{"id":665123,"date":"2026-10-25T18:02:16","date_gmt":"2026-10-25T18:02:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/665123\/"},"modified":"2026-10-25T18:02:16","modified_gmt":"2026-10-25T18:02:16","slug":"andy-irvine-on-donal-lunny-he-glued-planxty-together-and-made-the-structure-work-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/665123\/","title":{"rendered":"Andy Irvine on D\u00f3nal Lunny: \u2018He glued Planxty together and made the structure work\u2019 \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the basement of the International Bar in Dublin, Andy Irvine<\/a>, of Sweeney\u2019s Men, Planxty<\/a>, Mozaik, LAPD and Usher\u2019s Island, is playing me the songs of Woody Guthrie<\/a> while wearing an Industrial Workers of the World T-shirt.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is all good practice for tonight, because I\u2019m playing in Tower Records and I\u2019m not quite ready,\u201d he says, and his wife, Kumiko, laughs.<\/p>\n

They met in 2000, when she was roped in to help organise a tour for Irvine and the late D\u00f3nal Lunny<\/a> in Japan<\/a>. Irvine is 84 years old and about to go on tour once more. He is holding his guitar-shaped bouzouki and has a harmonica upside down in the harness in the same style as Guthrie. He recently released Devoted, a record made up of Guthrie songs and one of his own that\u2019s a tribute to the American singer.<\/p>\n

\u201cI discovered Woody Guthrie when I was about 16,\u201d Irvine says. \u201cFirst of all, I was fascinated by the music he played, and I took that on board. And then gradually, as I got to know more and more about Woody, I took his politics on board as well. I took everything on board in the end.\u201d<\/p>\n

Guthrie\u2019s music speaks remarkably well to the current age, with songs warning against fascism, decrying injustice, lamenting the plight of refugees and urging the people to unite against the tycoons who exploit them. <\/p>\n

\u201cWoody wanted to see a more equal world,\u201d Irvine says. \u201cIn the 1940s, when he was travelling around in the south [of the United States], there was segregation. Woody used to play with Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, two black men, and he insisted that they all go into white places.\u201d<\/p>\n

Irvine was obsessed with Guthrie as a teenager. \u201cI met Pete Seeger<\/a> in London\u201d \u2013 Irvine\u2019s family lived there \u2013 \u201cand I asked him where Woody was, because there was no way of finding out these things in those days,\u201d he says. \u201cThere was no internet or even an encyclopedia to tell you.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo I found out that he was in hospital in New Jersey with Huntington\u2019s disease, which he had inherited from his mother, and he was no longer able to sing and play.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe couldn\u2019t write, but a lovely woman called Sid Gleason, who lived in East Orange, New Jersey, with her husband used to take him out at weekends.<\/p>\n

\"AndyAndy Irvine. Photograph: Enda O’Dowd <\/p>\n

\u201cSid was great with me. We became really close friends. She was the one who called me Andy first. She said, \u2018Oh, Andrew sounds so formal. Do you mind if I call you Andy\u2026?\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cThe letters to Woody Guthrie were all discovered about 10 or 15 years ago, when they knocked down Greystone Park\u201d \u2013 a psychiatric hospital in New Jersey \u2013 \u201cand they\u2019re all now in the Woody Guthrie archive\u2026<\/p>\n

\u201cI was 16 or 17, and the things I said \u2026 I shiver with embarrassment.\u201d<\/p>\n

One evening at Peggy Seeger and Ewan MacColl\u2019s club in London, Guthrie\u2019s friend Ramblin\u2019 Jack Elliott played. <\/p>\n

[\u00a0Peggy Seeger: \u2018I met Bob Dylan before he was Bob Dylan. He came for my autograph\u2019Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople rushed towards Jack, all these extrovert people, and I thought, well, there\u2019s no point in me joining them, because I\u2019m not one of them. So I stalked him all the way back to his house and noted the address. I went home and wrote him a letter with my phone number, and he rang me up the next day and said, \u2018Come on over,\u2019 and I couldn\u2019t believe my luck.<\/p>\n

\u201cI rode over on the bicycle. I was 17. They didn\u2019t know what they were letting themselves in for. I\u2019d go over every morning. I\u2019d get there about 9.30 or 10am and I\u2019d bang on the door. And June, Jack\u2019s wife, would get up and she\u2019d come to the door and go, \u2018Oh, it\u2019s you! Come in\u2026\u2019<\/p>\n

