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Tommy Makem

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Liam Clancy: The Life and Times of a “Sociable Loner”

Liam Clancy

The late Liam Clancy

As Liam Clancy was dying last fall, the documentary of his life, “The Yellow Bittern,” was about to come out on DVD. The film’s producer, Anna Rodgers, who’d spent five years plumbing the life of the youngest and last surviving member of the iconic group, The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem, recalls one of her last conversations with him. “He said ‘I’m going to boost sales for you.’ He was a terrible man for making those dark jokes. We’d say, ‘Liam, stop it,’ but he thought it was hilarious. I have to say, I did laugh to myself afterwards.”

“The Yellow Bittern, The Life and Times of Liam Clancy,” called an “small scale epic” by one critic, will have its only Philadelphia showing on Friday, May 7, at the Philadelphia Irish Center, 6815 Emlen Street, an event sponsored by The Philadelphia Ceili Group.

I spoke to Anna Rodgers by phone this week from her office at Crossing the Line Films in County Wicklow where she was putting the finishing touches on the RTE series, “Growing Up Gay.” A film she directed, “Today Is Better Than Two Tomorrows”–the story of two Laotian 11-year-olds, one in school, the other in Buddhist monastery—was recently screened at The Full Frame Documentary Film Festival in Durham, NC, and she’s also filming a documentary on the Faddenmore Psalter, an eighth century manuscript found in a bog.

You spent the last five years of Liam Clancy’s life with him. What was he like?

Really it’s very hard to say. He was a hard man to get to know in lots of ways. Even though he would be very gregarious, very friendly to people when he met them and he was a great conversationalist, it took time for him to let you in. He was a very deep thinker, very philosophical. You never had an ordinary conversation with Liam. As he was approaching the end of his life, he had an awareness of that, and he had philosophical ideas about what it’s all about, about his own life. He was a great storyteller, and he would tell the same stories over and over but I loved to hear them again and again because I loved the sound of his voice. That’s one of the things I miss the most. It was great fun to go out with him and have a meal. He would have a chat with everone. He was a sociable loner. Alan [Gilsenan, the film’s director] talks about “the capless interviews,” the ones we did in his home when he took his cap off and wasn’t the performer anymore. Then you got more of an insight.

Will we learn anything new and surprising in the documentary?

It’s not that kind of film. There are no big revelations in it. It’s not going to tell you something, if you’re a fan, that you didn’t know about before. It’s the way he tells a story, about his life and the period of time in cultural and political history in which the band existed [the ‘60s in the US]. One of the things in the film that is unique is the unseen archives, including home movies of Liam’s he found in his attic. And these were movies he’d never seen—including film of his own wedding! We also found some footage of his [1964] performance at the Newport Folk Festival filmed by his friend, [film director] Murray Lerner, but it took a couple of years to find that because the images had become separated from the sound.

How did Liam feel about having a film made about his life?

He once came across a grave of someone who had his name 100 years ago and he wondered what his life had been like. He wanted to put down his life story for posterity, to leave something behind for his children and grandchildren. He was very much into that, that a man should tell his story.

Was he able to see the film?

The film came out on Liam’s birthday and he came to opening night in Dublin, actually in a wheelchair. He was very weak. But he still partied all night. He went into the hospital and never came home, but we talked on the phone. We filmed to the very end. We even filmed his funeral. We knew he would have wanted us to. It was beautiful. Not a big show business funeral. Though there were a lot of people there, it felt like a very personal funeral. It was an absolutely beautiful day. It had been raining and there was a rainbow.

Why did you decide to call the film, The Yellow Bittern? Was it for the bird, which is shy and solitary, or the poem/song which is a mournful elegy by a drunken narrator of a marsh bird that has died of thirst?

It was Alan’s idea. We were trying to come up with a title for the film that would separate it from so many of the records, tribute albums and the other documentaries that had been done, including the previous documentary we ourselves had made [“The Legend of Liam Clancy”]. Liam loved that poem. It seemed poetic and lyrical and enigmatic, which hinted at the enigmatic performer who hides behind the mask. Liam recited it for us a number of times and had sung it. In fact, the last thing you hear on the film is actually Liam reading “The Yellow Bittern.” He was on oxygen and his voice was going and he had aged a lot, but you could tell how much he identified with some of the lyrics.

Here you can read a translation of the poem, from the Irish, by Seamus Heaney.

April 30, 2010 by
Music, People

Farewell to “The Bard of Armagh”

In Ireland in 2003. From the Makem Web site.

In Ireland in 2003. From the Makem Web site.

“Tommy Makem was my hero and the reason I wanted to perform,” says Tyrone-born musician Gerry Timlin, co-owner of Ambler’s Shanachie Pub and Restaurant, who in June visited the man known as “The Godfather of Irish Music” and “the Bard of Armagh” for the last time at his home in Dover, NH.  Makem, 74, died Wednesday, August 1 and, after a three-day wake, was buried August 9 in Dover. He had been diagnosed with lung cancer in May 2006.

Timlin has shared the stage with Makem and The Clancy Brothers many times and Makem became his mentor when Timlin arrived in the US with his guitar, a beautiful singing voice, and irreverent humor in the 1970s.

“I loved his wit, his commitment, and his bravery. He came to the US and made a path for the rest of us and with the Clancy’s carved out a course for us to follow,” says TImlin, who was in Ireland when Makem died. “He created new venues for us and helped us all make a living doing the one thing we all loved. Without him the world of music will never be the same.”

