Catch him if you can: Brendan Shine is still entertaining after 50 years
BRENDAN Shine nearly fell off his tractor when he discovered he had a fan in Dermot O’Leary, once and future host of The X Factor. In his 2014 memoir, the second generation Irishman cited Shine’s lilting ‘Catch Me If You Can’ as the song that had influenced him most profoundly in his life. As an eight-year old O’Leary was taken by his father to a performance by Shine in Essex only for the youngster to fall asleep before the singer got around to ‘Catch Me’.
In the book, he recounts missing the moment with the gravity of someone sharing a profound childhood trauma.
“It’s extraordinary that the track that is the first stop in my soundtrack is a song about a middleaged farmer effectively ... pimping himself out,” O’Leary would write, quoting Shine’s lyrics at length: “I’m a Paidin, from Tulla bhadin/I’ve got money and acres of land/I’m looking for a honey, with a bit of money/Catch me if you can, me name is Dan, sure I’m yer man”.
“To hear that someone in that position in the entertainment business had been moved by your music was delightful,” says Shine, 69, who, for the past 50 years, has juggled music with running a farm and stints overseeing the family pub in Co Roscommon. “To me, that sort of response is more gratifying than all the gold discs in the world.”
SMOOTH OPERATOR
Those who may have pictured Shine as a D’Unbelievables character brought to life will be surprised by the flinty figure he cuts. Shine is down to earth, with little of the expected twinkling folksiness. And he has a clear understanding why his music has proved so enduring. He was fortunate to come along at the end of the showband era.
Irish audiences were tiring of singers with put-on American accents crooning about Chevrolets and hot-dogs. They craved authenticity. Shine’s songs were exactly what the nation cried out for. They were grounded in the real Ireland: a place of potholed laneways, rainy afternoons and dry conversation at the farm gate. Some might have been put off by the more Father Ted elements of what he was doing. However, you could not deny it expressed a genuine Irishness. He was literally and figuratively rooted in the soil.
“I came to prominence as the show bands were weaning off,” he says.
“They were doing cover versions of poppy stuff. I came along with songs such as ‘Where Three Counties Meet’, ‘O’Brien Has No Place To Go’, ‘Abbeyshrule’. These were songs about real life that people could associate with. They responded to it.”
His biggest hit was, of course, ‘Do You Want Your Lobby Washed Down’, a jaunty dirge imprinted into the consciousness of any Irish person over the age of 40 (close your eyes and you’re six years old again plonked in front of Live at Three while your parents talk about goings-on at mass).
What is perhaps not as widely known — at least among those with a passing awareness of the singer — is that Shine didn’t write ‘Lobby’. It is, in fact, a traditional piece. While the etymology is obscure the best guess is that it originated in West Cork.
Apparently, scrubbing down a ‘lobby’ was for a time accepted as an alternate method of recompense when one could not pay a restaurant bill (the equivalent of offering to wash dishes).
Several versions of the song exist. Shine’s is based on the one disinterred by Jimmy Crowley and Stoker’s Lodge, which he encountered in the early 1970s. He immediately understood that he was destined to record it and that it would be the making of him.
“I knew the song was going to be big,” he says. “It suited me perfectly. When it came out, it really was everywhere. I was touring in England when the Pope visited Ireland. But I remember they had a band play it for the Pope. That was 1979. It really was the song of the year.”
MUSIC IN THE WALLS
Shine was born in Athlone, Co Westmeath, in 1947. Still at school he played in his father’s country band, where his speciality was accordion. They lived next door to a dance hall; some of his earliest memories are of music seeping in through the walls. He never forgot that his first job was to entertain.
He has spent most of his life in Moore, Co Roscommon, where he and his wife Kathleen maintain a farm. Farming has always been therapeutic: when he wishes to relax he goes out into the fields to watch the cattle. He never left, even as his career took off.
“I love where I live. The longest I went away was for two months. I enjoyed touring, but always at the back of my mind was the knowledge I’d be home again,” he said,.
Still, there were setbacks such as the death of his brother and musical collaborator, Owen, who fell down a flight of stairs while touring Birmingham in 1986. Owen was Shine’s bandleader, and his passing was a double setback.
“That was tough,” he says. “He worked with me, he was in charge of the band. That was one of those things that happened. It was certainly difficult for me. What you could say is that it was no tougher for me than for anyone else in that position. It was undoubtedly hard.”
He will be accompanied on his forthcoming tour by his two daughters, Phillipa and Emily (a doctor and psychologist). They’ve performed with him since they were children so that their gigs double as family reunions.
“I’ve had great success but I always focus on what I’m doing right now,” he says.
“ I’ve released 41 or 42 albums. It hasn’t stopped me being ambitious. I always want to do new projects. It is what keeps me going and gets me out of bed in the morning. If you’d told me 50 years ago that I’d still have a career I wouldn’t have believed you. I didn’t think I’d stick it out. However, it’s always been fun and, while I don’t jump around on stage as much as before, I still love what I do.”
- Brendan Shine is at Cork Opera House, June 9, and also plays a number of dates at INEC, Killarney, through the summer
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