This Weekend I’ll Mostly Be Listening to… Maura O’Connell April 26, 2014
Posted by irishelectionliterature in This Weekend I'll Mostly Be Listening to....trackback
This is a strange one in that I’ve never seen her in her own right, the only material of hers I have in the house is from The “A Womens Heart” album yet last year I saw the news that she was going into semi retirement.
I’ve had the pleasure of seeing her duet as a guest with Declan O’Rourke in the Burren and had the sheer luck of twice being in pubs in Clare where she was singing as part of a session. The videos below do not do justice to the depth and character of her voice, nor her charm as a performer. Still she is well worth a listen.
Her website
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The Cedar Lounge Revolution 
When I was eleven years old my father was doing MC at a folk festival in Ballyconneely (MC as in introducing the acts, he wasn’t an early rapper). A young woman and a guy with a guitar asked if they could go on stage and sing a couple of songs during a break in the action. It was Maura O’Connell, she did three numbers, one was by Thom Moore IIRC and she rounded off with a belting version of Two More Bottles of Wine by Emmy Lou Harris.
It was a pretty good festival, Freddie White, Stocktons Wing, Andy Irvine, Phantom Orchestra, Shaskeen and other staples of the era but ended somewhat chaotically as an enormous storm rendered the safe unsafe, there were basically sparks hopping off it. The Fureys, who were the headline act, quite wisely refused to go on and some of the crowd took out their wrath out on the festival organisers and security.
Anyway I’ve always had a soft spot for Maura O’Connell since then. She does a fine line in songs by the great Thom Moore who’d be worth a This Weekend of this own.
Can’t find her version of this song which I love for reasons of local sentimentality among other things but here’s the original.
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I’ve listened to her since the early eighties and it’s a regret of mine that I never had the chance to see her live. She has a wonderful warm-toned voice that I could never get tired of listening to.
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Sorry, since the eighties, not the early eighties.
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Different kind of music but I’m very sorry to hear that DJ Rashad has just died in Chicago at the age of 35. He released two brilliant albums in the last couple of years, innovative, exciting, witty and fun. He was part of the Footwork scene in that city which has produced an amount of good stuff lately. RIP. Not as famous as Frankie Knuckles but I think his legacy will eventually be large.
and
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