Sean Tyrrell will never be mistaken for one of the three Irish tenors. An authentic modern day troubadour, his rough-hewn and piercingly honest voice is well-known and respected throughout Ireland, seasoned from decades of sessions around his County Clare home on Ireland's west coast. Sean is perhaps best known for setting Irish poetry to music and giving new life to writers and works that have been overlooked or forgotten. Not one to take the troubadour moniker lightly, he frequently performs an award-winning version of the 18th century satiric poem The Midnight Court (all 1206 lines of it!) at theaters and arts festivals, assuring audiences that Irish oral tradition is alive and well.
His sixth studio album, Walker of the Snow, is a no-nonsense journey through a vast repetoire. Probably the year’s only Irish folk album to come with a parental adivsory, Tyrrell moves smoothly from tradtional Irish to contemporary Irish to American folk and popular song. The great equalizer is Tyrrell’s voice--free of affect, its honesty and integrity take even the most familiar songs and make listeners feel like they’re hearing them for the first time. “You Are My Sunshine” and “On Top of Old Smokey” are often interpreted as cheerful, uptempo numbers, but Sean’s voice never hides from a lyric and exposes the loss at the root of both those classics.
His choice of Irish verse is inspired, including both the famous and the forgotten. Wilde’s “Reading Gaol” is rendered hauntingly new, while Gogarty’s obscure “Ringsend” is sure to get the attention of a new audience as Sean’s voice reaches out, just above a beautiful but spare arrangement, “I shall live in Ringsend/ With a red-headed whore . . . .” The title track is also a poem Sean set to music, essentially a murder ballad by the little known Irish writer Charles Dawson Shanly, an Irishman who set out for the Yukon Territory in the early 1800’s.
Sean has been plying his trade in Ireland and around the world since the late 1960’s. His latest album was funded by his fanbase through an Irish crowd sourcing website and quickly picked up by The Vital Record for worldwide release. A compelling live performer, Sean is known for playing unusual instruments like the tenor banjo, the mandola and the manocello. His first album, Cry of a Dreamer, was voted Best Folk Album of 1994 by both Folk Roots and Hotpress. The album was picked up by Hanibal/Rykodisc in 1996 and given a “Spotlight Review” in Billboard Magazine, which called Sean “the genuine article.” He’s played with many Irish music greats, including Davy Spillane, Kilfenora Céilí, and members of The Chieftains.
Sean has been plying his trade in Ireland and around the world since the late 1960’s. His latest album was funded by his fanbase through an Irish crowd sourcing website and quickly picked up by The Vital Record for worldwide release. A compelling live performer, Sean is known for playing unusual instruments like the tenor banjo, the mandola and the manocello. His first album, Cry of a Dreamer, was voted Best Folk Album of 1994 by both Folk Roots and Hotpress. The album was picked up by Hanibal/Rykodisc in 1996 and given a “Spotlight Review” in Billboard Magazine, which called Sean “the genuine article.” He’s played with many Irish music greats, including Davy Spillane, Kilfenora Céilí, and members of The Chieftains.
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