by John Hoban
It sounded good to me to sing ‘Hey Joe’ or ‘Boys of Barr na Sráide’ in Oxford Circus tube station, and to play ‘The March of the Kings of Laois’ and ‘O’Carolan’s Concerto’ at Marble Arch subway. One day a fella from home joined me on harp and we did our best to sound like Sonny Terry and Brownie McGee. I had heard these guys live in the 100 Club and it tore me up.
I found music everywhere I looked, even when I wasn’t expecting it. I remember one November night I met a man called Darach Ó Cathain, he had no place to go and nowhere to stay, so I brought him back to where I was staying in Fulham. For to thank me, he sang the whole night, between talking and downing a brave few deoiríns (drops). I felt a very special presence that night with Darach singing ‘Baile ui Lai’ – a happy song of Raifteirí’s, and ‘An Beinnsín Luachra’. He was a very highly respected singer of the Conamara sean-nós tradition. He performed with Seán Ó Riada’s Ceoltoirí Chualann when they first formed, and he also used to sing on the radio programme, Reacaireacht an Riadaigh. There is a CD of his singing called Darach Ó Cathain, it is one of the most special recordings of all. He died in 1987, but I hear Darach singing these songs still.
Fortunately, I just happened on the Irish Culture Club and this Irish music and in the White Hart Pub in Fulham, West London. I loved it, but it was alien to me. This was my first real connection with Irishness (especially the language, the sean-nós and the dance music), a connection I certainly did not have at home in Ireland. This is the irony of the exiled Irish. So, I studied it, devoured it, night and day, and listened and learned from the masters. It was full of passion and sweat, bacon and cabbage, rolled up smokes, gallons of light and bitter. A new language. I was getting my own story/history in sound. The true story from real people, outside of the official, clean version, the party line. I never believed history or school or anything.
I was learning, sometimes very quickly, all the things school avoided teaching us. As I listened to the best of music from Ireland, I felt sure that I was being taught about the life of the spirit through the language of music. It was all about music. The Favourite Pub on the Holloway Road was where I went to my Mass on Sunday mornings. These mornings were filled with poetry, songs (I used to be asked up for a song by Jimmy Power from Waterford), anarchists, republicans, communists, punks, construction workers, and their wives sometimes, misfits, con-men, con-women, dreamers, schemers and real decent folk. One May Sunday morning, I remember learning to play ‘Lucy Campbell’ and ‘Toss the Feathers’ from a busker outside this pub. He was a guitar player from Scotland with whom I will always associate these tunes.
I dashed off on my own to hear The Sex Pistols play with Siouxsie and the Banshees in the 100 Club, The Nashville Rooms and in Soho’s El Paradiso. I stood in these places with the bands – The Bromley Crew and The Subway Sect. I witnessed the birthing process of punk aesthetics, which I recognised as really powerful and individual. ‘Anarchy in the UK’ and ‘Pretty Vacant’ were two songs at the time that said it all. I can never forget those sounds, those days and John Lydon, God bless him, sneering and singing. Brilliant. Bodies flying everywhere (like a few other times in my life!). I was never a real punk, nor was I ever a Paddy or a Mick either. I felt as if I fitted in nowhere. I wasn’t one of the ‘Johns’ from North London who hung out on the Kings Road in McClaren’s shop. I didn’t support any particular football team, but I did support the Pistols, still do. John Lydon is a Galway man as far as I am concerned, ‘Up Galway’, The Tribesmen, our neighbours at home. There is an old saying in Ireland, Mayo, God help us, Galway glad to have us.
A lot of great punk and rock’n’roll music has come from the second-generation Irish in England. The Gallaghers, Morrissey (it sometimes seems that half of Manchester is Irish), Boy George, to name a few. The Pistols had it all (a bit like Wayne Rooney), power, art, songs, beauty and sheer terror of the present. These people were truly creative, and they reflected life as it was for them without all the trappings of privilege. They embodied it all, anger, truth, humour, and intelligence. I was a total fan.
Dylan, Nusrat Fatah, Cathal McConnell, The Sex Pistols, Alijah Bai Conti, John Doherty, all changed me forever, never to be the same again. As Dylan says, ‘He who is not busy being born, is busy dying’.
The Troubadour coffee shop in Earl’s Court was known as a famous folk club, except on Sundays when it turned into a Latin American ‘free for all’ session. I used to join in with my mandolin and I just knew the music: Cumbias from Colombia, Cuban tunes, Valse Criollos and ‘winos’ (Huaynos) from the Andes. I first heard of Victor Jara there. Many moons later, when visiting Lima and Cusco with my wife Isabela, I was reminded of the first time I heard the wonderful sound of this music. I loved it. Once again (like so many other times in my life), music acted as the signpost, this time pointing me in the direction of the Andes. I was glad to follow. I sang a few songs in Machu Picchu and saw some of the best dancing ever in Lima – Miraflores on Saturday night in the public park. Limeños (natives of Lima) dancing to old Cumbia music.
