John Sheahan of the Dubliners told David Hennessy about a new stage show celebrating the music of the iconic ballad band.
More than a decade after the Dubliners called time on more than 50 years of touring, a new stage show will celebrate the legacy of the iconic band.
Fiddle player John Sheahan chatted to us about the launch of The Dubliners Encore: A show that celebrates the music, songs, and story of The Dubliners.
The Dubliners released 30 original albums, selling 40 million records, and playing sold-out tours. John and his late great bandmates Luke Kelly, Ronnie Drew, Barney McKenna and Ciarán Bourke, caught the imagination taking traditional Irish music from the parlour and the pub to the world stage.
A member of the band for 50 years, John has been working behind the scenes to create a show that authentically brings The Dubliners’ story to life on stage packing 50 years of songs, stories, and craic into just one night.
John Sheahan told The Irish World: “It’s going to be an interesting show, I think.
“When it came to the end of 2012, that was the end of the Dubliners’ touring period after 50 years on the road and a lot of people were lamenting the fact that they wouldn’t see us ever again: That’s the end of an era and the end of the soundtrack of their youth and all that kind of thing.
“And my daughter Ceoladh came up with the idea.
“She said, ‘Daddy, why don’t we put together a special show of songs interwoven with history and anecdotes, video clips and archival footage showing the whole history of the group.
“That’s how the idea started.
“I said, ‘If you’re willing to do a bit of talent scouting and come up with five guys who would be capable of representing the original group..’
“So she did that and was very successful in the choice of singers and musicians that she came up with.”
The show is directed and produced by Phil Coulter, Maurice Sweeney and Ceoladh Sheahan.
Maurice Sweeney is a renowned film and television director. He directed the award-winning documentary John Sheahan: A Dubliner so he has a deep understanding of the history and story of the Dubliners. He has also won five IFTAs.
Ceoladh Sheahan, John’s daughter, is a multi-award-winning film and television producer.
Phil Coulter, who produced six of The Dubliners’ original albums as well as writing some of their biggest hits, returns as the show’s Musical Director.
“We’ve been rehearsing for the last couple of years with Phil Coulter.
“You would know Phil Coulter, The Town I Love so Well man. He produced six of the original Dubliners’ albums back in the 70s and he came on board with his experience in music and record production just to make sure that the sound was faithful to the original sound.”
There will be emotional moments for you, won’t there in seeing your late bandmates brought back to life?
“There will be.
“Even during the rehearsals, it was quite emotional listening to someone very, very close to Luke.
“James Gallagher, the singer they got to represent Luke, is very, very close to Luke’s voice and even his stature and presence on the stage.
“And then the same for Killian who represents Ronnie: Similar voice to Ronnie but Just his own natural voice happened to be in the same kind of genre as Ronnie’s.
“What we didn’t want was actors who would imitate the original sounds.
“We wanted guys who were doing it naturally themselves, and even the banjo player turned out to be quite like Barney in character and general appearance.
“He was even late for the first rehearsal as Barney would have been!
“I don’t know if you heard that one.
“Barney was about four hours late for a recording session one time and he comes in, apologises and says, ‘Could we start with a break?’
“Barneyisms, that’s what we call them.
“He came out with some hilarious stuff at times.
“I rang him up one day, he was in hospital for some tests. I used to ring him up every day just to keep in touch and said, ‘Any test today?’
“Barney said, ‘Yeah, they did a brain scan, found nothing’.”
It must be good to talk about your late pals. You were like brothers, weren’t you?
“We were like a family. We were like five brothers working together.
“And yeah, it was that connection between us where you could nearly guess what the next fella was going to say.
“I’d be doing a duet with Barney and we may have pre-arranged to do each tune twice over.
“I would feel at the end of the first one Barney was going to say ‘again’ when he was getting into the spirit and the mood of the tune.
“And that’s exactly what would happen nine times out of 10.
“You could nearly tell the fella’s mood in the morning just by looking at him.
“You could tell if a fella was in his morning mood, grumpy or friendly.”
So with this show is it nearly the case that you can close your eyes and think it is Luke, Barney, Ronnie, Ciaran etc?
“Very, very close to that, David.
