Music of the Peoples

However bitchy trad musicians can get, I doubt any would begrudge the Teilifis na Gaeilge Traditional Music Award presented in Galway's Town Hall to Donegal fiddler and composer Tommy Peoples. His contribution to the music, through his benchmark recordings on the first Bothy Band album, and with Paul Brady, Matt Molloy and Daithi Sproule in the 1970s and early 1980s - and his tunes which have now become common currency - were celebrated on Monday night with a big concert line-up of musicians like Joe Burke and his wife Ann, Frankie Gavin, Mairtin O'Connor, Paul Brady, Paddy Glackin and Micheal O Domhnaill - and indeed in a rare stage performance, Tommy himself.

The paradox about Tommy is, however, that if you put any limelight on him at all, he shies away painfully. Deeply humble and delicate, you can hear it in his few, measured words in the hoarse, rural, implacable accent: occasionally the bashful grin spreading across his face, bringing up the handsome twinkle in the dark brown eyes which all his kids have. Just turned 50, and living in relative obscurity in Co Clare with his wife, Marie Linnane, and five kids, his life now is a far cry from the fireball exuberance of his younger days. The Linnanes provided a bedrock of support for him through some very rocky times, while his mother-in-law, Kitty, was the piano player and organiser with the old Kilfenora Ceili band, and helped keep Tommy on the straight and narrow.

And musically, the man has never lost it. Indeed the magic touch has gained a great emotional maturity - although he prefers playing in low-key sessions, like the great ones on Sunday lunchtimes in Cruise's in Ennis with Alph Duggan and flute-player Kevin Crawford. Or with the snow-bearded folk singer Mike Newby at the Roadside in Lisdoonvarna. Or in the pub in Kilfenora that the brother-in-law, Gerry, bought from a Lotto windfall a few years back. And although Tommy is a bit of a local tourist attraction, he's no prima donna - rather, utterly respectful of anyone that blows in, subsuming his extraordinary gift into the session unison. To really hear Tommy Peoples today, you need to listen to The Quiet Glen, the album which arrived earlier this year, breaking a recording silence of 15 years. Produced by himself and recorded in his house on a four-track and remastered upwards, his fiddle is backed quietly, tastefully, by guitarist Alph Duggan. It's a beautiful album, full of lamentation and bright humour, with all the trademark stylistic touches: the jagged stutter of the bow-bounced triplets attacking to the phrases - "I was only trying out what those Donegal fiddlers were doing, and getting it wrong, my own way"; those wicked little shivery notes, the skittery triplet runs; the swooning, dithering rolls, and very much a Clare thing, the rapid, lively switch from one tune to another.

But most importantly, the album brings together for the first time, a series of his own tunes - consciously to stake a claim on them, as some have taken on a life of their own, such as The Green Fields of Glentown (recorded countless times by other musicians, including a string-section rendition on Donal Lunny's new album); or Grainne's Jig, named after his youngest daughter - and which, upsettingly, a prominent accordionist in the US has now claimed as his own. Having only joined IMRO two years ago, Tommy is a bit of a late starter in terms of the business end of his work, and has never received royalties from records which continue to sell well. "I thought I was the only fool in the outfit at the time, but most of the other guys would say the same. When it boils down to it, I should have been alert on my end, but we tended to take people at face value then." He now sells The Quiet Glen through a deal with Ossian, as well as directly through a web page run by a friend (Tommy himself doesn't even have a phone). "So far, it has exceeded all my expectations, and certainly more than I ever got from any record company." The album in its dedications of tunes, frequently harks back to east Donegal where he grew up near St Johnston. "It was rich tillage land, but there were two very definite distinct classes, between the landowners and the mostly Catholic labourers. My own mother was hired out when she was 12 - that's not so long ago, 1918 or so. That was the norm at the time, but who knows when the norm is right or wrong?

