A winner at the races for Mayo and Galway!
by Tom Gilmore
This time of year, Galway is famous for the races, but Mayo is now back on record for a race meeting too – one with a difference along the Atlantic ocean floor.
The unusual Mayo races are back as the title track of a new CD album featuring singer Sean Walsh with commentary by Seán Bán Breathnach on the 80s Folk/Comedy hit The Races of Killadoon.
It’s the first outing on CD for this former vinyl single hit from 1983 about a race meeting, along the Atlantic Ocean floor.
Fifteen other Trad tunes, Ballads and Country songs make up the musical mix on this new album.
This 1983 hit was originally launched as a single by the late Monsignor James Horan of Knock Shrine and Knock Airport fame, in Louisburg, beside where the sea shore races take place.
A hilarious song, it tells the tale of horse racing, donkey derbies, and even egg and spoon races, along the Mayo ocean floor – when the tide is out of course!
“The three o’clock race did not take place.
For the tide had not gone out”
These are two lines from this comedy song penned by the late John Duggan, a former Garda in Glenamaddy and for many years a presenter on Mid-West Radio.
The commentary by Seán Bán Breathnach is equally as hilarious as the lyrics, if not even more so! In his typical breakneck exciting speed with words Seán Bán’s commentary talks about fleet footed runners with names such as Asal Mór, Grá Mo Chroí and Mary Ann Maguire.
Indeed, The Races of Killadoon song, after Seán Bán commentary reaches a crescendo at the finish line, mutates into an original Trad tune written and played by Galway City-based, Dunmore native Sean Walsh titled The Killadoon Jig.
Hilarious the song may song but the races along the Atlantic ocean floor happened regularly off the Mayo coast for many years, always in summer and always when the tide was out!
Another Trad track, titled The Sean Walsh Reel is also revived on this CD.
It was a number one on the Irish Radio Show charts on New York’s station WVHC 88.7 FM also in the early 80s. Back when Sean was topping the charts in New York he was ahead of songs by Christy Moore, The Furey Brothers, Paddy Reilly, Big Tom, and The Wolfe Tones.
Some of the well-known tracks on his new album include that stirring rebel ballad The Hills of Sweet Mayo, with vocals, plus some fine accordion, playing by Sean.
There is also an unusual version of 21 Years which was a number one hit for Dermot Hegarty back in 1970 but with different lyrics.
“I first heard this song on an old 78 rpm disc back when I was a teenager growing up in Dunmore, Co. Galway. I memorised the words from that version and have been singing it at live gigs for decades,” says Sean.
On this recording the prisoner, who is the subject of the song, is sent to jail in Nashville but in Dermot’s 1970s version he was sent to the notorious Dartmoor Jail in the UK.
Other tracks on the album include Home Boys Home, The Flower of Sweet Strabane, Country songs including Dim Light Thick Smoke and Loud Loud Music, Pins and Needles, Put My Little Shoes Away, plus various selections of reels.
Apart from singing Sean plays accordion, banjo, keyboards, and guitar on all tracks as well as being the producer of the record.
No doubt Galway’s Sean Walsh and Seán Bán Breathnach hope their 80s hit about Mayo’s Races of Killadoon will race up the charts again this month – as a joint winner for both counties!