“Yeah, the sound is very, very faithful to the original sound.
“It’s interesting to see it all coming together.
“It’s really a tribute to the originals, Luke and Ronnie and Barney and Ciaran, and even the fiddle player who represents myself (Aidan Connolly): Similar kind of a personality.
“During rehearsals, I was able to sit in with him and give him some tips that he might not have thought of in accompanying songs, tips that I developed over the years myself.
“There’s a great connection between everybody for five guys who hadn’t worked together.
“You could see them coming together very much as a group and getting on well together.
“It is an interesting, interesting project.”
It is 60 years now since you joined The Dubliners in 1964…
“That’s right and there’s quite a few anecdotes and bits to history and stories, including the story about myself when I left my good pensionable job in the Electricity Supply Board and we had a meeting that evening to discuss the future. Now that I was free, we could take on a lot more work and that kind of thing.
“But during the meeting, a row broke out and the group broke up in front of my very eyes.
“So here I am driving home with Bob Lynch and saying, ‘What the hell am I after doing? I’m after giving up my good pensionable job today and the group has broken up’.
“And the next morning, I got a phone call from Ronnie saying, ‘Are you okay for Friday? We have a gig down the country’.
“And I said, ‘Yeah, of course I’m okay but I thought the group broke up last night’.
“’Ah, don’t take any notice of that. That happens every three or four weeks’.
“There are little anecdotes and stories like that woven into the show as well as a lot of archival material that wouldn’t have been seen before.
“I was a bit of a hoarder, a bit of a magpie saving up all these bits and pieces over the years but they’re coming in very useful now for the show.”
It is also this year 40 years since Luke Kelly’s passing making it more apt and poignant to pay tribute to the band in this way…
“It is indeed.
“Luke left such an amazing legacy of songs for a young man.
“He was only 43 when he died.
“He left a huge legacy, as they all did in their own way.
“They were such unique characters and yet there was that bond between us when we got together on stage.
“It’s a bit of a cliché now but we were more than the sum of the parts, I suppose you could say.”
Did the Dubliners always get a warm welcome in the UK? I’d say it meant a lot to Irish communities over here..
“That’s right. I can remember playing the Albert Hall a few times in the 60s and you would have a gang of fellas coming back, fellas who worked for McAlpine and Laing and all these big contractors.
“For them, it was quite a nostalgic experience.
“It was like us bringing a bit of Ireland back to them in London, you know?
“Yeah, we meant a lot. We meant more than we realised at the time, I think.
“The stories you hear coming back years later: People recounting concerts and visits and incidents that happened along the way. You realise that you’re part of their extended family in a sense, in a way.”
You mention McAlpine there and I bet McAlpine’s Fusiliers was a song that rang true with them..
“Absolutely, they were reliving their own experiences on building sites and digging tunnels and working for McAlpine, John Laing, Wimpey. It’s all in the song: ‘The craic was good in Cricklewood and they wouldn’t leave the Crown. With glasses flying and Biddies crying when Paddy was going to town’.
“Great songs, they could identify with that whole feeling.
“It was part of their life, it brought it back to them.”
And Luke was one of those, wasn’t he? He spent his time on the buildings sites of Wolverhampton. Wasn’t it part of the charm of the Dubliners that you were normal fellas, no airs and graces?
“That’s right.
“Yeah, Luke lived in England for a couple of years going around the folk club circles.
“I think he was a vacuum cleaner salesman at one stage but didn’t do very well so went back to the singing.
“He lived in Birmingham. He had a brother in Birmingham, Paddy Kelly.
“He’s still there actually in the Birmingham or Coventry area, and he would always come to the shows, of course, whenever we were around there. A good singer himself, Paddy actually sang with a song during gigs here in Dublin a few times as a guest.
“Yeah, they were the genuine article.
“They weren’t just putting on an act, they were the real thing.
“Quite often they looked like guys who came in from the pub next door to play a concert and in many cases, that was the reality anyway, that’s exactly where they came from, but people loved that as long as we were capable of doing a good concert.
“It’s okay having a drink as long as it doesn’t interfere with the gig and it very seldom did.
“I must say we were always conscious of the fact that ‘this audience has paid in to see us and we should be presenting our best’.”
