Nick Kehoe is an Irish musician, who has converted many old Irish melodies into modern day songs.
Ireland is an amazingly rich source of folk music, so rich in fact, that it’s hard to keep track of all the amazing songs it has to offer.
And it’s not just the searing, beautiful melodies, there is also the constant stream of brilliant lyrics, telling of love and loss, rebellion, hardship and emigration. These are works of genius; sometimes tragic, sometimes joyous but always heart breakingly moving and real.
There are literally thousands of these songs, yet even a keen follower of Irish folk music is unlikely to have heard more than a hundred or so. What happened to the rest?
In many cases, they stopped being relevant. Good melodies may be timeless but good lyrics can fall victim to changing times, lifestyles and attitudes.
Audiences in the 19th century may have been able to relate to a song about a roving pedlar, but to a modern audience it’s of little more than academic or historic interest. The same applies to songs like The Little Red Lark or Lovely Nancy. In many cases the original lyrics can no longer be found.
Yet these old songs and hundreds more like them have wonderful melodies that still resonate today, just as appealing as better-known and over-exposed songs like Carrickfergus or the Salley Gardens.
My New Songs for Old project is designed to give these melodies a new lease of life by adding new lyrics that reflect our life today, while maintaining the link with the past.
It’s been difficult but rewarding. Hours spent working my way through Petrie’s Complete Irish Music, containing no fewer than 1,592 traditional melodies, was no easy task…a task that is nowhere near finished by the way.
The effort has been well worth it because there are some exquisite forgotten gems going to waste.
New Songs for Old is my attempt to put that right. The Little Red Lark has become The World We’re Leaving to You, a lament for the state of the world we’re bequeathing our children.
Lovely Nancy has become Mary’s Faded Photograph, a song about looking back on the life of an elderly relative who, in my youth I thought of as out of touch and uninteresting but who I now see as a wonderful and fascinating woman…someone I wish I had got to know better.
The Roving Pedlar has become Days of My Life, about the shared experiences of growing up in a small town.
There are many more as you will see on the Songs Page, and there will be many more to come.