Nábac Gigs and News

Galway First Article on Nábac Galway CD launch - By Kernan Andrews
Dec 3 2007

No Problem for Nábac as they launch debut album in The Crane

Four Dubliners and a Derryman - through accident, design, and other strange adventures - found themselves in Galway city, and decided it would be a good idea to make the city the HQ for their band.

The Galway based trad and folk band Nábac will launch their debut album Siar Anoir with a gig in The Crane Bar, Sea Road, on Thursday December 13 at 9pm.
The band are Liz Coleman (fiddle, mandolin, and mandola), Ciaran O’Dongaile (uileann pipes, flute, and whistles), James Ryan (mandola, guitar, and banjo), Noriana Kennedy (vocals, whistles, guitar), and Paddy Kennedy (bodhrán, cajon, flute, and percussion). So why base themselves in Galway?

“Galway is the best place for trad music,” Noriana explains as I sit with her and Liz for the interview on a Wednesday evening, “ and there’s also a great community of musicians here and plenty of sessions.”
Galway - or rather a couple of elderly Galwegians - helped the band come up with their name.

“Paddy was always fond of the phrase,” explains Liz, “and when he and James went sailing one summer and there were these two old men from Connemara they met who kept saying ‘Ná bac, ná bac!’. Although Ciaran says it means “Don’t mind it” for the band it means ‘No problem’ and that sums up our attitude. We’re positive and we’ll have a go.”

For the past two years, both in Galway and abroad, Nábac have been gigging heavily and building up a reputation as a good live act with a (much needed) young, fresh, and vibrant take on Irish traditional music. It’s culminated in their debut Siar Anoir, which was produced by the band and Seamie O’Dowd.
So for those still unfamiliar with Nábac, what can they expect from the album and next week’s Crane gig?

“I don’t know what the purists would call it but we feel it’s a modern approach to Irish trad,” says Noriana. “It’s Irish music to start with and then we blend it with folk music from other parts of the world.”

“We’ve got influences from many different places,” says Liz. “We listened to trad growing up but we also play American and Scandinavian folk and gypsy music. Noriana and Paddy’s mother is from the Philippines so that influence is there too on the Filipino song ‘Ang Tangi Kong Pagibig’. We’re also into soul and reggae.”

In a time when trad music seems to be stuck in a rut, Siar Anoir is a welcome release. It avoids the sickly-slick overproduction of some and the musically rigid purist hell that affects other releases. With Nábac, they just play, enjoy themselves while playing it, and transmit that enjoyment of Irish trad to the listener. They’ve certainly been achieving that abroad.

“It’s amazing the enthusiasm for Irish music that we’ve seen in Italy and Sweden,” says Noriana. “It’s unbelievable and it always surprises us.”
Regular tours on the Continent have also produced their fair share of bizarre moments for Nábac.

“We had just played a show in Spain and we were about to do a festival in Italy.” says Noriana. We arrived in Italy and Ciaran opens his pipe case and finds part of it was missing. ‘Where did you last see it?’ we were asking him. ‘It was in a park,” he said. In a park. What park? The park might have been back in Spain!
“‘What are you going to do?’ we asked so we asked the owner of the hotel we were staying in to give us a bit of the garden hose. So Ciaran sticks the top of the hose onto his pipes and there he is on stage with this big yellow plastic thing sticking out of the top of his pipes. It made a few squeaks at first but he moved it around and turned out fine.”

Nábac have a good sense of humour and certainly don’t take themselves too seriously. The band profiles on www.nabacmuisc.com are proof of that. Noriana’s entry reads: “After lengthy board meetings, Nábac Inc management decided it would be in our commercial interest to have the band fronted by a good-looking female.”
“That’s bulls**t! My brother wrote that!” says Noriana, laughing with acute embarrassment. “What he wrote originally just slagged me off so I asked him if he could just write something nice. ‘I can’t do it,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t come naturally’.”

So now that the album is coming out, what are Nábac’s immediate plans?
“We’ve more tours coming up and next year is looking busy,” says Liz. “We are going to Denmark before Christmas and then Germany for three weeks.”
“That will be our first experience of ‘slogging touring’ in a van and no doubt we’ll be back in Italy,” says Noriana. “Liz’s PhD will have to go on hold as will my career as an environmental scientist. I think we’ll have to take a sabbatical.”

For tickets contact The Crane on 091 - 587419 or go to www.thecranebar.com