Davey Cashin of The Kilkennys told David Hennessy about 25 years of the band, taking the mantle of bands like The Dubliners and why he had to give up hurling for music after nearly breaking four fingers.
Traditional folk and ballad band The Kilkennys are noted for their live performances and connection with audiences across the globe.
Picking up the mantle left by acts such as The Dubliners and The Clancy Brothers, the four piece group tour circuits in Europe regularly.
They have shared the stage with renowned Irish artists such as Shane MacGowan, Sharon Shannon and Finbar Furey and performed on the main stage at Milwaukee Irish Fest – the largest Irish Festival in the world.
Originally known as Uisce Beatha, the band was established by schoolmates Davey Cashin and Tommy Mackey back in 1998 when they were in school in St Kieran’s College in Kilkenny. Davey’s brother Adam was also an original founding member.
It was in 2008 that they would rename themselves in favour of a name that was easier for foreign audiences to get to grips with.
The Kilkennys come to the UK on tour this month.
“It’s gonna be good,” Davey tells The Irish World when we ask him how he’s looking forward to it.
“We’ve been going over and back to England now for the past maybe 10 years now.
“It’s a second home really, you get the ferry across and then we’re on the road until all the shows are done.”
The Irish World chatted to Davey before last month’s St Patrick’s celebrations.
March saw them in the middle of another European tour with the band in Belgium for 17 March.
But as the band often tour in Europe, this is not strange for them.
“Last year we were in the city of The Hague.
“They had a big festival there and it ran all day long, bands all day and all night.
“You would swear you were in Dublin or Kilkenny the way they were celebrating St. Patrick’s Day in Netherlands, crazy.
“But it’s any excuse for a party, isn’t it?
“St. Patrick’s Day is what everybody wants to celebrate, isn’t it?
“I was just talking to somebody yesterday saying that I haven’t spent a St. Patrick’s Day in Kilkenny or Ireland in maybe 20 years. I’m not exaggerating.
“The demand for Irish acts around the world for that week is incredible.
“So it could be in Boston, it could be in New York we find ourselves, it’s usually Europe the last 10 years.
“That’s where we spend a lot of our time: Germany, Holland, Denmark, Switzerland.
“I’ve never been in London for St. Patrick’s Day, believe it or not so I’m curious as to what the celebrations are like over there.”
The Irish World were able to satisfy Davey’s curiosity at least to some extent by telling him about the big St Patrick’s Day concerts like the one that was headlined by Sharon Shannon on 12 March.
“Excellent,” he says.
“It just passed me by. I never thought of London as a St. Patrick’s Day destination but that sounds excellent.
“You might see The Kilkennys on the stage next year if I have anything to do with it.”
What are the crowds celebrating Paddy’s Day in the European cities like? “I get asked that question a lot: What kind of a following do we have in Germany, Holland, and mainland Europe and they’re surprised when I say that there’s no Irish.
“When we’re doing a tour in Germany, it’s a German audience.
“And it’s the same in the Netherlands, a Dutch audience.
“We wouldn’t have any Irish coming to the gigs and that’s because, for 40 years a well known band called The Dubliners paved the way for Irish acts.
“And they had a 50 year career. They were absolutely adored and loved, and they played in Europe more than they did in in Ireland.
“They never really engaged with the United States, they always headed east to Europe and that’s the way they liked it: Short flights.
“When Barney McKenna passed away, all the German, Dutch and European promoters were over for the funeral.
“That’s when John Sheahan, leader of the Dubliners, decided they were going to call it quits after 50 years.
“Barney was gone and the Dubliners were no more.
“So our manager got talking to the promoter and said, ‘I have a young band, they’re from Kilkenny. They’re called The Kilkennys. They are not trying to imitate The Dubliners but it might be time to introduce a fresh folk act into the European scene.
“And they took a chance. They put us into all the Dubliners venues, and we played to their audiences.
“And 10,12 years later, we’re doing that circuit now.
“We’re continuing the tradition and that’s what traditional music is about, you pass it on.
“It’s a rite of passage, you learn something from the people who came before you and then you pass it on to the next generation and you keep it alive.