Makem was “the consummate performer,” says Timlin. In fact, Makem died with gigs on his schedule stretching into November.  Though a solo performer, for much of his career, this banjo-playing baritone performed with friends Liam, Tom, and Paddy Clancy. He’d come to New York from Ireland with Liam, and  they initially both embarked on acting careers until fate and their love for music drew them together for the magic that was the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem.

Many people were introduced to Irish music by Makem and the Clancys and, at least among the listening public, they are perhaps known best for what every Irish performer thinks of as the crowd-pleasers, the drinking songs like The Jug of Punch, Irish Rover, and Finnigan’s Wake. But Makem was a trad musician at heart. “He sang all kinds of folk music,” says Timlin. His mother, Sarah, was a renowned folk singer who collected traditional Irish folk tunes that might have otherwise been lost.

Traditional purists have tended to be dismissive of the way The Clancys and Tommy Makem popularized Irish roots tunes, but in recent years, many have come to recognize that their rise and that of the Chieftains–during the nascent folk era in the US–helped create a resurgence in popular interest in Ireland’s own musical history which, at the time, seemed to be heading the way of the thatched roof.

As one trad musician wrote on a message board after Makem’s death, “I listened to Tommy, and the Clancy Brothers — kinda hard to separate them, even though he hasn’t played with the band for years — for a lot of my childhood, dismissed them in my late teens as hokey and cliche, then ultimately realized how much they’ve all meant to the music.”

Makem meant everything to Timlin’s music–and his life. ” I was proud to say he was my friend and I will miss him sadly every day,” he says. ” ‘Onward and upward’ he would say and so ‘Onward and Upward Tommy.'”

Here’s what others have to say about Makem. First, Liam Clancy, who first made note of Tommy’s passing on his message board:

“He was a friend and partner-in-song for over fifty years. We shared a great hunk of our lives together. We were a hell of a team. Tommy was a man of high integrity, honesty, and, at the end, courage. Our paths diverged at times but our friendship never waned. He was my brother every bit as much as my blood brothers.”

Irish President Mary McAleese:

‘In life, Tommy brought happiness and joy to hundreds of thousands of fans the world over. Always the consummate musician, he was also a superb ambassador for the country, and one of whom we will always be proud.”

Singer-songwriter Eugene Byrne, quoted in the Dover newspaper Foster’s Daily Democrat:

“Not one of us who play a note of Irish music on a guitar today would be playing if it wasn’t for Tommy Makem, along with the Clancys. He gave us pride in our country and our culture. Bono (U2’s lead singer) was influenced by him. Michael Flatley’s new show, Celtic Tiger, has Four Green Fields in it.”

From Marianne MacDonald, host of the local radio show, “Come West Along the Road” (Sundays from noon to 1 p.m. on WTMR-800 AM):

“One of the bright twinkling stars from the constellation of Irish music faded today.  We’ve lost the great Tommy Makem.  I was fortunate to have seen him at Appel Farms, the Guinness Fleadh and, years ago, at the Holmdel Arts Center when my mother dragged me to my first Irish Festival.”

From Ed Ward of the Milwaukee Irish Fest:

“I spoke to him about two weeks ago, the day after he returned from Ireland. We talked for about a half an hour about his trip, how wonderful it was to see the parade of people who came to visit him in the hotel, relatives, old friends, the archbishop. He said he was very sad when he boarded a plane to leave Ireland, clearly knowing he would not see it again.”

“He desperately wanted to make it to Milwaukee this year so we discussed plans on what we would do as it was evident he would not be able to perform. But he planned to be there anyway. We are going ahead with these plans and Tommy’s slots will be billed as “Remembering Tommy Makem” and will be led by his nephews Tom and Jimmy Sweeney, Brian Doherty, Kevin Evans and Eugene Byrne and other close friends. The Makem and Spain Brothers will also be in Milwaukee so it should be a special celebration of Tommy’s life and love for the music of Ireland.”

From Ira Goldman, editor and publisher of the Trad Music News:

“Just about anything and everything that can, and should, be said about Tommy Makem’s music has been said since his death last Wednesday evening. The great and the not so great have been crowding the Tasker Funeral Home in Dover NH for his wake since yesterday and Thursday morning we will fill to overflowing St, Mary’s Church in that lovely New England village Tommy called home for decades.

Most people know Tommy as a balladeer and partner of the Clancy Brothers and especially of Liam Clancy. Many know him as the composer of fine songs, some of which have become standards of Irish music. Some of us have had the joy of knowing him as a fine ‘sean nos” singer and traditional musician on the banjo and whistle. His musicology as well as his music made him a true treasure of Irish Traditional Music.

Some of us have been blessed to have the invaluable, immeasurable, and lasting delight of knowing Tommy Makem as a person and as a friend. In the some 25 years I knew Tommy I never heard an unkind or angry word pass his lips. His countless acts of warmth and kindness will never be forgotten. For example, Tommy recorded a wonderful song, as delightful for “grownups” as for children, called “Waltzing with Bears.” When he was told two wee boys in Co. Carlow (aged 5 and 6) were learning the song from his cassette tape so they could entertain their Yank friend at Christmas, Tommy wrote each of them a note congratulating them for learning the song and thanking them for learning it from him.

And there was once a quiet, sunny afternoon in the empty bar of the hotel by the Sligo railroad station when Tommy played piano and let a Yank friend sing with him (much to the dismay of Liam Clancy who had to listen).

There are not enough tears to truly mark your passing, Tommy. There will always be the memories and the music and the love.

Slan, old friend.

Ar dheis De go raibh a anam uasal.”

August 2, 2007 by