The Donohue story

“My parents had reared me to shake and to mow,
To plough and to harrow, to reap and to sow.
But my heart being airy to drop it so low,
I set out on high speculation.”
The Limerick Rake

I was raised by hard-working people. They taught us the value of work by example. They were up each morning and had a day's work done before they woke us for school, and my mother made us breakfast. My father ploughed and harrowed; the sweat on his aged brow glistened in the Galway summer sun. They grew beet for the sugar company; we harvested turf from the bog to warm us in winter. They milked 20 good-natured cows, and the odd kicker. My father hacked out a foundation for a new house with a hand and a half when he was 70. If contentment is wealth, he had found riches in an orderly life of hard work, matched only in intensity with that of my mother.

My respect for manual labor is so great that I knew it was best left alone. My brother Frank and I got a special dispensation because we were musicians. Our hands were built for fretboards and keyboards and not for the plough or the harrow. We both probably thought a musician's life was all play. In our early teens we jumped on a bandwagon and headed off to far corners of our 32,500 square mile island. From Sneem to Carndonagh. We’d often leave at 2 pm and get back at 6 am, with the sun ascending over the Sliabh Eachtaighs, and the next day do it all again, never almost, staying in a hotel.

Our hair had to be styled, our suits ironed, our shoes polished and our friendliness with the public unrestrained. Our mother would say, isn’t your life very hard, as we were having to go out in the dead of winter, heading towards Caherciveen or some god-forsaken town in Waterford, or Cavan to play in a hall with a freezing dressing room and transparent ham sandwiches for sustenance.

We lived for the good feed in Farranfour (thanks Nicholas) and a steak in Thurles. The pretty girls of Mayo welcomed us to the Palm Court in Bellmullet. Yes, there was much to look forward to. Records in the charts kept audiences coming, and the fans lined up for autographs. A preponderance of them were of the fairer sex.

A casual invite to America by an uncle took me off the showband merry-go-round and landed me in a country that had the “pursuit of happiness’ in its Declaration of Independence.

My first week in the Bronx, and I was hit in the face with reality. American musicians worked 4 to 5 hours a night. Dragged their equipment up 5-story walk-ups on the Grand Concourse. All of that life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness jazz was actually hard work. Those who played festivals would play three sets a day.
As a sometimes solo performer, I knew what Vegas throat was. Vocal chords were not designed to be blasted with air, 6 nights a week, 4 hours per night. Often with audiences, whether indifferent or enthusiastic, I didn’t always want to hear anything original or new. If you played one of your own songs, you were careful to back announce it, or it would have audience members checking out.

I guess my point is if you want to avoid hard work, you must first learn to inherit well. Or have passion so strong that lugging gear in and out of a million venues is a small price to pay for the flow you feel. When your guitar is pulsing out its rhythm, adjacent to your heartbeat, and your voice complies in delivering the song in a way that compels the listener to reach for their lover's hand, that’s a feeling that endures long after the last note. Like a farmer looking out on a field of ripe barley, or a meadow with spring lambs bleating.

Contentment is wealth, even if the artist in you stretches it thin in your quest for perfection, or an acceptable level of ecstasy.

Gabriel Donohue has performed with The Chieftains, Tom Waits, Cherish the Ladies, Eileen Ivers, and runs musical coach tours to Ireland with Scott Kirby. They take along fans of Irish culture and Irish music. He also produces other artists. www.Isleinntours.com