\"WoodyWoody Guthrie in 1943. Photograph: US Library of Congress <\/p>\n

\u201cJack was hanging out of Woody when he was about my age or a little bit older, so I don\u2019t know if that\u2019s the reason he accepted my friendship, but we became really good friends.\u201d <\/p>\n

He plays Ramblin\u2019 Round<\/a>, a song Guthrie wrote about dust bowl refugees in the 1930s. He plays a bit of another Guthrie song, The 1913 Massacre<\/a>, about a real attack on miners and their families by a mine owner\u2019s goons. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a great last line,\u201d he says. \u201c\u2018See what your greed for money has done\u2026\u2019 Everything wrong with the human race is in that line.\u201d<\/p>\n

Next Irvine plays Wallace Taylor Train\/Bet on Wallace, a hybrid of two campaign songs Guthrie wrote for Henry Wallace, Franklin D Roosevelt\u2019s vice-president before he was ditched in favour of Harry Truman. <\/p>\n

This meant Truman was the man in office when Roosevelt died. So Wallace ran independently for president as an out-and-out socialist candidate. He lost. <\/p>\n

\u201cThat was the end of any chance of progressive politics [in the United States]. The reason [Wallace] didn\u2019t get the vice-presidency of 1944 was because a lot of the Democratic senators and House representatives from the south disagreed with his policy of ending segregation.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt would have been interesting to see how he would have managed if he had been president of the USA.\u201d<\/p>\n

Irvine also plays Mister Charlie Lindbergh, an attack on the fascism-curious American aviator. It contains the line, \u201cThey say America First, but they mean America Next.\u201d \u201cThat song was not released on record until the 1960s,\u201d Irvine says. \u201cI imagine it might have been something to do with libel possibilities.\u201d<\/p>\n

In his own Guthrie tribute song, Never Tire of the Road, he also quotes the singer\u2019s refrain \u201cAll you fascists bound to lose\u201d. \u201cI sang that at the end of [an American] show, and everybody joined in with gusto.\u201d Irvine laughs. \u201cThere probably wasn\u2019t one Republican in the audience.\u201d<\/p>\n

What is he thinking as he plays this music? <\/p>\n

\u201cAt this moment I\u2019m probably thinking, \u2018What\u2019s the next verse and where am I on the fingerboard?\u2019\u201d He laughs. \u201cThey become more dramatic and emotional as time goes on.\u201d<\/p>\n

Guthrie\u2019s egalitarianism is what attracted Irvine, he says. \u201cWhen I was quite young I used to get up early and travel around the block of flats that we lived in with the porter. He\u2019d be emptying the bins, and I\u2019d be fascinated by what [would] be in the bins. I collected things\u2026 <\/p>\n

\u201cI really liked Jack very much, but my parents were saying you shouldn\u2019t really be hanging around with this working-class man, and I didn\u2019t understand that. So I think I had it in me anyway. But, yeah, Woody shaped it.\u201d<\/p>\n

His mother was the musical comedy performer Felice Lascelles, and Irvine became a child actor. \u201cMy mother was very showy. A couple of drinks and she\u2019d sing at the drop of a hat. And everybody loved her except her miserable 10-year-old son, who was embarrassed by almost everything she did.\u201d<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Phil Coulter: \u2018The song Congratulations has fed, clothed and educated my children\u2019Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Irvine doesn\u2019t seem particularly showbiz. \u201cNo, I absolutely hate showbiz.\u201d<\/p>\n

Is his more earthy and introverted musical career a response to that? <\/p>\n

\u201cIt could be \u2026 I\u2019m not an extrovert at all, and in fact I get very nervous on stage, which is why I\u2019m having a drink now. If I\u2019m playing well I love it. I love myself \u2026 I think I want to be loved, you know? And if the audience loves me and loves my music, I\u2019m brought back up to self-confidence zero.\u201d <\/p>\n

He smiles. \u201cI\u2019m usually below that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Why? <\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know. I\u2019m a nervous man. It\u2019s no hardship. Ronnie Drew<\/a> [of The Dubliners] was also really nervous. He\u2019d get sick before going on the stage.\u201d<\/p>\n

Irvine met Drew when he came back to Dublin at the age of 20 and found a new ballad scene around O\u2019Donoghue\u2019s Bar. <\/p>\n

\"Sweeney'sSweeney’s Men: Andy Irvine (centre) with Johnny Moynihan and Terry Woods. Photograph: Brian Shuel\/Redferns <\/p>\n

