Some Nice Pictures of Tommy Makem

Veteran folk singer Makem dies

This was in the BBC newspaper. I've been posting all the write ups even if some read the same I will continue to post them if they come from different papers.



Veteran folk singer Makem dies
The folk musician and singer Tommy Makem has died at his home in New Hampshire in the United States.
He was 74 and had been suffering from lung cancer.



Mr Makem was born and raised in Keady in County Armagh and was best known as a member of The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem.

He visited Armagh three weeks ago and also travelled to Belfast where he was presented with an honorary doctorate at the University of Ulster.

His nephew Peter Makem said his uncle "fought the disease to the end".

Solo career

"I feel he wanted to see Keady and Derrynoose and Armagh for the last time, to see around where he left 52 years previously," he said.


After moving to the United States in the 1950s, Tommy Makem teamed up with the Clancy Brothers but left the group in 1969 to pursue a solo career.
He later joined Liam Clancy to become Makem and Clancy before going solo again in 1988.

Tommy Makem was best known for songs such as The Green Fields of France, Gentle Annie and Red is the Rose.

Liam Clancy said: "Tommy was a man of high integrity, honesty, and his courage really shone through towards the end.

"Our paths diverged, of course, many times, but our friendship never waned."

'Happiness'

Irish President Mary McAleese was among those who offered condolences to the Makem family.


"In life, Tommy brought happiness and joy to hundreds of thousands of fans the world over," she said.
"Always the consummate musician, he was also a superb ambassador for the country, and one of whom we will always be proud," she said.

Irish Arts Minister Seamus Brennan said the singer was "a legend in his own lifetime".

"He was a multi-talented artist whose abilities went beyond music, with other skills as a storyteller, actor, songwriter and poet," he said.

"He has left behind a rich and enduring legacy of music, song and story to be enjoyed and appreciated by this generation and generations to come."

Tommy Makem

Below is a poem written by Tommy Makem for Tom Rowe's funeral mass.
Recently at the Milwaukee Irish Festival Tom Rowe's son Dave read these words at a tribute to the man who wrote them. Tommy Makem died on August 1st, 2007 leaving a void in the hearts of many.
Tommy you will always be on my mind and forever in my heart.


TOM SONG
(for Tom Rowe)
by Tommy Makem
Feb. 2nd, 2004


Following the rim
Of life's circle, Tom,
We saw your light
Shining bright and crisp
As a frosty moon.


Long before
The sound of your song
Tuned our ears and hearts,
And set our senses spinning
In their own circles,
We saw your body pulse
With the rhythm
Of the earth;
Throb with the power
Of the grey green deeps;
Lift with the spirit
Of the west wind;
And then soar
Like a lark at dawn.


Your song bore us
To other places
And other times,
Buoying the heart,
Balming the soul;
Renewing our hope,
Celebrating our joy.


In a saddened
Tawdry world
We were bettered by your coming,
Blessed by your presence,
Lessened by your going.


We are comforted
In our knowing
That your song
Has no end.
We hear it
In the wind's singing;
In the earth's heartbeat;
In the symphony
Of the wild sea's crash
On the rocky shore;
Its whisper
On silver shingle.


We see you
In the seabirds dance,
Circling and surging
In a brilliant ballet
Of other-worldly grace.
Charon the boatman
Will recognize
Your brightness,
And give you
Pride of place
As you row the Stix
And raise the song
On another voyage.


So, sing sweetly Tom,
Down the fleeting years,
Echo and re-echo
To glad our open
Hearts and ears
Waiting here
On another shore.
Sing sweetly again,
And know that we
Hear and cherish
Your unending song
Circling, circling,
Circling... ....

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.

