Counties Derry and Antrim, Northern Ireland

We are coming to the end of our musical journey around Ireland as we re-enter Northern Ireland.  Above a picture of Castlerock Beach in county Derry, that I took last summer.  Now the politically correct name for the city these days is Derry/Londonderry so as not to offend anybody, but it's way too much of a mouthful for me and I shall stick to simply Derry.  

We will feature only one young artist from this troubled city, Soak, or Bridie Monds-Watson to give her full name.  She has a powerful voice for someone so young.  Her genre is described as indie folk or Dream Pop. Here is a performance of her for the npr Tiny Desk Concert series from when she was only 19 years old and includes 3 songs from her debut album Before We Forgot How to Dream:

County Antrim is mostly famous for it's northern coastline and the Giant's Causeway.  It gets pretty busy with tourists these days, even on a miserable New Year's Day such as this one in 2014 

But of course the western half of Belfast is also in County Antrim.  Rooted in the traditional music of County Antrim are the trio Brendan Mulholland on flute (from Glenavy near Belfast International Airport), Conor Lamb on Uilleann pipes and Deirdre Galway on Guitar.  This a tue, The Antrim Barndances, off their 2018 debut album Music in the Glen.

McPeake is a Belfast family band that is now run by the 4th generation of Francis McPeake.  During the peak (excuse the pun) of their popularity they were recorded by Pete Seegar playing their most famous song written by Francis I around 1948, The Wild Mountain Thyme:

Here are a couple of airs I recorded at a concert in Portaferry in 2015 in their present line up:

Gráinne Holland is a Gaelic singer born and bred in Belfast.  Here she is performing a haunting County Antrim song called Airde Cuain from her 2015 album Gaelré:

Joshua Burnside is from Lisburn just south of Belfast and his style of music is described as indie folk or folktronica.  His 2017 debut album Ephrata was actually written in Colombia and incorporates some influences of Cumbia.  This is a song from this album, Blood Drive:

I first met Belfast singer/songwriter Andy White about 14 years ago in a small bar in the village of Arcola near La Spezia, Italy.  He was performing in the Pegaso Bar, which was run by friends of ours at the time and just across the valley from where we lived, as part of his annual tour of Europe.  My wife being from Belfast we had an immediate connection and we chatted away after the gig.  The next few years he kept returning to the same venue until alas the bar changed ownership.  Nowadays we go and see him every year on the Belfast leg of his tour, and in fact we have tickets to see him at the end of the month (29th November 19) at the American Bar in Belfast, fancy coming along?

Andy rose to fame in the mid-80's particularly with his song about the Troubles, Religious Persuasion.

He now lives in Melbourne, Australia with his son Sebastian and has just released what I believe is his 14th studio album.

This concludes our tour of the 32 counties of Ireland, next we will head for brief sojourn to the Isle of Man, before hitting Scotland.  To follow my virtual journey check the tripline map.