"But I didn't really grow up in poverty, as such. There wasn't money to spare or even spend. I remember my mother getting groceries, and putting it in the book, to pay later, but there was another wealth that compensated enormously for that." Tommy glimpsed the fading world of the old labourer-musicians who were paid tuppence to play in pairs (for volume) in the local dance hall for people dancing the sets or in the Lancers, a now derelict little hall with its tin roof and stone seats - a focal point then for the old-timers. "When I came along, that generation had mostly packed up playing. Different influences were coming into play, like Rock Around the Clock, the showbands. You were seen to be old-fashioned if you were playing traditional music - you felt you were kind of in a time warp." But his own family were big musical figures in the area. Tommy never really knew his grandfather, Jimmy, who was a local legend, as were his father's cousins Bob and George, even his uncle Mattha. As a kid, Tommy would sit on the stairs and rock away to himself, singing. "It became like an addiction, because I didn't stop till I was 12 or more" Marie later said of their own kids "they're all rockers, every one of them" At the age of seven, his father, who had played the fife in the local fife and drum band, bought him his first fiddle, and local fiddler Joe Cassidy gave him his grounding. "You wouldn't have heard a radio in those days, or even the old fellows unless you were passing by their house, so it was all very strange to me starting off." Having won a scholarship to St Eunan's college in Letterkenny, Tommy was expelled for scaling the walls and escaping - a pattern he repeated when he went to Dublin as a labourer in the Carmelite Friary in Aungier Street in Dublin, and even when he did a stint as a Garda. Forever escaping into Dublin sessions at Church Street and the old Piper's Club, he hadn't delivered a single summons in 18 months, and was unceremoniously turfed out. He gives the shy grin. "It was pretty plain to all concerned that I wasn't going to make much headway." Around that time, living over the Brazen Head pub, he started to write tunes, first on paper, which he then tried out on the fiddle (he has about 50 to his credit). But his unique fiddle style was attracting wide attention, and he began touring abroad with outfits like The Green Linnet (including Mary Bergin and others) and the Bothy Band, which he joined after Paddy Glackin left. Those tours led to some rough collisions with drink, and while there were some high-rolling times - himself and piper Paddy Keenan were a notorious pair - Tommy came close to destroying himself a number of times, in a car-crash, for instance, which shattered his left little finger, and meant he had to retrain himself "the proper way - which I'd never learnt".

Although now well dry, tragedy has also touched - and brought closer together - the family which he is so fiercely proud of: the scampish daughters, Nessa with her daughter Roisin Kate, and Siobhan, another fine fiddler, who sat in beside him at the jam-packed session in Cruise's last Sunday; his teenage son Cronin; and 12-year-old Loughlin. Saddest of all was the awful loss of their beautiful son, Tommy, seven years ago. His photo is still on the dashboard of the family car. Talking me through some of that stuff, with tears in his eyes, Tommy said: "That's why music is only ever a bit of fun, in the face of that . . . And I would still have the old hang-ups that, like myself, the music is a bit of a backward thing; I would have lived with the sense that my own parents were backward, that little bit of shame that they didn't keep up with the Joneses or whatever, but in later years I realised to my own shame that the gold was staring me in the face, that their truths were far more valid than the new things that were replacing them."

But surely his music connects in with all of that? "Maybe. I would always be afraid that I hadn't honoured those people as I should, not that they ever made me feel obliged or anything." He goes back to the old house or "homestead" as he calls it, which is "liveable" and which he owns with his two sisters. "The next nearest house is all boarded up now, but my uncle Mattha lived in it and raised the family in it. I remember at one stage, the house was condemned by the county council, but even after Mattha left, another man and his wife and three children moved in and lived and died there. The children emigrated and I just heard recently that they came back and looked at the house, but stayed in Letterkennny, and so effectively the roots are kind of gone, which I thought was sad."

Again, the eyes misted. "Particularly now when I see those empty houses, and none of them there anymore, do you know? . . . and I'm not even just saying that about my own parents, I'm thinking of all the neighbours in that area, wonderful people, like . . . I suppose I miss them as well . . . I left it pretty young, and I feel I deserted ship."

For all his gifts, and he has many (check out his moving foreword in Caoimhin MacAoidh's book on the Donegal fiddle tradition, Between the Jigs and the Reels), Tommy carries a lot of pain and tension within him, although he is recovering from the crippling crises of confidence that afflicted him in younger years. But he still has an ambiguous relationship with his musical gift, and is loath to put pressure on his kids to pick it up (leaving that job to the local schoolmaster, Frank Custy). Siobhan definitely has his style, but it was only after Loughlin prevailed on him that he began to give the boy lessons. Even now, he rarely practises or plays at home - "I get the odd fit when the house is quiet; I was the opposite extreme when I was younger, and I'd just go into a pub and just play, especially when I wasn't asked . . ." I think the whole world would ask him now.

The Quiet Glen is available on his website or from Ossian