View from the Green Room: Box Set from Sharon Shannon
Sharon Shannon
Sharon Shannon’s enthusiasm for her music is infectious. "Well," says the long-haired blond box-player. "Ye’re great to come and ye don’t know how lucky ye are to have this magnificent theatre here in Waterford. I just love it here." And then she hitches the box, sits on her high-chair like a judge in session and off she goes.
Her approach is dead simple. "We’ll horse into it," says she and then it’s heads down and drive on for the finishing line.
It’s like a musical version of the Donovan brothers’ approach really: "pull hard and row like a dog!"
She’s going to be playing some stuff from the new album but "don’t worry" says she "all ye’re favourites are in there as well."
And then it’s off with an opening set of three reels with her band of Cillian Shannon on acoustic guitar and Gerry Banjo O’Connell on…well… banjo! What else? Her concert choices have all got names that resonate with the pieces…Wild Boys, A hole in the pipe, The Piper, Frenchies and Bangees. And the divil knows all. The audience instantly recognise them and join in with foot-thumps, rhythmic claps and shouts of ‘Up the Déise’. Great craic!
The song titles are really launching pads for a selection of jigs, hornpipes, reels, slow airs and even a waltz or two.
It’s her divil-may-care approach that makes her music so exciting. Sharon puts it all down to the time she spent working with The Waterboys.
There were no rules as to the type of music played. She could move very easily from a punk song to an old timey American waltz to Irish jigs and reels and onto New Orleans-type blues.
She’s got a guest singer with her. Róisín Broderick who’s just the ticket to get the audience to lilt along to her tunes.
She’s a natural storyteller, too, and the audience immediately warms to her folksy, how’s-it-goin’-like approach.
Shannon’s great strength is her innate feel for a tune. It’s the ornamentation that makes it all work. And there are musical surprises everywhere.
She can take a melody, drag it around on a variety of rhythms, wander off on tangents and yet remain absolutely faithful to the tune.
It’s no wonder that the Clare woman’s debut album ‘Sharon Shannon’ in 1991 was the best-selling album of traditional Irish music ever released in Ireland and that she won the lifetime achievement award at the 2009 Meteor Awards.
A good night at the Royal from a superb box-player.