\u201cAt that time almost no pubs allowed music. Even in O\u2019Donoghue\u2019s, a year or two before I arrived, Johnny Moynihan [who became his bandmate in Sweeney\u2019s Men] would play the tin whistle under his coat and Maureen O\u2019Donoghue would be going, \u2018Who\u2019s playing music there?\u2019 I think by the time I arrived O\u2019Donoghue\u2019s allowed music, and that was the big attraction of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

He loved The Dubliners. \u201cThey were very kind to me, and welcoming, and when they were away on tour O\u2019Donoghue\u2019s wasn\u2019t quite the same,\u201d Irvine says. \u201cRonnie giving out yards to people\u2026<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the early 1960s Dublin was a very conservative place. And people were very much ruled by the Catholic hierarchy. Sometimes if you went out in the street with your jeans and a beard, people would look at you and go tsk-tsk.<\/p>\n

\u201cO\u2019Donoghue\u2019s was a planet where you were among your own people.\u201d <\/p>\n

The toilet there even made a musical drone that Irvine liked to sing to, he says. <\/p>\n

\u201cI was very disappointed when I went in last year and the drone wasn\u2019t there any more.\u201d<\/p>\n

Why did he leave acting? <\/p>\n

\u201cI hadn\u2019t enjoyed it since I was about 14 or 15, when the dreaded puberty hit me and I suddenly became a lot more self-conscious\u2026 When I played music with Johnny and other people it was a lifestyle. I didn\u2019t have any ambitions. We very rarely played for money. Johnny had a set of rules by which he lived, and I kind of agreed with him.\u201d<\/p>\n

Moynihan brought the bouzouki to Irish music. <\/p>\n

\u201cOne weekend he came over with a bouzouki, and that was the beginning of it. We didn\u2019t like it at all. It was a Greek bouzouki, and I can\u2019t remember what we didn\u2019t like about it. But he then was told of a flat-back instrument of the same type available from a maker in London, and he flew over there and he bought it, and that was the beginning of the Irish bouzouki.\u201d<\/p>\n

It became Moynihan, Irvine and, later, Lunny\u2019s go-to instrument. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe trouble with the guitar, if you played a G chord, it had too many thirds in it. And thirds were not good if you were accompanying reels and jigs.\u201d<\/p>\n

When did Irvine realise he was a \u201cprofessional musician\u201d? <\/p>\n

\u201cSweeney\u2019s Men was formed in 1966. The summer of 1966 was magnificent. We travelled around Ireland\u2026 I keep diaries quite often but never when things are going really wonderfully. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a great shame I can\u2019t remember too much about it. We came back to Dublin at the end of the summer of 1966, and we shared a house in the North Strand, and we got almost no work and we were really rat poor. <\/p>\n

\u201cI think that\u2019s when I decided I was a professional musician, in the attic with nothing to eat.\u201d <\/p>\n

They were managed by Des Kelly, the leader of the Capitol Showband, who got them gigs. They often played at the interval during showband gigs with terrible sound set-ups. <\/p>\n

\u201cI remember singing our hit song The Old Maid in the Garret\u2026 I set off in a key hoping it was the right one. At the end of the first verse I discovered it wasn\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n

Why did Irvine leave that band? <\/p>\n

\u201cAlong with the rest of European youth, I got this buzz to get out on the road, hitchhiked to Bulgaria and Romania, and the rest is history,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cA \u2018sunburnt thumb\u2019 was what Woody used to call it. As Galway Joe Dolan [another Sweeney\u2019s Men founder] wrote, \u2018Why we\u2019re travelling, I don\u2019t know, just pack up your bag and get up and go.\u2019 <\/p>\n

\u201cThe realisation that one could go to all these places and see them without having a load of money, young people all over Europe in 1967, 1968 all discovered that at the same time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Irvine has always been an internationalist, happy to play Irish music, American music, Scottish music and Balkan music on this Irish-Greek instrument<\/a>. <\/p>\n

He\u2019s surprised it wasn\u2019t more controversial among the purists. <\/p>\n

\u201cIn 1970 I worked up this song, which I\u2019d learned most of from Eddie Butcher, The Plains of Kildare\u2026 Part of [the arrangement] is in seven-eight [time] \u2026 I remember playing a gig in the Neptune rowing club, and I thought \u2018God knows what they\u2019ll think. People like [the accordion player] Tony MacMahon might come up and hit me.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

He laughs. I tell Irvine that I find those time signatures difficult to play and that I\u2019m more comfortable in four-four or three-four time. He laughs. \u201cGood for you. I\u2019m not that good in four-four.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"AndyAndy Irvine. Photograph: Enda O’Dowd <\/p>\n

