Expect to attend loads of sessions with Trad Tours.
You don’t have to worry about finding great music when you go to Ireland with Marianne MacDonald. The host of the WTMR 800 AM Irish radio program, “Come West Along the Road,” not only knows dozens of musicians in Ireland, she usually has a few on her Trad Tours trips. That’s come in handy more than once
“On my trip to Donegal last year, we were at a ceili at Ardara and the ceili band didn’t show up so the musicians on my tour played the ceili,” she recalls, laughing.
On one trip to Crane’s, a famous pub in Galway owned by Mick Crehan, whose sister was a friend of MacDonald’s, the famed fiddler and singer Desi O’Halloran sauntered in to meet the tour group and sang for them. He comes in whenever he hears they’re there. “I made friends with him the first time after I began playing his music on my show,” explains MacDonald. “My group just loved him. The last time we were there, on the last night of the tour, the group did a Desi O’Halloran soundalike contest. They came up with it on their own and we had a lot of fun.”
A few times her tour members have had the “locked in” experience: Once Irish pubs are officially closed, the doors are locked until the next morning and whoever the publican allows to remain is attending a “private party”—actually, a way around closing time laws—where the beer still flows and the music can go on till the sun rises.
The highlight of another of her tours involved the late Tommy Moffit, a popular and well known musician from Roscommon who lived in Philadelphia where he had a long-running radio show. The same one MacDonald does now. “We had a ceili at the White House in Roscommon and Tommy played. His whole family from Roscommon came to see him and he was thrilled to be playing in his hometown. He was pretty sick at the time and this may have been his last trip to Ireland. It was wonderful to be there for it.”
In case you haven’t figured it out, MacDonald’s tours aren’t for the tone deaf or anyone who hates Irish traditional music. When she launched her first trip a few years ago, MacDonald knew exactly what she wanted to offer—music, music, and more music. “Because that’s my interest,” she says. “I have an Irish radio show and I was a dancer for years. I actually started them out as dance tours. I’ve maintained all these friendships in Ireland so I’m able to expose people to music they might not have an opportunity to hear otherwise.”
She’s led tours to all parts of Ireland, Cape Breton in Canada, as well as Boston and Nashville.
“As an Irish trad musician, having traveled on my own to Ireland several times, I can say that Marianne arranges visits to the best venues for hearing Irish trad music and experiencing the culture, the craic, and the dancing,” says local fiddler Mary Malone, who has gone on several of MacDonald’s tours including one the radio host arranged just for her family, who wanted to experience Bloomsday in Dublin. “Everyone still talks about it,” says Malone.
MacDonald’s 2012 journey (October 4-11) will take you from Philadelphia to the Beamish Cork Folk Festival in Cork City where some of Irish music’s leading lights are on the bill, including Lunasa, Cherish the Ladies, Kilfenora Ceili Band, Paddy Keenan, John Doyle, Karan Casey, Mundy, and Julie Felix. While in Cork, you’ll stay at The River Lee Hotel, a luxury, 4-star hotel within walking distance of the festival venues. In addition to the headliners, there will be some special musical guests playing just for the tour, including Noel Shine and Mary Greene and their daughter, Ellie, as well as Rory McCarthy whose music she plays on her show regularly. The tour, which costs $2,199 plus $195 tax, including airfare, will also explore the largely hidden gem of the Beara Peninsula. “It’s where my family came from and it’s beautiful,” says MacDonald.
You’ll spend some time in Dublin at the prestigious Burlington Hotel, accessible to Stephen’s Green, Trinity, and the pubs, shopping and session scene of Ireland’s capitol city. A side trip to Avoca (setting for the series, “Ballykissangel” and home of the Avoca Weavers), the magnificent gardens of Powerscourt, and County Wicklow, known as Ireland’s garden spot.
For more information, contact Marianne MacDonald at 856-236-2717, or rinceseit@msn.com. See her website for details.