My own music-making was coming on in leaps and bounds. I was at it all day, every day. I got into the folk clubs as a floor singer, paying my way in as I never had any money (or ‘bread’ as the hippies said). I supported Martin Carty, Dave Swarbrigg, June Tabor, Ewan McColl and Peggy Seeger, and loads more. I also got recruited into some very rough, country and Irish bands. I remember well the rum and black outfits. ‘Black Puddin’ and the ‘Hills of Knocknashee’ were some of the questionable musical offerings of that time. I got on fine with the other band members who saw me as a bit of a character, a bit daft. They were all fine, straight, upstanding Irishmen. They took no drink and didn’t smoke, sensible lads. I am very grateful to all the bands and people I met along the way. It was all good for learning, playing in the Irish pubs was sort of sad at times, but it was also great entertainment.
Needless to say, I moved away from country and Irish music and the Galty and The Gresham ballrooms. I was a ‘townie’, a ‘fish-head’ (slang for a Castlebar native) and a biteen odd, different, always on the move. I was listening a lot to Django Reinhardt, Blonde on Blonde by Dylan, and Paddy in the Smoke. My taste in music at this stage also included reggae and ska. My party pieces were ‘The Deportees’ and Chuck Berry’s ‘C’est la Vie...the Teenage Wedding.’ God help us. We had a small, but loyal, following (unemployed generally) in the pubs, clubs and traps of North London.
Early on, after my arrival in London town, I tried a few employment agencies looking for ‘the start’. I think my first posting was to a warehouse near Brixton tube station, working with a loyal band of Jamaican lads, packing mannequins for export to the fashion houses of the world. It was a howl. I was the only Paddy (as I was known) present. All day long reggae – fantastic music that I love to this day. Toots and the Maytals, The Heptones, Desmond Dekker, Jimmy Cliff, Ska – The Skatelites (Don Drummond was a music hero of mine), Marcia Griffiths’ ‘Survival’, The Paragons’ ‘Feed the Fire, Fan the Flame’, ‘We the People Who Are Darker than Blue’ and on and on. Of course the air was filled with ganja, and there was lots of dancing too – I think. A week or two I lasted until I rode off, me and Clint Eastwood, into the sunset. Nevertheless, this particular job greatly boosted my love of Jamaican music and culture.
Around the same time, I saw the movie The Harder They Come with Jimmy Cliff playing the part of the outlaw Ivan O’Martin in Perry Henzell’s film. This film to me is timeless – a story of a young man’s move from the country to the city and all the trauma that comes with it. I totally appreciated the sheer raw beauty of the soundtrack which Perry said was “The best week’s work I ever did!” It is incredible that it took less than a week to put the music together for this film. I felt then, but not so much now, the song ‘Living Here in Limbo’ best described my days and nights in London. ‘Sure as the sun will shine, I’m gonna get my share now, what’s mine...’
I lived sometimes around Notting Hill. I used to busk on Portobello Road of
a Saturday, and maybe do a gig or play a session of Irish music in the Elgin Pub in Ladbroke Grove. I loved the vibe, the music, ‘the colours man’ around this part of London. Van Morrison’s presence was all around, ‘Saw you walking, down by Ladbroke Grove this morning, with your brand new boy and your Cadillac’, ‘Astral Weeks’, ‘TB sheets’ and ‘Them and Us’.
My soul was always filled with music and song as my life seemed to flicker by like a slide show. No future, no ambition, nothing mattered except the next one, the next ‘hit’, the next jug of ale. I was selfish and self-centred, but I believe today that I was saved by music and ‘...the song she was hummin’. Glory O, glory O, to the bold Fenian men’.
Our lives in London (the rovers, nomads, exiles, navvies) didn’t seem to matter to anyone else, at home or abroad. We were reacting to the hand we were dealt in life. All in the same boat, just about keeping afloat, ‘...merrily, life is but a dream...’
I learned Irish music and the Irish language in London, from people who had it from birth. I loved it. I loved being away with the fairies, being an immigrant, a stranger, a drunk. I couldn’t imagine living any other sort of life as I wondered around the great city of London, heartbroken, homeless, blessed, loving it and hating it, humming and strumming ‘The Banks Hornpipe’ and squattin’ in Kilburn in a mansion with the boys from the County Mayo. Most of them gone on today, Slí na Fírinne (the way of the truth).
So boys pull together,
in all kinds of weather.
Don’t show the white feather
wherever ye go.
Be as a brother,
help one another,
like true hearted men
from the County Mayo.
(Traditional)
‘While we honour in song and in story...’, I don’t think a day passes without me singing or playing a tune in honour of these good people who helped, guided and befriended this poor soul as I sang and danced my songline in those heady, intense, and dangerous times. God bless you all, you are in the music forever, ‘In the smoke’ mar a déarfá (as they say).
Swift the Thames flows to the sea,
bearing ships and part of me.
(‘Sweet Thames’, Ewan McColl)
THE WHITE FEATHER
(John Hoban)
I’ve seen lots of men and some women,
as I ramble from shore to shore.
