Homecoming show to celebrate new albums

Fans of quality trad and folk music are in for a treat next Thursday night, September 20, when Irish-American supergroup, Cherish the Ladies join forces with Galway’s Don Stiffe and a host of guests for a concert to launch two new CDs.

Heart of the Home is the 17th album from Cherish the Ladies, whose American-born co-founder Joanie Madden has strong Portumna roots, and whose members include Mirella Murray from Claddaghduff, outside Clifden.

Singer-songwriter Don Stiffe, who tours extensively with the group, will also launch his CD, Longing for the Day, at the concert in the city’s Galmont Hotel – formerly the Radisson, which is part of an Irish tour.

Mary Coogan and Joanie founded the band in 1985 and both now have houses in West Clare – Joanie’s mother, Nelly, is from Miltown Malbay. The initial plan had been to settle in her dad Joe’s home place of Portumna but that changed after he died nine years ago, following an accident, she explains.

It was tough, but she’s grateful that “we got him into a studio a few months before that, in Spiddal with Charlie Lennon and recorded A Galway Afternoon. It was hard to get him in there and it’s great to have that recording”.

Composer and flute-player Joanie pays tribute to her father’s roots in Heart of the Home’s stunning first track, a march followed by a reel, entitled The Portumna Workhouse and The Hurling Boys of Portumna. And she has connections with those hurling boys. Joe’s uncle Mick Kenny captained Galway’s first victorious All-Ireland hurling team – in 1923 – while her dad and her uncles also played.

Joe, an All-Ireland winning musician, emigrated to the US in 1958 and Joanie was one of seven children born to himself and Nelly. They lived in the Bronx and her father was highly influential in New York’s music scene, heading up a 12-piece band, Joe Madden’s Orchestra for many years, having inherited it from Paddy Killoran. Joe had joined the Sligo-born fiddle-player’s band after moving to New York and music was central to the Madden household.

While the Maddens grew up in an Irish-American community, Joanie is the only one of her siblings to play traditional music – the others weren’t interested and her father didn’t push them into it, she says.

“He noticed I had music in me, but I had a troubled beginning,” she adds with a laugh.

For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.

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