“Because if you don’t, it will die out and be like a language or any other traditions that die out if they’re not practiced.”
Davey grew up surrounded by music with his father Adrian being well known in Kilkenny as an entertainer and great banjo player.
However, Davey tells us he didn’t start with the music himself as early as one might think as something else was his main priority as a youngster.
“I was in St. Kieran’s College and that’s the home of hurling.
“If you have aspirations or notions of being a hurler, you have got to get yourself in there.
“That’s all that was on my mind as a teenager: Hurling, getting into Kieran’s College, making the team, maybe get a shot with Kilkenny underage teams and things like that.
“Sport was to the forefront of my interests and then I met a couple of young guys that had interest in music.
“They were singing the folk songs, they were singing a lot of Christy Moore, they were singing a lot of Wolfe Tones, Clancy Brothers, Furey Brothers kind of stuff and just started doing sessions at weekends.
“And funnily enough, I never really had much interest in that but I grew up in a household where my dad was always singing and always doing sessions. It was always around me and for some strange reason when my friends in school started doing these sessions, I was able to fall in very easily.
“The songs came easily to me so they were obviously in the back of my brain somewhere from an early age listening to my dad and all the parties he had in the house and different sessions like that.
“So myself and Tommy Mackey, who’s still in the group and my brother Adam, that was kind of the foundations of the band and we played in pubs at the weekends, made a bit of pocket money.
“Then we did the Leaving Cert, left St Kieran’s.
“We had odd jobs, we tried college: Wasn’t really working and we just kind of gathered one day.
“We said, ‘Guys, we’re kind of doing this as a hobby. What if we give it a year, and see if we can make a go of it?’
“The plan was: Four guys. We play four nights a week. We charge £400 as it was at the time.
“That’s £100 pound a man times four. You have got a wage of £400 pound a week and we’ll see how we go.
“That was the business plan if you want to call it that.
“So by Christmas that year, we were playing four nights a week and we were fulfilling our dream. We were professional musicians, we were making a living from playing music.
“We were youngsters and we were delighted with ourselves.
“We kind of went on from there, did the pub scene, the club scene around Ireland started spreading our wings, got a van getting outside Kilkenny and that went on for six years.
“We were called Uisce Beatha back then, the Irish for whiskey: The water of life.
“And it was fine, we were having a good time.
“We were young and we were enjoying it but we were essentially a pub band and after maybe seven, eight years, we kind of went, ‘You know, we have kind of done what we can do on this scene and that was around the time we decided to get outside of Ireland and said, ‘We need to start touring, maybe getting to England, America, Europe. How do we do that?’
“So we travelled as Uisce Beatha, didn’t work. The name didn’t land.
“People didn’t understand it, they didn’t get it, they couldn’t spell it so we said we had to change the name and it was a tough decision because we had eight years under our belts as Uisce Beatha.
“What will happen when we change the name? Will we lose all our followers?’
“So we changed it to The Kilkennys because we were from Kilkenny.
“And we just went from there.
“Kilkenny beer is known around the world and it kind of landed.
“It’s a destination. If tourists visit Ireland, they’ll obviously go to Killarney, Dublin but Kilkenny’s up in the top five in destinations when people come to Ireland so we’re well and truly on the map.
“So it worked for us and we just went from there.
“We’ve been touring Europe, England ever since.
“We stepped out of the pub scene and now we’re kind of on the theatre and festivals scene.”
If it’s ’98 you started, you’re going 25 years..
“You’re frightening me now, you’re making me depressed,” Davey laughs.
“It would have been around the ‘97, ‘98 mark. We would have been 17, 18 getting prepared for the Leaving Cert.
“While everybody else was studying for the Leaving Cert, we were rehearsing songs so we could play at the weekend.
“That’s what our priorities were.
“And as you can imagine, the hurling career ended because I went up one day to catch a ball and a hurl came across the back of my hand nearly broke four fingers.
“I said, ‘Right, there would be no gig this weekend if I broke my hand’.
“So the decision was made there and then, it was hurling or music.
“You couldn’t do the two but there’s no money in hurling so I went for the music.”