Tommy Makem

August 15-21, 2007 / Page 14
EchoOpinion
I was in Boston in late July, and of
course any excursion to that city requires a
personal inspection of the Irish bar-music
scene. I can’t say I carried out this assignment
with the enthusiasm of former years
(age, kids, aversion to headaches - you
know the drill), but I certainly observed
enough to go home happy. Well, happy
and nostalgic. On the trip home — via the
T, you’ll be happy to know - I found
myself thinking about my favorite such
place in New York, and how much I
missed it. And I tried to remember how
long it has been since Tommy Makem’s
Irish Pavillion closed its doors.
The next morning, I read in the Boston
Globe - on Page 1 - that Tommy was dead.
Many of you have your own memories
of Tommy, and most of you no doubt have
read the recollections of others who knew
him in last week’s issue of this newspaper.
You know by now that Tommy Makem
and the Clancy Brothers revolutionized
the Irish and Irish-American music scene;
that they had dreams of being actors long
before they sang together; and that their
influence over Irish and Irish-American
culture continues to be profound, even
with three of the four gone.
My own memories are of Tommy during
his solo years, after he and Liam Clancy
broke up their act in 1988. I came late to the
Makem and Clancys show - late by about,
oh, two decades. While I had heard of
them while growing up in the 1960s, I can’t
say I actually heard them, and even if I did,
I’m not sure they would have made much
of an impression. The 1960s, as we now
know, were not exactly a heyday for Irish
America. Interest in Irish culture, especially
among the young, assimilated Irish-
Americans of the suburbs, was probably at
its lowest level ever. It was a time when
Daniel Patrick Moynihan noted, in
“Beyond the Melting Pot,” that Irish-
American organizations seemed like relics
of another era.
So there were no Clancy Brothers and
Tommy Makem LPs in my collection. It
wasn’t until the 1980s, after their reunion
in Carnegie Hall, that I actually listened to
them.
It was, of course, a revelation. A little
late, I admit, but a revelation all the same.
These men were not simply singers, not
simply musicians - they were storytellers,
and they were telling stories about love
and war and debauchery and drinking
and politics and even gluttony. In other
words, they were telling stories I could
relate to.
At around the same time, in the mid-
1980s, I discovered Tommy’s place on East
57th and Lexington Avenue. I had just
moved to Manhattan from the wilds of
Staten Island, a journey not dissimilar to
the one that brought Tommy and the Clancys
from Ireland to the Ed Sullivan show.
Tommy Makem’s Irish Pavilion immediately
became a home away from home,
and when I got a job within walking distance
of the Pavilion (a coincidence,
believe it or not), it sometimes felt like
home itself.
Tommy played there about once a
month, and while I saw him at festivals
and in other venues during the late 80’s
and into the 1990s, I decided there was no
better place to see him than on East 57th
Street. The small stage and intimate setting
seemed to bring out the details of the
songs and stories that I missed in larger
concerts. And, of course, there was nothing
quite like seeing and hearing him sing
“Four Green Fields” when you were seated
15 feet away.
When, in the late 1980s, I wished to
reacquaint myself with a young lady I had
met a few years earlier but was far too
awkward to actually ask out, I brought her
to Tommy Makem’s. When we became
engaged about a year later, I brought her
back, introduced her to Tommy during a
break in his show, and he led off the next
segment with a song for her, “Eileen
Aroon.” Unaccompanied, his great baritone
sang words I wished I could have
said at that moment, on that occasion:
Who in the song so sweet,
Eileen aroon!
Who in the dance so sweet,
Eileen aroon!
Dear were her charms to me,
Dearer her laughter free,
Dearest her constancy,
Eileen aroon!
I had never heard him sing that lovely
song on stage, and I’ve never forgotten
the generosity and humanity of that gesture.
We became fixtures at Tommy’s annual
Christmas shows, which ran long into
the night and which left you believing
that hope and charity and good will just
might have a shot after all. My kids made
it to Tommy’s place before it closed, but
they never saw the Christmas show. Their
loss, and mine.
I’m in no position to pass judgment on
Tommy’s place in American music,
although it has to be high. I’m not qualified
to tell you what made his music so
important. I don’t know much about
what innovations he and the Clancys
brought to folk music in general and Irish
music in particular.
But I do know, based on a few wonderful
conversations with Tommy, that he was a
generous and noble soul, a great storyteller,
a wonderful host and an ambassador
of good will.
I also suspect he’d be embarrassed by
all the attention his death has received.
But that was part of his charm, too.
I had just moved to Manhattan from the wilds of Staten Island, a
journey not dissimilar to the one that brought Tommy and the
Clancys from Ireland to the Ed Sullivan show. Tommy Makem’s Irish
Pavilion immediately became a home away from home and when I got
a job within walking distance of the Pavilion (a coincidence, believe it
or not), it sometimes felt like home itself.
EchoPerspectives

Tommy Makem, "Bard of Armagh," Dies at Age 74

photo: Rhonda M
THE SOUND OF SILENCE

Tommy Makem, "Bard of Armagh," Dies at Age 74

By Earle Hitchner

letters@irishecho.com

[Published on August 8, 2007, in the IRISH ECHO newspaper, New York City. Copyright (c) Irish Echo 2007. All rights reserved.]

