Donal Clancy:
On The Lonesome Plain
dclpcd16

Guest Musicians:
Ciaran Somers: Flute, vocals
David Power: Whistle, vocals

"Dónal Clancy is a consummate Celtic guitarist with a voice sympathetic to a range of different song cultures and with a sense of musical arrangement true to the great classical Irish tradition." - Archie Fisher

“The first time I met Dónal Clancy he was a small boy. I was working with his father Liam Clancy and Tommy Makem. The minute I heard this record it reminded me of his father: his tone and turn of phrase. As well as being a great singer Dónal is also a great guitar player. This new record is a gem: Dónal's singing and guitar playing throughout the album is excellent. If Liam Clancy were alive today, he would be very proud of this recording. He IS very proud of it, I'm sure!” - Arty McGlynn

“Dónal Clancy’s new CD is a classic recording of a man and a guitar, great material beautifully played and sung.” - Martin Simpson

Bio

Dónal Clancy is regarded as one of Ireland’s finest guitarists. He is the son of the world renowned singer Liam Clancy of The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem and has since the death of his father focused his attention on the family repertoire of songs that he grew up with, while keeping the Clancy tradition alive with his solo performances.

Dónal grew up in a household and community steeped in music. He spent his early childhood in Canada and the US before his family settled back in An Rinn, Co. Waterford in 1983. His father gave him his first guitar at the age of eight and he was playing professionally by his early teens. A founder member of the group Danú, Dónal left to join a trio with his father Liam and cousin Robbie O'Connell. Their debut tour in 1996 took them across the US from the Santa Anita Race Track in Los Angeles to Lincoln Center in New York. They continued to tour together for a couple of more years and recorded two albums before they disbanded in the early noughties. In 1998, Dónal moved to New York where he became the go-to guitarist for many of the top Irish music acts in the US. He toured and recorded with Riverdance fiddler, Eileen Ivers and was a guest with The Chieftains on their Tears of Stone Tours in Japan and the US. He has also been a member of the Irish American super group Solas and contributed to the soundtrack of Ric Burns’ award winning documentary film New York.

In 2006 he released his first solo guitar album Close To Home which The Boston Globe dubbed "a sweet masterpiece of melodic grace and riveting groove". In 2009 Dónal returned to live in Ireland with his wife Mary and their three children and in 2014, to much critical acclaim, he released Songs of a Roving Blade. The Irish Post awarded the album 5* calling it “folk singing at its best” and “a smashing album that should help to ensure these songs will never be lost”

Dónal’s latest album On the Lonesome Plain features a mix of seven vocal tracks and six guitar instrumentals, including two of his own compositions A Strike for Victory commemorating the 1916 Easter Rising and an instrumental piece entitled Máirseáil na Conrach, preceded by The Green Fields of Canada, this is a particular highlight and showcases Donal’s fingerstyle playing to great effect. Other standout tracks are Open the Door Softly from the pen of Scottish Folk legend Archie Fisher and the classic ballad Reynardine. “Most of this recording happened serendipitously in the Spring of 2015, while experimenting with various microphones and guitars.

Also by Donal and available from Copperplate Mail Order: Donal Clancy Songs of a Roving Blade

Audio

Track 1: Open The Door Softly

Track 2: Reynardine

Track 3:The Waterford Waltz

Track Listing

1. The Lowlands of Holland
2. The Green Fields of Canada
3. Drill, Ye Tarriers
4. Open the Door Softly
5. The Honorable Thomas Burke
6. The Waterford Waltz
7. Reynardine
8. Fling
9. Blackwater Side
10. Whiskey, You're the Divil
11. Miss McDermott
12. Strike for Victory
13. Idir Áird Mhór is Eochaill

Press Reviews

R’n’R Mag  Sept/Oct 18 * * *
Dónal Clancy, son of Liam, has been developing a reputation as one of the finest Irish guitarists for more than twenty years. On The Lonesome Plain, just his third solo outing, now secures major distribution for an album originally released by Donal in 2016 and very good it is too.

Donal’s fingerstyle guitar picking is exemplary, and you can’t help noticing echoes of Arty McGlynn, which is praise indeed. Half the album is instrumental including a couple of O’Carolan tunes which are particularly ripe pickings for Donal’s guitar style. Beyond them traditional pieces sit alongside one strong self-composed work.

Donal also composed one of the songs “Strike For Victory”, an exhortation to join the 1916 Easter Rising “for freedom’s sake”. His singing style is very laid back, with a gentle timbre quite similar to his father’s.
He also applies that seemingly effortless style of old favourites like “The Lowlands of Holland”, “Reynardine”, and “Blackwater Side”, choices prompted by Donal listening to old vinyl.

