Paddy Berry

Michael Marrinan’s roots are in West Clare, the home of traditional music and song. His own songs and ballads have over the years given joy to many in blissful sessions of weekend singing. His ballad making style echoes the brilliance of the revered rhymers of old using musical assonance to intone his stories. There is music in the reciting of his songs.

He ambles from the serious to the frivolous with equal fluency, from being “Homesick for New York” - a delightful composition - greatly enhanced by delicate guitar accompaniment, to keeping ahead of the posse after the Kilbrien Church frolics. His feeling for subject in “The Island of Australia” is heart stirring and his sensitive treatment of the blossoming of early love, lost in the West Clare of his youth, reminds us all of the Ruth we once knew.

Michael leads a long line of modern ballad makers with a freshness of style in the quality of his verses. His use of simile and subtlety, metaphor and imagination and the bundling of his songs together to entertain a diverse public, are the trademark of his undoubted ability.

Michael resides in the cultural cosiness of “The Decies” living close to nature - by a well of spring water you might imagine, his eyes peeled, ears pricked, his mind clocking ninety, reporting the misdeeds of the speculator, the legacy of binder twine or composing from a bar stool.

“Ballads box badly,” said the sage. “They bundle better” hinting there is a bit of rock ‘n roll in us all allowing us to stray occasionally into the new light.

There is a bundle of joy within the grooves of this exciting CD.