Singer, songwriter, storyteller, banjo, whistle, piccolo, guitar, and bodhran player, actor, author, publican, and tireless champion of Ireland's culture and history, Tommy Makem, the 74-year-old "Bard of Armagh," lost his 16-month battle with lung cancer on Aug. 1 in Dover, N.H. He resided there for much of his life since immigrating from his hometown of Keady in South Armagh to the United States in Dec. 1955.
In America, Tommy Makem earned the additional moniker "Godfather of Irish Music" in recognition of his extraordinary and enduring impact that began in an epic musical partnership with three singing brothers from Carrick-on-Suir, Tipperary: Paddy, Tom, and Liam Clancy. Through their best-selling recordings, sold-out concerts, and popular TV and radio appearances, the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem would help to transform both the performance and the perception of Irish music, and in the process become a household name first in America, then in Ireland, and subsequently across the globe.

Early Years in Ireland
The younger son of Peter and Sarah (nee Boyle) Makem, Tommy Makem was born on Nov. 4, 1932, in the market and mill town of Keady, where he grew up in a house filled with music. For a time his father was a scutcher, or flax beater, but music was Peter Makem's passion, playing fiddle, bagpipes, tin whistle, and drums. His wife Sarah possessed an astonishing repertoire of more than 500 songs, many of which Tommy learned directly from her.
He also learned a number of songs from Mary Toner, who lived across the street from Mone's Bar, where Tommy worked after leaving a job as garage clerk. One of the songs Toner taught him was "The Cobbler," later a performance staple of his, complete with aping the actions of repairing a shoe. While holding down day jobs, Tommy pursued acting and music, including a stint with a showband called the Clippertones.
When American song collector Diane Hamilton and 19-year-old Liam Clancy visited Sarah Makem in 1955 to record her at home in Keady, he and Sarah's 22-year-old son, Tommy, struck up an immediate friendship. Those two left Ireland for America within a month of each other: Liam heading for New York, Tommy for New Hampshire, where many family members had previously gone to work in its mills and factories.

A Career-Changing Accident
In Dover, a heavy piece of printing press machinery smashed Tommy Makem's left hand. Impaired and unemployed for a time, he visited New York City, where he met Paddy and Tom Clancy and afterward reconnected with Liam Clancy. All four became absorbed in acting.
"Tommy and I were once cast in the unlikely roles of two priests in 'Shadow and Substance,' a play by Paul Vincent Carroll," Liam Clancy recalled with a laugh from his home in Ring, County Waterford. "We got forty bucks a week."
But beginning in 1956, music became ascendant when the Clancys and Makem recorded "The Rising of the Moon: Irish Songs of Rebellion" for Tradition Records, a cottage label managed by Paddy Clancy. The cover of that album and their next one in 1959, "Come Fill Your Glass With Us: Irish Songs of Drinking and Blackguarding," listed the performers individually.
The name of "The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem" was not chosen by them but for them. Impatient with their dithering over what to be called (at one point "the Chieftains" was considered), the owner of Chicago's Gate of Horn nightclub put those blunt six words on the marquee at the onset of the quartet's six-week engagement. The name stuck.
As their fame grew, so did their gigs, and talent scouts for "The Ed Sullivan Show" caught the quartet in concert at Manhattan's trendy Blue Angel club. In January 1961, the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem, originally slated for four minutes, performed for about 16 minutes on TV's most popular variety show after a headlining act called in sick.
Before millions of TV viewers, the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem were a sensation, singing "Brennan on the Moor" and other Irish songs with a boldness, gusto, and pride not previously witnessed by the wider American public. The cream-colored, cable-knit Aran sweaters they wore projected their native identity as Irishmen and professional identity as an Irish singing group. Their genuineness was unmistakable and unavoidable, with no hint of a shamrocks-and-shillelaghs performance style ingrained in many non-Irish audiences' minds. It was a heady, head-raising period in Irish America: JFK in the White House, the Clancys and Makem on "Ed Sullivan."
Signed shortly thereafter to a Columbia Records contract providing a princely advance of $100,000, the quartet now officially called the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem made their initial Columbia album in 1961, "A Spontaneous Performance Recording," which received a Grammy nomination. Several more highly successful Columbia recordings followed, including "Home Boys Home," a 1968 LP that featured for the first time Makem's own stirring song "Four Green Fields." In its lyrics, "the fine old woman" represented Ireland, and her "four green fields" represented the four provinces of Connacht, Leinster, Munster, and Ulster, the last "in bondage in strangers' hands" that "will bloom once again."

