Josie McDermott

Josie McDermott was born in 1925. Hailing from Coolmeen in County Sligo, not far from Ballyfarnon on the border of County Roscommon, Josie played flute and penny whistle, composed tunes, and played in ceili bands and other ensembles for much of his life. In addition to a deep love of traditional Irish music, Josie also played saxophone and trumpet, and enjoyed jazz, country western music, and other styles. He played popular music as well as ceilis in regional dance halls as a young man, and won the All-Ireland title at the Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann three times in the 1960s and 70s, once for tin whistle, once for flute, and once for lilting. Josie lost his sight in 1962, and perhaps owing partly to this fact is known to have been particularly interested in the life and music of Turlough O’Carolan. Even before his death in 1992 and before he was the subject of an RT4 documentary, some of Josie’s tunes had taken root in the traditional repertoire. Many now recognize him as being not only a skilled musician, but as an excellent composer and lyricist.

Finding my way to Josie’s music was an interesting process. I knew early on that I wanted to look at the music of O’Carolan and also at a 20th century composer for contrast. Part of the idea was to examine music that was within the Irish tradition but came from more recent composers. As a starting place, I looked to flute players, thinking that my own connection to that instrument made it as good a beginning as any. Josie interested me, as I had learned a tune of his called “The Trip to Birmingham” from Ivan Goff the summer before at the Augusta Heritage Center. I had heard Josie’s name in connection to Roscommon flute-playing (which Paul McGrattan calls “… the heartland of the flute-playing tradition…”), but didn’t know much about him until I started doing research for this project. The 2009 documentary “Cérbh E? Josie McDermott” was immensely helpful, and contains some wonderful footage of Josie recorded before his death, and interviews with many musicians who knew him.

The more I read about Josie the more interesting coincidences and points of contact I found between him and this project, and every time a new and curious fact came to light, it was a small exciting discovery. Josie only made one album, Darby’s Farewell, which was released in 1977 (the year I was born). He was not only from the same region as O’Carolan, but like O’Carolan was blind for part of his life. Josie was something of an enthusiast of O’Carolan’s music, and once wrote a song in homage to him and to Ballyfarnon, where O’Carolan often stayed and is said to be buried.

When I began looking into Josie’s history, I did not immediately realize that he was the vocalist on a track that I had fallen in love with years before. On it, Josie lilts a couple of tunes, displaying considerable skill at this art form, of which I had long been a devotee. The track is on a CD called Celtic Mouth Music, which features Irish lilting, Scottish puirt à beaul, and several forms of Canadian mouth music. Here was yet another point of musical kinship. Already teaching myself lilting by ear from recordings, I began obsessively re-listening to Josie’s track, which it turned out had been culled from his solo album for the compilation.

One thing that attracted me to Josie was his broad taste in music. In the liner notes to Darby’s Farewell, he is quoted thus, “If you put a good ceili band, a good traditional jazz band, a good country and western band and a small orchestra, in four halls, I’d find it very hard to know which of them I’d go to hear. I’d want to hear the four of them!” Irish musicians don’t always look far beyond the borders of there own form for inspiration, but here was someone who’s broad tastes matched my own.

In addition to being a skilled musician, singer, and composer, Josie was one of those “musician’s musicians” whose name comes up in the discussions about the masters whose lives embody the heart of the tradition. If my own estimation means anything, his place among the list writers-of-tunes is well deserved, as is the credit given to him as an important figure in Irish music.