'We played Prince’s club in Minneapolis, and the crew were from that gig in Cork'
Mike Hanrahan, left, and the other members of Stockton's Wing have just released Hometown.
There is one upside to making an album during a pandemic. With so much empty time, you can spend forever filling in the details and obsessing over the minutiae of the recording, says Stockton’s Wing’s Mike Hanrahan.
“It was a blessing in disguise. We actually spent more time mixing the tracks than Def Leppard took to record an album,” laughs Hanrahan from his home in Deansgrange in Dublin. “We were very privileged to have that.”
Hometown is a collection of live recordings taken from two concerts by the veteran folk-rockers, in Ennis and Dublin in early 2020. Showcasing material from across the band’s career, it is reminder of their unique blend of the ancient and modern. Folk collides with funk, confessional songwriting with rock ’n roll.
But if mixing genres seems perfectly logical today, that wasn’t always the case. “A section of people couldn't get their head around it,” says Hanrahan, recalling Stockton’s Wing’s early years. “We were really lucky in a sense – we were writing pop songs. 2FM was just starting. The DJs took to us. Larry Gogan played us. We got to a younger audience. The few we lost of an older crew, we gained multitudes of people.”
Contradictions were baked into the project from the start. Stockton’s Wing were formed in Ennis in 1977 by fiddle player Maurice Lennon, flutist Paul Roche, bodhrán player Tommy Hayes and Kieran Hanrahan on banjo.
All four were acclaimed trad players. And yet the group’s name came from Bruce Springsteen and a lyric from his Born To Run album: “Slow dancing in the dark on the beach at Stockton’s Wing”. Sitting by the hearth in rainy Ennis, they looked across the Atlantic for inspiration. And they found it in Springsteen’s oeuvre of stifling small town life on the New Jersey shoreline.
Mike was Kieran’s younger brother whom the band recruited as singer in 1979. He led the troupe through their glory years in the 1980s and early 1990s when they pioneered a sort of Celtic Yacht Rock – mixing Steely Dan with Planxty, The Chieftains with The Doobie Brothers.
Those who “got” Stockton’s Wing adored them. And they ticked off a string of notable achievements. They came within a whisker of going on Top of the Pops when they broke the UK top 40 with their 1982 single, Beautiful Affair.
Alas, the song went down rather than up the following week and the BBC looked elsewhere. Six years later, in July 1988, they opened for Michael Jackson at his two shows at Páirc Uí Chaoimh. They later embarked on a victory lap of sorts by supporting Prince at the same venue in July 1990.
“You could not but remember the sensation of walking out on a stage like that. You’re in Cork. They’re all there to see Jackson. Normally, with support artists, it’s like ‘ah yeah, carry on lads’. When we walked out on to the stage, it was like the Cork crowd was saying, ‘here’s one of our own’. I’ll never forget that welcome. That stayed with me. And having Jackson’s band sidestage, boogying along. That was a real buzz for us as musicians.”
The Prince concert stands out for different reasons. “We never met Prince. We had to fly off after the gig. We went from the sublime to the ridiculous. We went from a packed Páirc Uí Chaoimh, up to a windy and rain-drenched Salthill in Galway. With nobody there because they were all sheltering from the rain."
They’d got on well with Prince’s crew. And it was a relationship that endured. “We played Prince’s club in Minneapolis quite a few times. And the crew were there, some from that gig in Cork,” says Hanrahan. “They came over to say hello to us. They’d never heard a band like Stockton’s Wing.We arrived with banjos and fiddles and drums and keyboards. And this funky Irish music. They heard us and they were like, ‘hang on this is cool’.”
Cork has a pivotal place in Hanrahan’s life. In the early 2000s he worked for several years as chair of the Irish Musical Rights Organisation (IMRO). It was a challenging time for music in Ireland, with internet file-sharing posing a seemingly existential threat to the record business. And so by the time he stepped down he was burnt out and ready for something new.
That something new turned out to be career as a chef. The journey started at Ballymaloe Cookery School in East Cork. On his first day there, he understood immediately he’d made the right decision.
“I loved it. I suddenly noticed, ‘nobody knows me here at all’. I loved that. I felt safe in a place nobody knew me. I had no history. Those first few days it was a joy. Liberating. I knew I’d made the right decision.”
He spent several years away from music. And when comedian Pat Shortt opened a gastropub in Castlemartyr, Hanrahan jumped at the opportunity to oversee the menu. However, his love for writing and playing crept back and he was soon performing at nearby venues such as the Blackbird in Ballycotton.
“I hooked up with a guy in Cork, Seán Kelleher – the most beautiful songwriter. We were kindred spirits. We used to sing and play together. We’d play in Ballycotton. He was really good to me. He encouraged me. Another guy from Cork, Roy Buckley, a ballad singer, dragged me out of the kitchen in Shortt’s one night to sing a song. I hadn’t been up on stage for a few years. That got me back into it.”
He gave up being a chef several years ago and has returned to music full time. No two industries suffered through the pandemic as starkly as hospitality and live music – and Hanrahan feels for both. Which is why he was so thrilled to recently headline the National Stadium in Dublin as part of Temple Bar Trad Fest. Stockton’s Wing had played once or twice when restrictions were temporarily rolled back last autumn. But the January 27 show on North Circular Road, which came after all restrictions were lifted, felt different.
“There was a definite sense of relief – the audience was as much up for at as we were. I knew it was going to make for a great gig. And it did.”
- Hometown is out now