Davey would play alongside future Kilkenny stars like Tommy Walsh and Jackie Tyrrell in St Kieran’s teams before he hung up the boots.
“I was only a skinny teenager trying my best.
“I scrambled my way onto the team.
“But once I got a taste for the music, that was it.
“I figured out what I wanted to do and not many people in life are lucky enough to realise that.
“Some people wander through life for years trying to figure out what they actually want to do.
“It’s a common thing.
“I was lucky enough to figure it out.
“It was like a spark.
“I said, ‘This is what I want to do, end of story. We’re doing it’.”
The line-up has changed since the original lads got together in St Kieran’s College in the 90s.
“Over the years, things change.
“My brother Adam stuck it out for 15 years and then he started a family.
“He had kids, touring plus kids doesn’t really work out.
“So he said, ‘Look, guys, I’ve had a great run but I’m going to settle down and I’ll stay in the band until you find a replacement’.
“So then we brought in another guy from Kilkenny, Davey long.
“He stayed in the band a number of years, he started a family so what you have now is you have myself and Tommy who would have been founder members back in the Kieran’s College days and then the other half of the group then is made up from Mick Martin- He’s a Wexford man steeped in traditional music- And then we have another traditional guru from Ennis, in County Clare and Josh O’Loughlin is his name.
“And that’s the Kilkennys. Half the team are Kilkenny and the subs are Clare and Wexford.”
The Kilkennys are revered on the European circuit and as far away as India and Abu Dhabi for their live shows.
Have they ever tried to crack America? “People say, ‘Oh, why don’t you go to the states? You would make a fortune in the States’.
“And there probably is a market for us there but the states is a continent, it’s massive.
“You’d want to be almost based there.
“Just the in and out tours don’t really cut it.
“A lot of the Irish acts that are doing what they’re doing in the states are basically living there and that’s not an option for us.
“We have family and commitments at home here as well.”
You have shared the stage with the likes of Shane MacGowan, Sharon Shannon and Finbar Furey to name a few.
Are these real pinch me moments? “They are and the younger you are, the more starstruck you will be.
“As the years roll on, you tend to run into these people more.
“If you’re doing a festival, there might be ten acts and you’re all hanging out backstage and they’re just normal Irish people like yourself and myself, and you’re just chatting.
“They’re no different to you and I and then you tend to run into them and they become more your friends than someone that you adore and admire.”
There will be a new album in due course with just the Covid- 19 virus stopping the lads when they were in the studio working on it in March 2020.
“We’re back in the studio now so it won’t be too far away, but it’s not quite there just yet.”
What was it like when the pandemic put a stop to all live music?
“It was good to get the break and the reset as they call it, a bit of free time.
“But the weeks, months, and years dragged on and it was kind of, ‘Okay, Right, we need to get back here’.
“At the start, it was like a novelty holiday break.
“Towards the end, it started to get serious.
“People’s mindsets and attitudes had changed.
“I knew professional musicians who went back to day jobs and sold off their guitars and their gear, sold their vans.
“These were musicians that were working for a living and just to make ends meet, they had to stop doing what they love doing and just find other work.
“That was sad to see but you have to do what you have to do in tough times.
“The appetite for live music and gigs now is bigger than it ever was because people were deprived for so long.
“Absence makes the heart grow fonder, isn’t that what they say?”
The Kilkennys tour the UK from 7 April.
They play the Irish World Heritage Centre, Manchester on 7 April, Evesham Arts Centre on 8 April, Dicey Reillys in Greenford on 9 April, Blackburn Empire Theatre on 11 April, Harlequin Theatre in Redhill on 12 April, The Concorde in Eastleigh on 13 April, The Regent in Christchurch on 14 April, Sutton Coldfield Town Hall on 15 April, The London Irish Centre in Camden on 16 April, The Tivoli Theatre in Wimborne on 18 April, The Core at Corby Cube on 19 April, Millfield Arts Centre on 20 April, The Core Theatre on 21 April, Liverpool Irish Centre on 22 April and The Spotlight in Hoddesdon on 23 April, Sydenham Catholic Club on 19 May, Salvatorian College on 20 May and Gladstone in Port Sunlight on 21 May.
For more information, click here.
