Johnny Moynihan in Ballymore

Calling all lovers of traditional music. Johnny Moynihan and friends will play an intimate acoustic gig in Mick Murphy's pub in Ballymore this Monday night Feb 27 2006.

Born in Phibsboro, Dublin, Johnny dropped out of architectural college. Though remarkably young when he became well-known in 1966 as a member of Sweeney's Men, he was actually part of the pre-Dubliners sessions in O'Donoghues. While Luke Kelly was on a visit home from England around 1961, it was Johnny Moynihan who introduced him to O'Donoghues and encouraged him to go to the Fleadh in Miltown Malbay.

Moynihan introduced the bouzouki to Irish music in the mid 1960s. Andy Irvine picked it up from him and also introduced Donal Lunny to the instrument. Moynihan told Nollaig O Fionghaoile in an interview: "Being aware of my interest in traditional music, Tony French brought a Greek bouzouki back from holidays and offered it to me ... I was coming to the bouzouki as a mandolin player. I found the mandolin a tight little instrument that crucified your fingers, whereas the bouzouki was nice and loose and forgiving ... in the context of Sweeney's Men it was suitable to what we were doing."

With Andy Irvine he went to Galway in the summer of 1966 and persuaded singer and guitarist Joe Dolan to join them in a new group called Sweeney's Men. Moynihan and Dolan were both students in Dublin and veterans of the O'Donoghue's sessions in the early 1960s. In 1967 they released a single Old Maid in the Garrett which went into the Irish Top Ten as did the 1968 follow-up Waxies Dargle. Sweeney's Men is accepted as one of the most influential groups in Irish music to emerge after the Clancys and Dubliners.

After various personnel changes, Sweeney's Men was composed of just Johnny Moynihan and Terry Woods who released Tracks of Sweeney in 1969.

In 1973 he again teamed up with Andy Irvine in Planxty after Donal Lunny left the group. He was also a member of De Danann. He has influenced Irish folk singing and arrangement. He has backed up many singers on recordings including Annie Briggs on several albums and Jane Tabor and Maddy Prior on The Silly Sisters. He also plays the fiddle, tin whistle and melodeon. He has a soft nasal quality to his singing voice, reminiscent of another great Dublin singer, Frank Harte.

This is part of the usual Ballymore Inn Gigs, but has moved to this smaller more intimate setting as the promoter feels (quite rightly in my opinion) that the back room of the Inn is perhaps too big and the atmosphere of a trad gig might be lost in it.

However, I must take the opportunity to say that the renovations in the Ballymore Inn have completely transformed the back room and it is now a wonderful music venue, having been a barn of a place previously. Well done to our hosts Barry and Georgina O'Sullivan.

Monday night's gig in Mick's will be a cracker and well worth the onerous six-mile trip to Ballymore. I unfortunately won't be there due to pressures of the day job turned night job, but I have seen Johnny before and he is undoubtedly one of trad's finest performers. Enjoy.
 
Roy Thompson.