Shandrum Céilí Band hitting new notes after Fleadh success
THREE years ago in Sligo, Cork representatives Shandrum Céilí Band took Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann by storm, winning the first of three back-to-back all-Ireland titles a mere eight months after the group’s formation.
Now they are bowing out of competition on a high, with a pristine played-five, won-five unbeaten record since their whirlwind reign began with victory at Fleadh Cheoil Chorcaí 2015.
As the band members head for Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann in Drogheda this week, instead of defending their All-Ireland crown, their mission is to bring the music of North Cork to a wider audience in quite a different setting.
The void left by their absence from the competition stage is filled on another platform at Saturday’s fleadh concert, where the Shandrum’s fans can catch a glimpse of their next project.
“We said three [all-Irelands] is enough,” said accordion player and band leader Alan Finn. “The three-in-a-row hadn’t been done in over 10 years and people had said it would never be done again, so it was kind of a big deal.
“We formed in December 2014 and it was our first year in the competition. It was unheard of to win it straight out. We won the county, we won the Munster, we won the All- Ireland and then we won the All- Ireland again [twice]. We’ve only played five competitions and we’ve won the whole time.”
He rejects notions of a future competitive comeback: “To go again in a couple of years, the pressure would be on, so the competitive side of the band is after being quenched now. We’re happy with what we’ve achieved.”
What’s coming next is a second CD, a follow-up to the Shandrum’s 2017 debut album, The Dawn.
Due for completion by the start of next year, nine tracks are already recorded and will likely be aired when the band share the bill with Téada for Saturday’s concert at Drogheda Dominican Church.
The forthcoming album brings it all back home for Buttevant native Finn and the band, which is a reincarnation of an older Shandrum Céili Band popular in the dancehalls of North Cork from the 1950s to ’70s, and with whom his grandfather sang on occasion.
“There’ll be tunes people will never have heard before,” Finn promised. “They’re unusual tunes from the Boss Murphy Collection.”
The CD will be made up entirely of tunes collected by fiddle player John ‘Boss’ Murphy, (1875-1955), a native of Churchtown, not five miles from Buttevant. His manuscripts of tunes gathered dust until they were edited by Dr Colette Moloney and published in 2003 as The Boss Murphy Musical Legacy.
The tunes proved a perfect fit for the Shandrum, which sprang into existence as a spontaneous response to the passing of Finn’s grandfather, but whose musical roots are deep in the Sliabh Luachra heartland of Freemount.
That village’s Comhaltas branch, Craobh Chrónáin, had already produced Cork’s first All-Ireland céilí band winners, the Allow, in 2007, before Finn led the branch’s Awbeg céilí band to glory in 2012. He now teaches Freemount’s youth groups, his U18 Crossfields Céilí Band attempting their own four-in-a-row in Drogheda this week.
Among generations of musicians taught by Craobh Chrónáin founding chairman Con Herbert, it was Newtownshandrum’s Ger Naughton who suggested forming what became the Shandrum, an idea initially rejected by Finn.
“Ger Naughton said to me around October 2014, ‘Will we get a céilí band together? And I said no. But then my grandfather, Paddy Finn, passed away in October as well, and he was involved with the Shandrum. I rang Ger and I said ‘C’mon so, we’ll get a band together in memory of my grandfather’.
I rang Michael O’Mahony, who was the leader of the original Shandrum, and I asked him would he have a problem with us calling it the Shandrum and he said no, he’d be more than happy to see it revived.
While continuing the musical legacies of O’Mahony — who passed away last year — of his bandmates, of Paddy Finn and Boss Murphy, the Shandrum’s focus is on a future where céilí bookings are interspersed with the likes of Saturday’s ‘sit-down’ concert and a first appearance next month at Electric Picnic.
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