It was lovely to be asked to do another appearance on Geantrí.. It was recorded in September [I think] and I remember having a lovely evening listening to all the other guests doing their bits.. They got a nice sound for us.. even though the rest of the gang liked our polkas the best, I think the set of slides rock the most.
How we go the name..
It’s more like a gang of friends than a band, but if we didn’t have a name, we might be harder to book for gigs, sessions, concerts, etc. Over the years, the lineup has been a cast of thousands, but for the last twenty years, it’s mostly been the gang you see on the Geantraí programme—except for Karl Nesbitt on the flute. He’s been joining us for the last seven or eight years on flute and drum as well.
The name originated way back in the late ’90s. I was playing fiddle with a tin whistler, Rebecca Daly, and a guitar player called Roy O’Driscoll. We had a few engagements every week in Cork City—Thursday and Sunday evenings at Snotty Joe’s and Sunday from 5 to 7 at the Hairy Lemon. We were probably advertised as Trad Session, and that was all fine until we got asked to play a mini-festival run by the CMRC (Cork Music Resource Centre). We needed to give them a name for the poster.
At that time, I was only known for playing guitar in a rock band called The Shanks. When I tried to explain to Cork City people what traditional music was, I was often met with puzzled looks. As far as I could tell, most city people understood traditional music to be ballads or Country & Irish. One day, after telling someone I was gigging, they asked cautiously, “Is it the ceili stuff?” After that, anytime I used the term ceili, it was to make sure that anyone expecting to rock out didn’t get ambushed by a diddly-eye nightmare they weren’t prepared for.
The Allstars part came from another Cork band called The Jammy Dodger Allstars. It was a sort of supergroup featuring Rory Looney (drums), Sandy Hyland (bass), Fergus Ryan (guitar), and the late Aidan O’Connell (vocals). They were really, really good, and I was very, very jealous of their name. I had seen them around the time we were booked for the mini-festival.
I was also obsessed with Joe Cooley’s music at the time. I was listening to the Omós do Joe Cooley album by Paul Brock and Frankie Gavin and trying to learn all the tunes on it.
So when I was asked for a name for the poster, I thought—When people hear us, they’ll think of the times they danced at a ceili. And to make sure they know they’re hearing the best of music, we’ll be Allstars. And let’s mention Joe Cooley as well.
We were billed as The Cooley Ceili Allstars.
The little festival gig was mad. We were joined by a conga player, Mark Wilkins. It was a bit of a blur, but I remember the crowd being totally surprised, and every set was followed by massive applause. That lineup of the band disintegrated within a few weeks, and for the following ten months, I didn’t have many gigs playing fiddle. But then something weird happened—apparently, a good percentage of the people who had watched that gig went on to manage bars in the city centre.
So from the following summer, I started getting people asking for The Cooley Ceili Allstars to play their bars. By then, I had moved on to obsessing about some other music, so the Cooley part was dropped. And just like that, The Ceili Allstars were off on a string of gigs and residencies that hasn’t ended yet.