, Vince Gill, Altan, Paul Brady and more. He now produces a weekly radio show for ICR from his home in Georgia called Across The Pond.
With all the solo projects the band members were doing it was hard to get time to do Pyros work so they could only get back together once in a blue moon to ignite the Irish music scene for a few days at a time. Since Ar Ais Arís brought the full lineup of the band back together 4 years ago The Pyros have been in touch more.
"Before the festival we hadn't all played as a band in years and with the concerts in the Inishowen Gateway Hotel we realized how much fun we had on stage and how much we missed playing together" said bassist John Cutliffe " So last year we were invited home to do some concerts for the music therapy programme at Scoil Iosagain. We decided that as long as we were home we should stay an extra few days and record some of the songs people have loved over the years."
The band headed for McGrory's in Culdaff where they set up a studio on the dance floor of the venue they had played in many times before.
"It was perfect" said Cutliffe "We had the place to ourselves and with Neil McGrory at the controls we worked hard for three days to get this done. We recorded everything as live as possible to get that original Pyros feel. Then our long time sound guru Billy Robinson along with Ciaran Tourish mixed the tracks in Ramelton"
The band have recorded many of the audience favourites on this collection as well as a couple of new tracks, a new song by Kevin Doherty and an instrumental by Paul Rodden.
So the Pyros take to the stage at the Plaza Ballroom in Buncrana on December 27th for one night only to launch the new CD.
For info on this and other holiday gigs yet to be announced visit the Pyros's website at http://jigtime.com/thepyros or for more information call 091 442084
