JigTime

Over many years, especially it seemed on cold wintry nights, we would play a regular Wednesday session in O’Flahertys Bar on Buncrana’s main street. The musicians changed from week to week. Sometimes it would be just Paul Rodden and I, occasionally Dinny McLaughlin, Michael Gallanagh or one of the younger local players like Ciaran Tourish.

At other times there could be twenty great musicians who would appear out of nowhere and a night of magic would suddenly materialize.
I am not sure if I was away for a while playing with another band or just oblivious to the changes around me but one of those nights I looked up and there was a new face in the crowd. He was good too. Kevin Doherty even at that young age had slipped in as quietly and unassuming as he has always been and it seemed like he had been part of these sessions forever.

It wasn’t long before he had been drafted into the Pyros and was brow beaten into playing mandolin for a lot of the tunes. But we could all see so much more than a handy mandolin player in Kevin. His songs had something different. They were about the places and people we knew. Oh there were the love songs of course but they were set in the hills of Donegal and not in the mountains of North Carolina. And in songs like “Joefy Spokes” the characters from Buncrana came alive. Of course when he sang “Slow Song” and quoted a man who was a friend to so many of us, the late great Leo Rodden, we would be suddenly back at the bar listening to Leo impart his wit and wisdom, and complaining about the weather and the powers that be.

But the songs and the singer were bigger than our wee town and soon Kevin was taking Joefy and Leo all over the world with him as a solo artist and with Four Men and a Dog. I even heard a story that one of his songs “Donegal Breeze” was played in space when a cd featuring Mary Black’s version was taken up there on the space shuttle by an astronaut.

It is always a pleasure to play on stage with Kevin. He is one of the good guys, as they say around here. It is easy to compare people with the greats like Dylan but just like Dylan, Kevin writes from what he knows best, his heart.

See you in a couple of weeks Kevin. Lets make time for a slow song!