On Friday, the Folk Music Society of New York presented Dublin-based singer Macdara Yeates at the St. Paul & St. Andrew United Methodist Church as part of Carnegie Hall’s “United in Sound: America at 250” series. There on the first stop on his first solo tour of the United States, Yeates was brilliant, commanding the audience with his superb delivery, warm personality, and outstanding songs. If you have the opportunity to catch him, definitely take advantage as he’s great and puts on an engaging show.
If you’ve not heard his 2024 album “Traditional Singing from Dublin,” you absolutely should, it’s brilliant – you can dive into a bit of a refresher by clicking here. If you have, you might also remember Yeates as one of the folks establishing an important community of singers at Dublin’s Cobblestone Bar in 2012 called “The Night Before Larry Got Stretched.” Geared toward bringing more young people into the world of traditional song, it’s been a wild success with folks like Yeates, Lankum, Ye Vagabonds, Landless and Lisa O’Neill among many who have been involved.
In the course of Yeates’s performance on Friday, he took care to pay great tribute to two recently-passed matriarchs of the tradition who inspired him and many others over the years: Dolores Keane and Helena “Nellie” Weldon.
Keane, who surely needs no introduction, was one of traditional Irish music’s greatest and most brilliant singers. Born in Caherlistrane, Co. Galway, she grew up immersed in music, raised by her aunts Rita and Sarah, who were celebrated sean nós singers. Consequently, Keane started singing at a very young age and in 1975, after a chance meeting in a pub, she became a founding member of Dé Dannan. She was the band’s singer on their eponymous first album, which contained "The Rambling Irishman,” which proved a big hit. She left the band shortly thereafter, but in the 1980s rejoined and ultimately appeared on three of the band’s albums.
Her longest musical partnership was with multi-instrumentalist John Faulkner, whom she married in 1977. Although they only recorded three albums together, “Broken Hearted I'll Wander” (1979), “Farewell to Éirinn” (1980), and “Sail Óg Rua” (1983), they shared an enduring musical connection that survived long after their marriage ended.
In addition, Keane recorded five solo albums over the years, including “There Was a Maid” (1978), “Dolores Keane” (1988), “Lion in a Cage” (1989), “Solid Ground” (1993), and “Night Owl” (1998), all critically acclaimed. She also appeared on the albums of several others, notably John Prine’s “In Spite of Ourselves” (1999).
Keane’s artistic significance was recognized during her lifetime with both a Gradam Saoil/Lifetime Achievement at the Gradam Ceoil TG4 awards in 2022 and an honorary doctorate from the University of Galway in 2024.
Keane was a singer’s singer. She sang with great flair and honesty, and many of the songs she sang, like “My Own Dear Galway Bay” and “Caledonia,” became definitive versions. She was unquestionably “The Voice of Ireland,” as she was sometimes called. Her loss is one that will be felt by many.
Nellie Weldon, who Yeates also recognized, was born in Dublin and grew up in the Liberties. In her youth, singer Liam Weldon was a neignborhood friend and circa 1952, on a visit to her sister in Coventry, when Weldon was living there, they reconnected and shortly thereafter married. The two were very active in Dublin’s singing scene taking part in sessions with Irish Travelers that took place in Cherry Orchard; the Traveling community and its welfare was an important cause to them. Over the years, she and Liam were also involved with sessions throughout Dublin at places such as Quinn’s, the Stew House, Tailor’s Hall, the Brazen Head, Merchant’s, the Goleen Folk Club, and together they ran the Pavees Club at Slattery’s of Capel Street, where many of the greatest artists of that era appeared.
Nellie Weldon.
A longtime resident of Ballyfermot, she was a singer herself (in an interview with the Irish Traditional Music Archive’s Alan Woods, she reported she’d grown up singing in a choir for 25 years) and in recent years she became the grand dame of the Cobblestone Pub, where she was beacon and inspiration for young singers, particularly those who attended “The Night Before Larry Got Stretched” singing circle session. There, her sharp wit and matronly presence inspired a new generation of younger folks and it was tradition that she sing the the evening’s final song – often songs Liam Weldon had composed – at these “Larry” nights. These became memorable moments for everyone fortunate enough to experience them. In a remembrance Yeates wrote after her passing that to hear her sing a song “was a masterclass - in humility, in listening, in being a kind and good-humoured neighbor and, as her beloved Liam would say, in ‘letting the song sing the singer.’”
Although having taken two very different trajectories in their lives, Keane and Weldon represented the very best in traditional singing. The influence they each had on people will be long remembered.