Going Solo
Toward the end of the 1960s, Tommy Makem wanted to embark on a solo career, and after giving a year's notice, he amicably departed the quartet in 1969. His success continued as a soloist until he encountered Liam Clancy at a 1975 Cleveland festival, where the two did a set together. That sparked another run of success.
"Tommy and I really got our creative juices going again, and we went into a studio in Calgary to record our first album as a duo," Liam Clancy remembered. "We did Eric Bogle's 'And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda,' and it went straight to the top of the charts in Ireland. We began a new career together that lasted 13 years."
The duo of Makem and Clancy flourished until 1988 when each returned to a solo career.
"In many ways Tommy and I were closer than my brothers and I," Liam Clancy said. "Basically Tommy and I spent 50 years together. There was never a harsh word between us, never a fight. Our paths diverged more by happenstance. I'd get interested in something, and he'd get interested in something else."
Fifteen years after the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem separated, the original quartet got together in 1984 for a documentary on them that would culminate in a highly anticipated, sold-out reunion concert in Lincoln Center's Avery Fisher Hall on May 20.
"We always had this incredible vibe of good will from audiences toward us," Liam Clancy noted.
The triumph of that night led to more reunion concerts that year and next before the history-making quartet of Paddy, Tom, and Liam Clancy and Tommy Makem disbanded for a last time.
Resuming his solo career in 1988, Tommy Makem never slowed down. For 16 years before it closed on June 30, 1998, he owned Tommy Makem's Irish Pavilion, a restaurant-pub on Manhattan's East 57th Street. He also released many more solo albums, wrote and performed a one-man theatrical show called "Invasions and Legacies" in 1999, hosted several public television specials for WMHT in Schenectady, N.Y., as well as Irish travel videos for PBS, and toured extensively right until lung cancer in its final stage made him too frail to perform after May of this year.

Honors and Tributes
A true man of letters, he wrote "Tommy Makem's Secret Ireland" in 1997 for St. Martin's Press and received three honorary doctorates between 1998 and 2007. Two years ago, he was honored in Ireland with an official postage stamp of himself with the Clancy Brothers.
A key part of what made Tommy Makem so inspiring as an artist was his unabashed love of the best in Irish culture. In his distinctive baritone, he sang Irish songs that mattered to him, and his admiration for Irish poetry poured forth in his stirring recitation of Seamus Heaney's "Requiem for the Croppies" that often preceded his singing of "Four Green Fields." Other songs he composed, such as "Rambles of Spring," "The Winds Are Singing Freedom," and "Farewell to Carlingford," will no doubt retain their appeal as well.
Tommy Makem's music, wit, storytelling, conviction, theater-bred actions, and bardic enthusiasm for verse turned his concerts into events and him not just into a star but a friend embraced by audiences everywhere.
"Nobody can duplicate the kind of first-time freshness and excitement that Tommy brought to Irish music," Liam Clancy said. "His enthusiasm and zeal were admirable. He was an entertainer in the best sense of the term."
Limerick-born musician and scholar Mick Moloney echoed that sentiment: "Were it not for him [Tommy] and the Clancy Brothers, many of us Irish musicians and singers might never have been able to make a living doing what we love best. Tommy's talent, exuberance, and bigheartedness helped pave the way for all of us, and we will forever be in his debt."
In her own tribute, Irish President Mary McAleese said, "In life, Tommy brought happiness and joy to hundreds of thousands of fans the world over. Always the consummate musician, he was also a superb ambassador for the country, and one of whom we will always be proud."
Pride, rooted in love of country rather than self-love, is part of the enduring legacy of Tommy Makem. His mark on Irish music is inextinguishable.