You probably didn’t anticipate it but your music would bring you to Top of the Pops…
“That was surreal really, with our type of music, going into Top of the Pops, when you think of the context in which we were singing our songs compared with the pop songs of the time.
“We did it a few times.
“We did it for Seven Drunken Nights.
“I remember going back years later and doing the song with The Pogues, The Irish Rover and I remember on that occasion, there was a young lad and he comes up to Ronnie and says, ‘Ronnie, would you like me to show you around the studio?’
“This was 20 years after Seven Drunken Nights.
“And Ronnie says, ‘I was here before you were born, son’.
“Another little Barneyism: I remember coming back from Top of the Pops with the Pogues. We arrived in Dublin Airport the next morning and we got the red carpet treatment. There were journalists and notebooks and cameras and the whole treatment.
“One of them comes up to Barney and says, ‘Well Barney, we saw you on Top of the Pops last night. What’s it like to be a star?’
“And Barney says, ‘I’m over the moon’.”
Speaking of the Pogues, Shane MacGowan passed away last year and was someone who took real inspiration from the Dubliners..
“That’s right.
“As I was saying earlier, we didn’t realise we were having such an influence on other up and coming groups.
“But I read reports in the newspapers where the Pogues cited the Dubliners as one of the main influences on them becoming involved in the music and the tradition.
“We became very good friends after that and collaborated on a number of occasions.
“Actually, I had the honour of playing at his funeral there last year, that was an amazing event.
“It was like a three hour rock concert in the church in Nenagh.
“It was a real the real celebration of his life, the actual mass part of it was secondary to what was going on but the priest went along with it and was happy to join in the mood of the whole event.
“It was amazing, one of the most unusual funerals I was ever at anyway.”
But there was not too many like Shane either..
“That’s right, he deserved it.
“He was such a laid back character but a genius at the back of it all.
“He just had a gift for words, poetry and melodies.
I mean when you think of Rainy Night in Soho.
“He was an amazing character.”
We also lost Paddy Moloney of the Chieftains a few years back. You went back a long way with Paddy, didn’t you?
“That’s right, we went to school together actually. We were in the same school class in Marino, and part of the school band.
“We had a Christian Brother there who taught us the tin whistle.
“Paddy had already started playing from other sources, but we remained good friends right up to the end.
“Little did we think, as young lads going to school learning the whistle, that we would both end up in two well known groups worldwide.
“It was just a hobby that became our lives.
“They were great times.”
We have spoken about your late bandmates. Of course it is sad that they are gone but the silver lining is that the music will never die..
“Yeah, it’s amazing.
“It’s a wonderful, wonderful thing to see that it’s still as popular now and there are so many young singers taking up the flag and flying it so well, singers like Damian Dempsey and Declan O’Rourke and Glen Hansard, Imelda May, all this whole new generation with whom I had the pleasure of playing with.
“When I was doing my 80th birthday concert five years ago I had Declan and Glen Hansard and Imelda May on as well as a lot of other very good traditional musicians.
“I think it was 15 or 16 people on stage at the end of the concert.
“It’s a wonderful, wonderful gift music, the way it can bring people together and create new friendships and relationships.
“It’s a wonderful, wonderful thing.”
John gives us one more ‘Barneyism’ before we let him go.
“The first time we went to Australia was 1968 and we were met by a friend of Barney’s from home in Melbourne Airport.
“Barney says, ‘Jesus it’s very hot, very hot over here’.
“And his friend said, ‘Barney, this is early morning. Wait until lunch time, it’s going to be about 100 degrees in the shade’.
“And Barney says, ‘100 degrees in the shade. Jesus, I’m staying out of the shade’.”
Dubliners Encore Show UK tour 2024/ 2025: Churchill Theatre, Bromley on Saturday 9 November, Hull City Hall, Hull on Sunday 10 November, Royal Concert Hall, Glasgow on Tuesday 12 November, The Bridgewater Hall, Manchester on Friday 15 November, Town Hall, Birmingham on Sunday 16 November, Pavilion Theatre, Bournemouth on Friday 14 March, Hall for Cornwall, Truro on Sunday 16 March.
For more information and to book, click here.
