Below is an interview Pat did about Beannachtaí an Lae and the radio. It followed on the shortlisting for the Oireachtas Communications prize .

This is featured on the site Aerthonnta.

Tune in to Claremorris Community Radio on 94.6 FM and on all good radio apps.

Anni Wilton-Jones

In many ways, producing my programme at present is like sitting At The Crossroads and waiting for the fiddler to arrive from the left, the flute player from the right, the dancers from behind me and the seanchaí from straight ahead. However, all the roads are empty and I don’t know when anyone will be coming along them.

So, while I’m waiting, I’m reliving great events held At The Crossroads in the past and keeping listeners in touch with how the people who can’t come along at present are getting on.

It is, of course, a challenge to keep an arts programme vibrant during a time when the arts are depressed. Despite great efforts to keep arts activities going via online platforms, the immediacy and ‘being there’ feeling cannot be the same and this also affects the radio reports on the events.

To keep things lively, archive material has proved very useful. Some fantastic readings and performances have again seen the light of day and I’ve found some marvellous and previously unused recordings. Occasional virtual interviews have been possible, too.

The practicalities of programme production in lockdown have proved to be less of a problem than expected. Most of the tasks can be carried out comparatively easily at home, though I do miss the friendly banter with Radio members and staff. Only one aspect has really proved troublesome – the recording of my own parts of the programme, without a soundproofed space.

First, I tried recording straight into the computer. The recording programme picked up the computer sounds. Then I tried recording into my portable recording device. It picked up the hum of the aquarium equipment, the splash of water from the filtering system and something else that I couldn’t identify so couldn’t eliminate.

I shut myself away in the only quiet room. Joe-Beddau, my cat, cried at the door – Siamese have a very plaintive and LOUD cry. I let him in. He was good as gold but his collar-bell jangled and jangled and jangled.

Now the most important part of preparing my programme is removing Joe’s collar before I start!

Until the next At The Crossroads programme, slán go fóill!

Anni Wilton-Jones

Ruairi O Broin

My Show is called For Folks Sake and I usually introduce it, saying, I will be playing my selection of Folk and Trad and it’s pretty much just that.

Quite often I will remember something that has irked me during the week and I’ll see if I have anything (tune or song) on my database that might illustrate my sentiments on the matter, Banks, Brexit, our own lovely selection of politicians and their foibles and a certain artist formerly known as the President of the US has provided me with an “excuse” to play tracks from my collection.

 I have been collecting a long time and have a long memory so Ill usually find some apt comment through the medium of music. 

I’ve been involved on the Folk and Trad scene for decades and would know quite a few from the national scene and indeed further afield and endeavour to ensure that their recorded work gets played and always mention both the name of the track and the album from whence it came. Recently I have been doing a slot from a series of albums from John Spillane of Irish songs we learned in school.

How I go about preparing a show varies but I generally prepare a playlist and convert it to MP3 and then record, if possible devising some sort of continuity between the songs/artists and intersperse the songs with tunes ranging from early American recordings of a German melodeon  maestro, playing Irish Trad up to the latest offerings from local musicians, Chloe Feeney from Claremorris Comhaltas springs to mind.

Mention of recently deceased musicians and singers is also something I consider important and recently did  a mini tribute to the late Joe Burke.

As there are no sessions, classes or gigs to promote at present I’m in a sort of limbo on that front but that will return.

R