Disneyland beckons for the four cailíní from Killaloe
Hats' off to the girls of Killaloe, they're off to Disneyland in Florida to sing and dance for the summer.
The females are an all-singing all-dancing trad band with a modern feel called Cailíní Lua, a group of four young women with an average age of 21 who are just about to experience the biggest breakthrough of their short lives as professional performers after management of the Raglan Road Pub in Disney Springs, Orlando, decided to hire them for the summer season.
“Oh we are so excited,” exclaimed band member Tara Brady, from Ballina-Killaloe. “One of the things we wanted to do since we formed the band as teeangers was get over to the US and see how we would go.”
And to think that it was purely by chance that these four cailíní got together in the first place. They were all just around 16-years-old when the All Ireland Fleadh Cheoil was being staged in Ennis in 2016 when organisers in Clare were desperately looking for a local group to perform at the Gig Rig during the event and do “The Banner County” proud.
Killaloe girls Katie and Laura Donoghue are from a family who have been involved in trad all their lives. Their mother, Mary, got a phone call asking if she could get a group together to perform on the main stage at the big event. The Donoghue sisters then summoned their friend Tara - a singer, and a dancer with the Nenagh based O'Flynn O' Kane Academy of Irish Dance - and another performer, Sarah Fox from Bunratty.
“We were really founded by accident,” says Tara. “We were thrown together, but when we came off stage at the Fleadh people were asking us for our CD. Our reaction was, ‘Oh my God, we're not even a band.’”
Though merely cobbled together at the last minute, the reaction of their first audience at that fleadh made them seriously think that maybe they had something going by sticking together. “After that we said we'd make a go of it,” Tara reveals.
Then it was a case of coming up with a name. With three out of the four from the group coming from Ballina-Killaloe, they eventually decided on Cailíní Lua, with its echoes of the Irish language name for Killaloe, Cill Dalua.
“We wanted to come up with a name that had a bit of home in it,” says Tara. “So that wherever we travelled to perform there would always be a bit of home in us. And now it turns our we're off to America and we will have a bit of home with us even though we're going to be so far away.”
INTRIGUING
How management in the Irish pub in Florida decided to hire them in the first place is quite an intriguing story. Tara relates: “A number of years ago I visited the pub during a performance with my parents and my brother when we were on holiday in Florida. The presenter asked if there was anyone in the audience who was Irish and if they would come on stage.
“I went up and did a small dance and they said, ‘Oh my God, what age are you?’ I told them I was 16 and they replied, ‘come back when you're 21.’”
And so Tara, on recently reaching 21, decided to renew contact with the pub and inform management of her involvement in the band and their success in recent years playing at live pub gigs, wedding receptions and even at wedding ceremonies in churches.
Pub management did an audition with the cailíní over a series of Zoom calls and the girls sent videos of some of their live shows and performances.
“They were looking for a ready-made band to come out to Florida, and that is what we are,” says Tara, revealing that she and the other members of the group are thrilled at the thought of the experience ahead of them. “We're all college students and we will be off for the summer, so it suites us down to the ground.”
Cailíní Lua's repertoire contains echos of traditional music and singing, but they bring their own unique style to their performance. And while they offer a few well-known crowd pleasers like Christy Moore's ‘Ride On’ and ‘Black Is The Colour’, they give old Irish trad songs and ballads a modern feel that seems to appeal to younger generations in particular.
“When people hear of a trad band they are waiting for lads with beards wearing woolen jumpers to appear on stage, but it's interesting when it's four young ones instead,” says Tara, who is herself a granddaughter of Jack Hogan, a founding member of the Killaloe ballad group, ‘The Shannon Folk Four’, who were extremely popular during the ballad session era in Ireland in the 1960s and 70s, and even decades later.
And in spite of the modern feel given out by the cailíní, there's a harping back to Jack's day as his granddaughter even plays the spoons.
“My mam had taught me a long time ago. At first I thought it was funny, but then we started incorporating it into our gigs and it goes down so well because it's something a bit different, and yet really traditional too,” says Tara.
What also goes down well is their whistling and lilting numbers - Katie performs the whistling and her sister Laura the lilting. “We are trying to modernise and make trad youthful by incorporating many aspects in to a lively show, and that's a style we are hoping to bring to Florida,” says Tara.
Lilting and whistling may sound old fashioned, but having young people do it while having the craic makes it more modern and appealing to audiences today, she says.
“What we are about involves getting people clapping along. But they are hearing something they never heard before from young people. There's a twist on it,” says Tara of the cailíní sound.
In addition to the spoons, Cailíní Lua's instruments include fiddle, piano, concertina, bodhrán and guitar. They have featured on TG4, performed at the Gig Rig at the All-Ireland Fleadh Cheoil every year since 2016, bar the Covid era, and have been awarded Ceremony Musicians of the Year by the ‘Brides of Limerick’ magazine in 2019.
The cailíní jet off on May 22. They will be on stage five or six nights a week, but it won't be too hard on the vocal chords because all four members of the band are singers and they can share the burden.
It’s great to be young all the same. Disneyland for an entire summer. What a ride!