Ciaran O’Reilly, producing director of
the Irish Repertory Theatre, remembers
clearly the first time he ever saw
Tommy Makem, who died two weeks
ago at his home in Dover, New Hampshire,
at age 74.
“It was when we were still doing our
annual benefits in Broadway theaters
on Monday nights,” he recalls. “He got
out of the cab on 45th Street, with that
huge, long-handled banjo hanging
around his neck, sort of tuning it as he
walked. I said, ‘Welcome, Mr. Makem.’
and he replied, ‘I’m Tommy. Mr,
Makem is my father.’”
Makem’s unselfconscious modesty
seems to have touched everyone with
whom he ever worked or otherwise
came into contact.
“I knew all his music by heart before
I ever met him,” O’Reilly remembers.
“After he did that first benefit, he was
always there for us.”
Charlotte Moore, the Rep’s Artistic
Director, remembers her feelings when
Makem came to do his one-man show,
“Invasions and Legacies” at the theater
on West 22nd Street. The show incorporated
a long epic poem he’d written,
tracing Irish history back to mythological
times.
“He was incredibly proud of his Irish
heritage,” O’Reilly says, “even though
he’d lived in America for more than
fifty years. The poem goes way back to Fir
Bolg times, to Ireland’s most ancient
days.”
The poem remains unpublished, and
Moore believes her copy is the only one
bearing Makem’s hand-written notes.
“He’d hate me for saying this,” she says,
“but there was something about him, a
quality he had, which made him seem
both noble and heroic. When he worked
with us, I followed him around like a dog,
trying to get to know him better. I was his
for life.”
Makem was, of course, best known as
part of the Irish folk group billed as “The
Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem,” in
which he played banjo and tin whistle and
sang with three brothers. Liam, Tom and
Paddy, from the town of Carrick-on-Suir
in County Tipperary.
Born in Keady, County Armagh,
Northern Ireland, on November 4, 1932,
Makem was a “Pioneer,” which meant
that, at the time of his Confirmation, he
had signed a pledge that he would never
touch alcohol. He wore a Pioneer lapel pin
all through his life.
“Being a Pioneer can’t always have been
easy,” O’Reilly says, “not with the
Clancy Brothers around.”
The Clancy Brothers all had dreams of
becoming actors, as did Makem, with
Tom Clancy being the only one who
made much of a mark in the theater or
television.
Meanwhile, music took over their
lives more and more, until, by the late
1950s, they were performing concerts
and recording more or less full time.
The group stayed together until 1969,
the year in which Makem. Left, under
amicable terms, to embark on a solo
career. In l975, Makem united with
Liam, the youngest Clancy, to form a
duo that endured until l988.
Makem’s wife, the former Mary
Shanahan, died in 2001. The Makems
had a daughter, Catherine Makem-
Boucher and three sons, Conor and
Shane, of Dover, and Rory, of Amesbury,
Massachustts. The Makem boys
are all performers, and sometimes
appear together as a group. The eldest
Makem son, Conor, who often worked
with his father, announced the death,
which he told the press was due to
“complications of lung cancer.”
The singer knew for some time that he
was ill, and made no particular secret
of it.
“He faced it bravely,” Ciaran O’Reilly
remembers, “and he tried a few
forms of alternative medicine, but
mainly, he tried to conquer the diseased
through sheer willpower.”
At Irish Repertory galas, musical legend Makem was just ‘Tommy’
Tommy Makem was a regular performer at the Irish Rep’s gala benefits.