Planxty first came together to accompany Christy Moore on his album Prosperous; then Moore had the idea that they should form a permanent ensemble. There was a magic to it. <\/p>\n

\u201cI think Christy and Liam [O\u2019Flynn] and myself just did what we did when we played solo, but D\u00f3nal [Lunny] glued it all together and made the structure work \u2026 We were just chemically the right four people.\u201d<\/p>\n

Irvine and Lunny subsequently worked together on many other projects. Lunny \u201cjust gets into everybody\u2019s brain\u201d, he says. \u201cWhoever he\u2019s playing with, he plays exactly what they would like to hear.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lunny, who is unwell when Irvine and I talk \u2013 it was announced on Friday afternoon that he had died<\/a>, at the age of 79, after a long illness \u2013 was the subject of a moving documentary, In Time, by Nuala O\u2019Connor<\/a>. Irvine saw Lunny recently. \u201cHe was in great form … The number of bands on hold because of D\u00f3nal [being ill] is in the millions.\u201d<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Siobh\u00e1n Long: D\u00f3nal Lunny\u2019s legacy will be his openness to new ways of interpreting old musicOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Irvine is heartened by the way younger people keep finding his music. In 2005, when Planxty re-formed, they benefited from a No Disco documentary and book about the band from the writer and promoter Leagues O\u2019Toole. <\/p>\n

\u201cI remember playing in the National Concert Hall and the first two rows were all people under 25 who wouldn\u2019t have been born the first time we played.\u201d <\/p>\n

Some of Irvine\u2019s oldest material still gets the best response. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe West Coast of Clare, the first song I ever wrote, continues to be the audience\u2019s favourite of my songs, which is a little bit annoying.\u201d He laughs. \u201cI sang it with John Doyle in North Carolina quite recently, and the audience actually gave it a standing ovation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Does he consider the rearrangements he does of songs from the traditional canon to be a form of writing? <\/p>\n

\u201cI might change the odd word. I might even change the odd tune\u2026 I\u2019m not averse to meddling.\u201d <\/p>\n

When Irvine is working on a song, he says, he goes \u201cto a different dimension.\u201d <\/p>\n

Of the current wave of young Irish trad acts, he particularly likes Daoir\u00ed Farrell<\/a> and Ye Vagabonds<\/a>. He still plays with the Swedish group Quilty; they\u2019re about to tour Ireland together. <\/p>\n

\u201cMy latest excitement became Swedish polskas and fiddle music. It\u2019s very odd. A polska seems to go on about four bars longer than it should.\u201d <\/p>\n

Does he have any thoughts on the music industry? \u201cI\u2019m not a fan of the music industry. One hopes for success. But it\u2019s not the most important thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

What is the most important thing? <\/p>\n

\u201cDoing it and loving it.\u201d He laughs. \u201cAnd getting loved for it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Why do this album now, almost 70 years after first discovering Guthrie? <\/p>\n

\u201cI was always a little bit aggrieved that the powers that be recognised so many people as being Woody Guthrie fans and not me. So that might have been one of the reasons. I thought, \u2018Right, f**k this. I\u2019m weighing in.\u2019\u201d <\/p>\n

Andy Irvine and Quilty begin their tour of Ireland at Belfast International Arts Festival on Wednesday, November 4th, followed by dates in D\u00fan Laoghaire and Naul, Co Dublin; Newbridge, Co Kildare; Kilmacow, Co Kilkenny; Galway; Limerick; Cork City; and Clonakilty, Co Cork. Andy Irvine also plays with Ois\u00edn Leech in Navan, Co Meath, on Saturday, November 21st. More details on andyirvine.com<\/a>. His album Devoted: Songs of Woody Guthrie<\/a> is released by the Last Music Company<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the basement of the International Bar in Dublin, Andy Irvine, of Sweeney\u2019s Men, Planxty, Mozaik, LAPD and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":665124,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[20529,12486,20528,93,120269,61,60,116442,124479,281508,91462,154606,281509],"class_list":["post-665123","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-andy-irvine","tag-christy-moore","tag-donal-lunny","tag-entertainment","tag-ewan-maccoll","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-national-concert-hall","tag-peggy-seeger","tag-ronnie-drew","tag-the-dubliners","tag-woody-guthrie","tag-ye-vagabonds"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/665123","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=665123"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/665123\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/665124"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=665123"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=665123"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=665123"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}