Archie Fisher’s “Open The Door Softly” is the only song accompanied by more that just Donal’s guitar, where friends contribute ethereal flute and whistle that maintain the relaxed mood that pervades this lovely, engaging album. Ian Croft

Songlines Magazine    Oct 18   REVIEWS Europe

Dónal Clancy   On the Lonesome Plain   DCLPCD16    * * *

       Celtic connections; Clancy Jr upholds his pa’s standards

As the son of world-renowned Irish folk singer Liam Clancy, the apple hasn’t fallen far from the tree for this folk guitarist. Dónal continues to pave his own way in the Irish folk world, with this latest album featuring a mixture of guitar, vocal tracks and two of his own compositions. While his rich vocals resonate throughout with a beautifully traditional lilt, tunes are also borrowed from the songbooks of the US (the memorable ‘Drill, Ye Tarriers), England (‘Reynardine’), and Scotland (‘Open the Door Softly’). The latter, by Scottish folk musician Archie Fisher, also features delightful contributions from guest musicians Ciaran Somers and David Power on flute and whistle. Clancy’s impressive fingerstyle guitar particularly shines on ‘The Honourable Thomas Burke’, ‘Miss McDermott’ and the traditional tune ‘Whiskey You’re the Divil’, also performed by Dónal’s late father with The Clancy Brothers.

Clancy has, on this album, translated traditional tunes into new arrangements for guitar, with results that are both intriguing and enjoyable. RACHEL CUNNIFFE

www.folking.com website
Dónal Clancy is the son of Liam Clancy, and comes highly recommended by the likes of Archie Fisher and Martin Simpson. His forthcoming album On The Lonesome Plain has already garnered praise from such publications as fROOTS both for his singing and for his Celtic-styled guitar. Deservedly so. His singing is unassuming but engaging, and entirely suited to his material, which to some extent reflects his focus on preserving the family repertoire but with an emphasis on the guitar that I don’t remember from the work of the Clancy Brothers or Clancy & Makem. That said, his guitar work shows abundant technique but technique never overshadows the integrity of the tune, or the vocal, or the lyrics. Nor does the familiarity of some of the songs compromise the effectiveness of the set: songs like these don’t date, at any rate when they’re this well performed.

Aside from track four, the performances here feature Dónal on a variety of acoustic guitars, discreetly augmented in places by a second guitar part using a Bourgeois OM through a Baggs M1 pickup. (Which sounds great: I think I may have to augment my own collection of pickups and transducers with an M1!). On tracks 4 and 12 he also adds a Kala Fretless U-Bass.

1. ‘The Lowlands of Holland’ uses a fairly well-known tune, but the words are quite specifically Irish in some of the lines and closer to the full story than some better-known versions.
2. The second track consists of an instrumental version of the Irish emigration ballad ‘The Green Fields of Canada’ followed by Dónal’s own tune ‘Máirseáil na Conrach’ (which according to Google Translate means March of the Coral, but I’ve had to use GT too often to trust it completely!). Beautiful guitar work.
3. ‘Drill, Ye Tarriers’ was much heard in folk clubs in the ’60s and ’70s, perhaps as a result of exposure to versions by the Weavers, Chad Mitchell Trio and such. This is rather an effective version of a song from the late 19^th century that his father Liam also performed with Tommy Makem, and a salutary reminder that even a song so well-known is capable of revealing new depths (and even a last verse I don’t remember hearing before).
4. I remember Archie Fisher’s ‘Open the Door Softly’ (a traditional song with some added words) from his 1968 album, and it’s a hard act to follow. But this version is very effective, and I love the additional flute and whistle from Ciarán Somers and David Power respectively. I don’t hate their vocal harmonies, either.
5. ‘The Honorable Thomas Burke’ is Dónal’s classic arrangement of a piece by the harpist Turlough O’Carolan (1670-1738).
6. Next comes a sprightly version of ‘The Waterford Waltz’: a fine version of a fine tune, benefiting from some unobtrusive overdubbed guitar.
7. ‘Reynardine’ is a song that has haunted me for decades. Who is Reynardine? An outlaw, a Bluebeard, a werefox? While the song is sometimes heard put to a fairly bouncy major tune, Dónal uses the haunting, more modal melody as recorded by so many of the big hitters in the folk community, and the words as (more or less) published by A.L. Lloyd. This version is straightforward, letting the understated mystery of the lyric speak for itself, but by no means simplistic: there’ve been many fine versions over the years, but this one more than holds its own.
8. The generically titled ‘Fling’ seems familiar to me, but I can’t recall a specific name for it. Anyway, more fine guitar work.
9. ‘Blackwater Side’ is a song that has attracted some classic performances in the past, but this is well worth hearing in its own right.
10. ‘Whiskey, You’re the Divil’ is another song you may have heard in folk clubs and sessions, but probably not played as well.
11. ‘Miss McDermott’ is a well-known piece also credited to O’Carolan, benefiting from a second guitar part that may remind you of some of John Renbourn’s recordings around the end of the ’70s. Well, it does me.
12. Dónal’s own song ‘Strike for Victory’ commemorates the 1916 Easter Rising “and is based on the 1916 Proclamation of Independence.” A rousing tune, beautifully played.
13. ‘Idir Áird Mhór is Eochaill’ (Between Ardmore and Youghal) is an air from County Waterford (I think) which Dónal plays here as an instrumental.

