The Hare's Corner

The phrase "The Hare's Corner" comes from the ancient Irish Custom of at harvest time leaving a corner of a
field uncut as a refuge for the Hare to escape to. ( A custom also found among the Mayan Indians)
I first heard my father Liam, mention the phrase in a conversation we had about the famous writer and Irish language activist Máirtín Ó Cadhain (O'Kyne).
Ó Cadhain identified the 'Gaeltachtaí' or 'Irish speaking regions' as being like the Hare's Corner of the Island of Ireland- that had but a temporary reprieve from the reaper's blade.
Thankfully the linguistic uniqueness of the 'Gaeltacht' still endures.
But our language is still in jeopardy.

The Hare has long been associated in Ireland with the Superstitious and the Supernatural and was considered to be the 'Shape-Shifter', the traveller between worlds.  
I was captivated by the metaphor of the "Hare's Corner"..
It represents for me the wild and mysterious source of the many rivers of music and imagination..
The music here on this record are the strange gifts I returned with from my many walks in the long grass!

Colm Mac Con Iomaire  (May day 2008)

April 2008. Standing at the back of the Birr Arts Centre. The crowd is small tonight but Violetta’s dress is sparkling, her voice soothing and her band rocking. I did my bit easily enough – I only have a half an hour to sing my songs – as a support act for this beautiful singer from Philadelphia. I’m new to this support-slot game and sometimes I feel like I’m a door-to-door  vacuum cleaner salesman. I’m not hassled by it because this writing-singing-gigging is what I love doing, but the crowd is here to listen to this Nu-soul-jazz woman and in the thirty or so minutes I get, I have to work damn hard to take their attention away from her, to me and my music.

***
  January 1990. I’d just written a new song. I was in love. The song came to me effortlessly one morning as I woke up from my sleep. ‘Kinda nice, kinda strange, kinda beautiful’. I thought it was worth entering it into the Oireachtas song contest  and so I organised a recording session in Elektra Studios – something like twenty five pounds for five hours! Special offer! Terry Hackett was the sound engineer and musicians wise my brothers Rossa and Rónán joined me, Karl Odlum (who met and dragged guitarist Niall Whitney in from the street), singer Jane Farley and the fiddle maestro himself Colm Mac Con Iomaire.

   The session was a great success but coming towards the end of the night there was a space in the middle of the song that Niall wasn’t able to fill it with his guitar. Up stepped Colm and filled it with a delicate, simple and mysterious line just like the love about which the song was written.

   Summer 1990. The Grafton St busking scene was coming to an end.  Bands were beginning to form, original songs were being written and recorded and the excited  cups-of-tea-talk was all about ‘deals’ and record companies. These wonderfully talented musicians were beginning to bloom and their imaginations were exploding with ideas. A new era was dawning – the era of The Frames, Kíla, The Mary Janes, The Cookers, Leslie Keye, Mark Dignam etc.

   I had a load of songs written and I decided to record them before all these musicians were too scattered that I couldn’t work with them again. So I took a week off work and booked a session in Sun Studiios on Crow St, in Temple Bar, two floors below Elektra! We worked from dawn to dusk and produced the bones of the album Éist.

   During this week, Glen Hansard, one of the buskers, was rehearsing with his new band, The Frames, in the same building. Glen invited Colm to the rehearsal one afternoon and as Colm now says that he went upstairs in one band and came down in another!

   Two years ago as I was nearing the completion of my own album, I gave Colm a shout – would he like to play a bit? Would he care to fill some space? He was just back from touring in the States, had family responsibilities now and his time was more precious. His voice carried this stress. He promised me that he would do his best. He did, and as is his wont, he let his playing do the talking. It was a great privilege for me to have him playing on my album. Later when I was launching the album in Crawdaddy, himself and Dee (the fiddle player who replaced him in Kíla) came along and serenaded the crowd with their amazingly intuitive and delicate playing.

   Colm, since that June day in 1990, has played with The Frames. Members have come and gone but Colm, like a loyal lieutenant, has stood by Glen’s side and has continued developing as a musician – witness him being a one man string quartet on so many of the songs! For a long time people (aware of his obvious talent)  have been asking him (pestering too) when he’s going to do his own solo album. It was Karl Odlum (the producer) who told me, at the beginning of the year,  that Colm was soon to start working on this album with him.

   And what an album it is! Wow, what an explosion of thoughts, a Vesuvius of thoughts. The playing is delicate. The production polished. The music is remarkably beautiful, a little traditional, a little classical, a little Eastern, a little Turkish, a little North-African, a little soundtrack-like, a little Frames-like, a little Mac Con Iomaire-like and more than anything very Colm-like!

***

   Violetta’s gig finishes and I gather my stuff to head home. In the car I think about Colm’s new album - Cúinne an Ghiorria – The Hare’s Corner. At times maybe he’ll feel like he’s doing the door-to-door vacuum cleaner selling stuff but it really doesn’t matter because music is what’s closest to his heart. Music is the deepest and easiest way for him to ‘speak’ to the world about himself and to explain his experience of the world to us who are listening intently. The language he uses is quite simply gorgeous. May the next one not take so long to come!

Colm Ó Snodaigh (Kíla)