Cracking show in store from leading folk bands

Arts Week with Judy Murphy

For a band that was set up as “a bit of craic” Galway foursome We Banjo 3, have become a force to be reckoned with. And they are teaming up with a similar force, Four Men and a Dog, for what should be a memorable concert in Monroe’s Live on Thursday, January 14.

We Banjo 3 was the brainchild of Corofin native Enda Scahill, one of Ireland’s top banjo-players and teachers who “wanted something built around the banjo that was fun”.

While working as an Environmental Health Officer with the HSE, he gathered together fellow banjo-players Martin and David Howley and they took to the road when time allowed, playing their own blend of Irish, old-time and bluegrass music.

The banjo isn’t exactly a fashionable instrument and some people thought they were mad, but when they played a lunchtime gig at the 2009 Galway Arts Festival in the Róisín Dubh at which people were turned away, they knew they had struck a chord.

Their initial success was partly due to talent and hard work, and partly due to serendipity.

“Martin entered us into the 2011 Music Network Award and when I was driving to Dublin for the event, [music expert] Mick Moloney was on the radio talking about the history of the banjo,” recalls Enda.  “For the competition, I spoke about its history and we won, not just because of the music but because of our passion for the banjo,” he says with a laugh.

Joking aside, Enda realised early on that a banjo band needed a reason to exist beyond playing tunes.

And so their first album The Roots of the Banjo Tree was “very much about the history of the banjo, its place in Irish music and the influence of Irish music on the banjo”.

It incorporated bluegrass and old-time as well as Irish and became one of the most lauded folk albums of 2012, winning the Irish Times Trad Album of the Year award.

When the three met the director of the Milwaukee Irish Festival, Ed Ward at an event in Wisconsin, he invited them to play at “the biggest shop window in Irish culture” on the basis of their Wisconsin performance.

Despite “freaking out a bit” at the prospect of Milwaukee, they didn’t waste the opportunity.

Enda’s brother Fergal, a multi-instrumentalist and professional musician who has played and recorded with some of Ireland’s top performers, had featured on The Roots of the Banjo Tree and he joined them for the Milwaukee performance.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.