I have been singing Traditional songs since I was a kid. My mother was known as a singer and used to be called upon to provide a song at parties and functions both family and public. Sadly I never got to explore her repertoire until it was too late. In mid life she stopped singing much and only went back to it when she was in a nursing home during  her last years. I recall her singing  “If I was a Blackbird” over the phone to me once, and finding a version of it in my favorite online repository of Traditional Song, Mudcat.org. Because I have lived in the United States since 1985 I was removed from the source and community of singers, having to make do with an annual St. Patrick’s Day Party where guests were invited to come with a song to share.

In 2005 that changed when I met Suzanne Cahill who had opened an Irish style restaurant in Lebanon and was organizing a monthly session in her back room. I went along to see who was playing and met a bunch of players from Lebanon and some who had transplanted to the Bethlehem area. They were playing jigs and reels, hornpipes and slow airs, but I was the only one singing.  Steve Scriniere originally from Palmyra but now a Tipton resident encouraged me, giving me songs to try out and loaning me more recent CDs to supplement my collection of Planxty, Steeleye Span, Chieftains, Bothy Band, McPeake Family, Dubliners and the Clancy Brothers. With practice confidence came and I found a mode that suited my voice and my repertoire grew.

At a session in 2011, someone played the slide reel, “The Road to Lisdoonvarna” and when he finished another musician asked if there were words to the tune. I decided to try it and a few weeks later I had my first song. Driving to work in 2015 a refrain  came into my head when I was trying to write something experimental.  It turned into a very traditional style emigration ballad based on the life of my father’s cousin Jim McErlean, which I call “By Moyola’s Stream”. http://https://soundcloud.com/seamus-carmichael/by-moyolas-stream

For those of you who enjoyed the songs, this is a set of recordings my friend Leslie Ham made when I performed for the Susquehanna Folk Music Society’s April Coffeehouse back in 2015. Pardon the brief gap in the recording of “The Oul Orange Flute”. She thought by the audience reaction to the fourth verse, that it must be the end of the song, whereas I was just waiting for the laughter to die down before concluding the piece.