Recorded Live at The Pavilion, Dun Laoghaire, over three sold out shows in December 2023
Available on streaming sites
Spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/album/0A07CYQ6Y9xyJBE8vDr783?si=BvEzr0PdRVKT_I77TYHbNQ
Bandcamp:
https://fiachnaobraonaintomdunnealanconnor.bandcamp.com/album/live-at-the-pavilion
+ announce national tour dates
Fiachna Ó Braonáin is still happily married to Hothouse Flowers and Tom Dunne to Something Happens. But when the “keys in a bowl” moment happened at a radio session – “why don’t you two guys make music together?’ it was just too hard to resist.
The result is as you’d expect with an affair: It’s fun, a bit reckless, full of energy, danger, and renewed passion. They certainly seem to be trying things they haven’t before: Willie Nelson’s On The Road Again, tunes, Christy’s John O’Dreams. There is a sense of freedom to it all.
But… there might be hell to pay!
It shouldn’t work. They have nothing in common. They are from different worlds. The Flowers is a world of poetry, romance, and soul searching; The Happens is one of anarchy, beaches, and girls in dresses.
Plus, they were on two different buses. Fiachna started his music life on the Trad bus and if the Punk bus hadn’t let Tom on – “no previous experience required”- he wouldn’t have been on any bus at all.
But if this affair has taught them anything, it is that those buses were in truth remarkably similar, and, most tellingly, brought you to the same place. With both buses the thing was to get on, you’d pick up the skills you needed once you did.
The most important thing was what you did when you got there. The songs you wrote or sang or played. On both buses it had to be real and authentic, but it had to be craic too and have the energy of a mischievous cyclone.
When gigs were suggested the On the Road Again show took shape. Being on the road is the musician’s dream. You do the thing you love most; you play with others for others and when it works it is the best thing you do. You close the door on everyday reality, at least for a while.
But it brings equal parts heartbreak and pleasure and Fiachna and Tom have vast experience of this. There are stories to be told, the romance versus the reality, with tales of Van Morrison and Tommy Ramone, burning buses, “unusual” fans, and freedom like you wouldn’t believe.
It stood to reason that Fiachna would play some of the songs of his youth, the songs that started it all for him – Don’t Go, Hallelujah Jordan, Your Love Goes On – and Tom would do similarly with Parachute, Beach, Forget Georgia, and Hello Hello.
But there are solo works too, one tune that is hundreds of years old and sung as Gaeilge, a stunning instrumental and, gulp, their first ever co-write, Our Song, a call for unity, peace and love, written when they promised The Late Late Show a new song mere days before their TV appearance and released as their second single following up from the first glimpse into Live At The Pavilion, a version of Harlan Howard’s The Chokin’ Kind, borrowed from their hero Willie Nelson.
Tom Dunne and Fiachna Ó Braonáin Medley | The Late Late Show | RTÉ One
https://youtu.be/XNdcMvHy2bs?si=123FDETldDCHTReA
Harlan Howard’s wife Melanie reached out on email and described the lads’ version as “just so lovely” when she heard it in Nashville! “Harlan would have loved this!”
But it is in exploring the common ground between these apparently disparate worlds that it really gets interesting: There are, or will be, songs from Harlan Howard, Warren Zevon, Willie, Christy, Brian Wilson, Bonny Light Horseman, The Bothy Band, The Replacements, Wilco.
It is often remarkable, finding a Planxty influence in a Pavement song, a trad chord in a punk song, a punk song in the Trad. This part of the journey has just begun.
Live on stage was where it was always destined to come alive and Live at the Pavilion captures the first bloom of this remarkable collaboration in all its giddy, head long charm. Recorded over three nights in December 2023, it presents the musical side of this amazing show.
For the stories, in all their jaw dropping detail, well, you just have to be there.
Fiachna and Tom are joined in this journey by the ridiculously talented, and indeed young and handsome, Alan Connor on piano, guitar, foot percussion, and vocals. He is best known for his work with Sharon Shannon, but that is just the start of it.
His sheer musicality is the ingredient that lifts these performances to the next level.
He was essential from day one. It could never have worked without him. When he hits his stride, and the instruments and voices all come together, something new and distinctly different leans into existence.
Hence the awkward name: Fiachna, Tom, Alan. Suitable for neither poster nor T-shirt. It will do for now. Suggestions on a postcard.
“The life I love is making music with my friends”
Fiachna, Tom & Alan Irish Tour 2024/2025:
23 November 2004 – The Pavilion, Dun Laoghaire
30 November 2024 – The Pavilion, Dun Laoghaire
14 December 2024– St Peter’s Church, Balrothery
4 January 2025 – The Lark Balbriggan
1 February 2025 – Roscommon Arts Centre
1 March 2025 – Riverbank Arts Centre, Newbridge
22 March 2025 – Esker Arts Centre, Tullamore
19 April 2025 – Town Hall, Galway
Spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/album/0A07CYQ6Y9xyJBE8vDr783?si=BvEzr0PdRVKT_I77TYHbNQ
Bandcamp:
https://fiachnaobraonaintomdunnealanconnor.bandcamp.com/album/live-at-the-pavilion