It's No Secret - Hammy Hamilton, Seamus Creagh & Con O Drisceoil
It's No Secret - Hammy Hamilton, Seamus Creagh & Con O Drisceoil
Hammy Hamilton/flute
Seamus Creagh/fiddle,
Con 'fada' O'Drisceoil/box
OSSCD89 2001, 2014
Music and Songs from Seamus Creagh, Hammy Hamilton, Con Fada O Drisceoil and Pat Herring Ahern
It's No Secret was recorded and issued in 2001. It was the brainchild of John Loesberg, then director of Ossian Publications, who wished to make a CD of three traditional musicians who also sing. He recruited Herring to produce the album, and as Herring is one of the finest guitarists in Irish music, he was also asked to accompany some of the tracks.
Hammy Hamilton, a native of Belfast, is well known as a flute player and maker, and has lived most of his life in Cuil Aodha in the Muskerry Gaeltacht. He is author of The Irish Flute Player's Handbook and director of the annual Cruinniu na bhFliuit festival (www.flutemeet.org). As a singer, he is fine performer of songs in the Ulster tradition.
Accordion player Con Fada O Drisceoil is a member of the Four Star Trio, whose CDs are The Square Triangle (1997) and Magnetic South (2014). He is well known as a writer of comic songs, and published a book and CD called The Spoons Murder and Other Mysteries in 2006. He received Gradam an Chumadara (Composer's Award) from TG4 in 2009.
Seamus Creagh was a legendary fiddle player, a native of Westmeath who spent most of his adult life in Cork. He recorded Jackie Daly agus Seamus Creagh in 1976, and his playing with Jackie in that decade inspired many young people to take up traditional music. In 1998 he recorded Seamus Creagh, Aidan Coffey with another fine box-player. He lived in Newfoundland for five years, and with various other musicians made the CD Island to Island. Seamus was a fine singer, mainly of comic songs.
Five years after Seamus's untimely death we have reissued It's No Secret, and fittingly it was launched during Feile Seamus Creagh, the annual festival that honours his memory, in St. John's, Newfoundland.