There’s something timeless about this set. Dónal tells us that at the time he put it together, he’d been listening to some classic records by the like of “Anne Briggs, Martin Carthy, Shirley Collins and Davey Graham“, and it fits well with the work of that generation of musicians, but also with a long line of Irish musicians, especially players of fretted instruments. I expect to continue to listen to it long after this review is completed, and if he ever records a set of O’Carolan pieces, I’ll be at the front of the queue. David Harley

Irish Music Magazine
Donal released this album, with just two guests, flute player Ciardin Somers and whistle player David Power, both appearing only on one track, the Archie Fisher song Open the Door Softly. That gentle approach to folk songs seeps into the album as Donal finds the melodic heart of each of seven songs and six instrumentals. His guitar rings out on Miss McDermott's and is played at fair pace in Whiskey You're the Devil; he introduces the album with an interesting version of the Lowlands of Holland. His guitar playing is musical, far beyond the poster paint of blocked chords, a model for any aspiring solo performer. Donal has composed two new tunes; Mairseail Na Conrach, an homage to the beautiful scenery of the Dingle peninsula and his 1916 inspired Strike for Victory, with its chorus of: "Through the door and out the gate to join the fight for freedom's sake..." A song which deserves a wider circulation. Donal's mastery of the ballad is not unexpected. He comes from good stock and has been exposed to many forms of folk music. For example here there are passing reflections of American influences on Drill Ye Tarrier's Drill. He plays the song The Green Fields of Canada as a slow air and moves it into Mairseail na Conrach with its English folk guitar sound. On O'Carolan's The Honourable Thomas Bourke, he summons up the spirit of 17th century lute playing, following it with The Waterford Waltz hopping along in mazurka time. On the Lonesome Plain, Donal has come into his own, a master of song and music and a tasteful interpreter of both of those often divergent traditions. Sean Laffey

Froots
Donal Clamcy, son of Liam Cancy was a founder member of Danu and a go-to guitarist for Irish musicians in America while establishing his name as an accompanist and singer. His latest album On The Lonesome Plain highlights his guitar playing, compositional depths and approach to traditional song. A solo album in every sense apart from some winsome whistles from Ciaron Somers and David Power on one track. it's a performance rich in emotional breadth and highlights his multifarious talents. Vocally he resembles his fatherat times, opossessing the distinctive Clancy sound - all rich warm timbre found in Drill Ye Tarriers Drill which echoes his father's phrasing and approach, backed up by a deft accompaniment
from the Gaughan and Carty school.
The opening Lowlands of holland is a lovely balanced performance, guitar and voice in perfect sync, while other standards like Blackwaterside and Reynardine are given suitably deft treaetments. His instrumental abilities show on O'Carolan's Miss McDermott and The Waterford Waltz, with The Green Fields of Canada given a quietly resigned Renbournsque reading mathced with his iwn Mairseal Na Conrach. Combining some solidly rooted vocal performaneces and adroit arrangments, On The Lonesome PLain is as good as Irish folk vocal album as one could wish for. John O'Regan

The Irish Times
Spacious and reflective, Donal Clancy's latest collection is an amalgam of well-known songs and decidedly English influences (specially, from the song tradition so closely associated with Martin Carty, Shirley Collins and Anne Briggs), shot through with half a dozen highly impressive instrumentals. Clancy's vocals carry echoes of his father, Liam, but his touch is light andhis tone utterly unforced, tracing a very different path from that of his father's (at times) declamatory style. His pair of original compositions (Strike For Victory, a doffing of his cap to the 1916 commemorations, and Mairseal na Conrach) are subtle and sophisticated in equal part. Clancy's take on Open The Door Softly is a beautifully mellow piece, richly embellished by David Power's whistle and Ciaran Somers's flute, with an almost Ry Cooderesque touch on guitar. Most definitely a collection inviting repeat exposure. Siobhan Long

ACOUSTIC MAGAZINE 81
The son of the late Liam Clancy, Gongs keening the GierleY music alive with his solo performances, and as this 13-track album shows, he's a more than worthy inheritor of the family tradition. His guitars include a Sobel! and a Bourgeois OM and, on the haunting instrumental 'The Green Fields Of Canada' and the rollicking 'Waterford Waltz', they produce tones to die for, as you'd expect. Clancy's a superb finger picker, and effortlessly breathes new life into traditional songs like the haunting 'Blackwater Side', and the frenetic 'Whiskey. You're The Devil'. Probably as fine an album of Celtic guitar as you're likely to hear.