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Sharon Shannon

Cambridge, 27th August 2007

From her stints with the Waterboys and Arcady, It would seem that just putting an accordion in Sharon Shannon's hands makes her happy. Luckily for the soft-spoken Shannon, others are just as happy when she picks it up.

	You have performed a few times here [Cambridge Folk Festival] and every time I see you play the accordion I find it fascinating. Did you chose it or did it choose you?

Sharon: Well, I grew up in a family in Corofin [County Clare, Ireland] and my parents were are absolutely mad for music and they were always playing music and dancing round the kitchen and my brother Gary who was the oldest (there are four of us and I've an older sister and a younger sister) went to tin whistle lessons and he taught the rest of us - he had to come home to teach us... 

	And everyone joined in?

Sharon: Yes! And then when he went to secondary school, he joined a ceilidh band and they wanted...he used to play the whistle but they wanted a fiddle player so he took up the fiddle just to play with them and he took up the flute as well. It was my brothers idea that we all get different instruments....you know...all the different instruments there are for playing traditional music...there's the banjo, the fiddle, the flute, the pipes, the harp...the accordion [laughs]

 

 

 

	[laughs] at least you can sit down while you're playing it!

Sharon: Yeah, it's the easiest one...I thought...from starting up from learning. Like a piano as well, you know, you hit the notes and it sounds good straight away.

	You can at least see your progress straight away, can't you?

Sharon: Yeah, where as when you're playing the fiddle it sounds really scratchy and everything for ages and ages.

	The thing that fascinates me is the hand-eye co-ordination - it's a bit like patting your head and rubbing your tummy at the same time! Did that come naturally to you?

Sharon: Oh [laughs], nothing comes naturally to anyone, there's a lot of hard work that goes into playing any instrument, an awful lot of practice. No matter how musical someone is, you still have to be able to put a bit of time in to make it good y'know?

	Yeah, I know. The same thing with singing, isn't it...even though you're half way there with the voice as the instrument, you still have to learn about the construction of music don't you?

Sharon: Oh, the tunes were all engrained into us from when we were very young anyway, and then once we started playing we used to...it was a great social thing for us as well and we really loved it. We used to go up playing for ceilidhs all through...from the ages 10, 11 we were out, out meeting other young musicians; it was a great social life for us as well, when really all our friends in school didn't have the benefit of that.

 

 

 

	I bet they didn't! So you've been here at Cambridge [Folk Festival] for many years, how does the vibe this year compare?

Sharon: Oh it's great! Well first of all, amazin' weather. It's great. It makes a big difference when there's all smilin' faces when you're lookin'...playin' and the audience is all happy.

	Y'know I don't know how you do it! I just couldn't go on stage in front of all those people. Do you ever get nervous before you go on?

Sharon: [laughs] Well sometimes, yeah sometime, I get very nervous depending on the gig but most of the time it just...something I've done since I was very young like we used to play for ceilidhs so we were on stage playing for hundreds of people dancing and stuff like that.




 

	And do you feed off the crowd?

Sharon: Seeing them enjoy themselves is really good.

	You've got a new album out haven't you? Tell me about that....

Sharon: Yeah, that's what we were kind of reproducing on stage earlier on, the new album. And it’s kind of a collaboration between Michael McGoldrick, Dezi Donnelly and me and Jim Murray, the fella that normally plays the guitar with me. So we all wrote...wrote tunes, brand new tunes for the album er...

	A true collaboration.

Sharon: Yeah and....erm.. it's been amazin'...we're really really delighted with it and erm...there's lots of other people playing on the album as well.. There's a big brass section and fantastic bass and drums and...

	A nice rich sound?

Sharon: Yeah, and we were trying to think of a name for the album. We got a great name...it's called Renegade.

	Good name!

Sahron: Yeah...and we were trying to think of a name that we cold use that would kind of dub as name for the band as well afterwards and we could call...have a band...a new band called Renegade [laughs]and that's the name of the album as well.

	Throughout your career you've collaborated with lots of artists and I understand that a lot of people specifically ask to work with you.

Sharon: It's great for us. We had um...we'd already organised with a guy from home who's really really popular in the charts called Mundy. And Mundy was singing with us this evening and when Mundy was...um...when Mundy had a big hit in Ireland...it's still getting played all the time on the radio...he had a big hit with a song called The Galway Girl. It was written by Steve Earle, so just as we were doing The Galway Girl who comes running onto the stage, only Steve and started singing with us!

	He's been popping up all day! I'm sure he's trying to commandeer this festival!

Sharon: They'll have to adopt him! He's great, very...very enthusiastic. A nice man.

	So what do you do when you are not performing?

Sharon: Oh, I love being at home, I'm a home bird.

	And presumably spend a lot of time writing? How do you go about that?

Sharon: I record my thoughts on a little machine like that [points to my dictaphone]. If I didn't have something to record them, I'd forget them straight away. I used to think years ago oh, if I don't remember it then it mustn't worth remembering. But you end up with nothing at all! [laughs]

	[laughs] Oh no!

Sahron: Well if you have something recorded then you remember it and...a little thing, a little idea and it kind of develops into...

	I know, it's like writing - it's the getting going that's the hard part. Well I'm going to leave you now, as I know you've got the signing tent in a moment, so thank you very much for your time and I hope to meet you again soon.