I’ve friends in many states of mind
who allow me stop on the floor.
I’m now in my fortieth year
of singing and dancing my way.
Please God, I’ll live till I’m eighty,
I’ll have twice as much to say.
I keep seeing new people and places
I’m in California today.
Singing in San Francisco
looking out on its beautiful bay.
I feel so blessed in this lifetime,
to be given a chance to forgive,
myself for being such a pagan,
and not having a clue how to live.
So, boys get together don’t speak of weather,
leave the turf and the hay,
to the neighbours at home,
heal one another,
let go of your mother,
be glad that you come from
the County Leitrim!
Notes on the song:
From a very young age, we were taught never to show the ‘white feather’ – never to show who you really are, don’t let anyone know you, keep it all under wraps. I believe this was so wrong. It was a code which commanded us to always look well, sound well, and let no one get close enough to see how fragile and vulnerable we really are. So, this song is a step in the other direction, as I try each day of my life to do the opposite to what I was taught. Each day I try to let somebody know who I am, and I also try to listen and to help them be themselves. Music and singing are the best ways I have found to do this.
BORN IN MAYO
(John Hoban)
We were born in Mayo forty years ago,
the biggest job, right now, is letting go.
The past, the future, what’ll the neighbours say.
Those chains that stopped us living for today.
We were born in Mayo forty years ago,
at sixteen from there we were forced to go.
We took the boat to Holyhead, lived in fear, right on the edge.
Digging drains in London in the snow.
Tried to figure out how a boy became a man.
Sleeping rough in the West End in a red van.
Nobody could tell me what I was all about,
so in a few short days, I was back where I began.
Hung out with the rebels, loners, tramps.
Singing on streets, moving with Travellers’ camps.
My best friend turned on me, plainly I could see
the game was over, the crowds were heading home.
Looked for help then I heard the truth.
One man’s story felt the same as mine.
I learned to listen, learned to share.
To do the best I could do.
I forgave myself and then again I met you.
We were born in Mayo forty years ago.
The biggest job, right now, is letting go.
The past, the future, what’ll the neighbours say.
Those chains that stopped
us living for today.
Notes on the song:
The story is about two people initially going their separate ways but by the end of the song, they join forces to walk together on the pathway to freedom and new happiness.
Chapter 7
IRELAND, MOTHER IRELAND
With my fiddle and banjo,
I’ve covered some ground,
from Belfast to Boston,
and dear Achill Sound.
Okemah, Oklahoma to old Santa Fe,
the place I call home,
is ’round the shores of Clew Bay.
(‘Knight of the Road’, John Hoban)
London, with all the rich, diverse, colourful, vibrant songs, the talk and the tunes led me back to visit the four corners of my native land. It led me to seek out the music, the masters, the source, and the hidden glorious world of the spirit. Somehow, the mystery of it all put me in mind of the smokes the patients begged from us kids when we visited ‘The Mental’ in Castlebar. I just kept moving from pillar to post, from town-land to village to city, seeking the old music. Thatched houses, canvas tents, teepees, hippies, benders, alternative this and that, normal folks, but mostly dark, dusty corners where we dropped anchor and congregated in song, dance, music and madness.
This went on and on, and almost to the tragic end for me. It did end tragically for quite a few of my friends. Alcohol and its allies were a constant, even sometimes referred to as ‘the cure’. Some cure. Music again was vital. It soothed my soul and gave me strength. It saved my life on many occasions.
At this stage, I was hanging on for dear life and on a constant diet of music. I was playing the banjo and bouzouki, singing and moving from town to town. But equally important, I was listening to every sort of music that came my way. I’d be staying in different houses (sometimes different counties) every second night depending on where the music would move me to. I would always be listening to other people’s LPs or record collections.
I loved exploring music I’d never heard before. For example, in 1972-73 I was very much into Bob Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks, Andy McGann’s music (the great Irish fidddler in New York), J.S. Bach’s Cello Suites, any flamenco or Cajun music I could hear, John Coltrane, Sandy Denny singing anything, but especially ‘Who Knows Where the Time Goes?’, and more.
In the early 1970s, I met up with Connie Cullen and Red Quigly in the Asgard pub in Westport. They were from Dundalk. They were good singers, and good people. Some friends of theirs also drifted over to the West where it was said ‘the livin’ is easy, fish are jumpin’ and the cotton is high’. Next I was down in Ennis, Cou
nty Clare, busking, listening and learning, when I met Eilis O’Connor and her brothers Gerry and Peter, fiddle players of high renown, also from the town of Dundalk. We got on famously. I also befriended Leon Agnew, the flute player, in Gurteen, County Sligo at a Michael Coleman commemoration weekend. Leon lived in, and played music around Dundalk. So, it seemed inevitable that I would go to visit Dundalk, to check it out, with a one way ticket. I think this was in 1979 – years didn’t register very clearly with me during these hazy days. I felt like a cork on the ocean, like a feather in the wind as I tramped all over the country following the ceol (music). It was leading me by the hand.