In Sympathy
Predeceased in 2001 by his wife Mary (nee Shanahan), Tommy Makem is survived by sons Shane, Rory, and Conor, daughter Katie, grandchildren Molly and Robert, and several cousins. A funeral Mass for Tommy Makem will be held at 11 a.m. on Aug. 9 in St. Mary Church, 25 Third St., Dover, N.H., with burial to follow in St. Mary New Cemetery.
Condolences can be sent to P.O. Box 336, Dover, NH 03821, and expressions of sympathy and remembrance can also be posted on the message board at www.makem.com. In lieu of flowers, memorials can be made to the Tommy and Mary Makem Fund, c/o Attorney William H. Shaheen, P.O. Box 977, Dover, NH 03821.



[first sidebar]

Makem Magic Preserved
From the huge canon left by Tommy Makem, it's almost impossible to offer recommendations. But these six are a worthy start or fond reminder:
"The Story of the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem" (Shanachie 201) is a video documentary, copyrighted in 1984 and directed by Derek Bailey, that features segments from the May 20, 1984, reunion concert at Lincoln Center as well as footage of Tommy Makem revisiting Keady and the three Clancy brothers revisiting Carrick-on-Suir, their former haunts in Greenwich Village, and interview clips of praise from Bob Dylan, Mary Travers, and Tom Paxton. Several screen images here are priceless.
The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem's "In Person at Carnegie Hall" (Columbia, 1963; later reissued as 11-track CD) begins with "Johnson's Motor Car" and finishes with "The Parting Glass." It confirmed the new status of the quartet: if you can make it at Carnegie Hall, you can make it anywhere, and they did.
The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem's "Home Boys Home" (Columbia, 1968), which marked the recording debut of Tommy Makem's "Four Green Fields," also featured "The Bard of Armagh."
"The Makem & Clancy Concert" (Shanachie, 1977), recorded at Dublin's Gaiety Theatre, was a double-LP set that includes Tommy's "Rambles of Spring" and Liam's renditions of "The Dutchman" and "And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda."
Tommy Makem's "Live at the Irish Pavilion" (Shanachie, 1993) is a solo recording that proves once more how charismatic and compelling he was as a performer.
"The Best of the Clancy Brothers & Tommy Makem" (Sony Legacy, 2002) is a compilation CD for which I wrote the liner notes, but here I'm touting its 16 songs.
As a bonus treat, don't forget the segment featuring Tommy Makem, Paddy, Liam, and Bobby Clancy, and their nephew Robbie O'Connell during "Bob Dylan's 30th Anniversary Concert Celebration" (Sony CD and video, 1993) that took place in New York's Madison Square Garden on Oct. 16, 1992.



[second sidebar]

Tommy Makem at Celtic Colours
In October 2004, I attended the eighth annual Celtic Colours International Festival in Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, where I saw Tommy Makem perform with Halifax duo Kevin Evans and Brian Doherty inside Holy Redeemer Church in Whitney Pier.
The setting didn't inhibit Tommy in the slightest. He elicited a loud, positive cheer from the audience when he said, "I'd like to dedicate this song to Dick Cheney," and then launched into a song he wrote, "The Liar." He wedded Gordon Bok's "Sabin the Wood Fitter" with "Fiddler's Green," sang "The Moonshiner" and "Lord of the Dance," beginning and ending the latter with a passage from "Carolan's Concerto" on tin whistle, and encored with his signature "Four Green Fields."
Backstage afterward, Tommy told me that he had last performed at Celtic Colours four years earlier. "It's grown tremendously since then," he said. "Cape Breton has been a favorite of mine for many years. The Clancy Brothers and I often performed in Sydney. I think Ireland could learn a thing or two from Cape Breton about supporting culture."
His dedication to preserving and promoting Ireland's rich musical heritage never wavered.




[Brief text below appeared on the front cover of the August 8, 2007, IRISH ECHO newspaper. The separate, full-length article above appeared inside on centerspread pages 24-25.]


Musical Legend Tommy Makem Succumbs to Cancer

By Earle Hitchner

letters@irishecho.com

[Published on August 8, 2007, in the IRISH ECHO newspaper, New York City. Copyright (c) Irish Echo 2007. All rights reserved.]

One of Ireland's most beloved singers and songwriters, whose "Four Green Fields" is so well known that it's often mistaken for a traditional ballad, Tommy Makem, 74, passed away on Aug. 1 in Dover, N.H., after waging more than a yearlong battle with lung cancer.
Sometimes called the "Bard of Armagh" and the "Godfather of Irish Music," Makem from Keady, Armagh, linked up with Paddy, Tom, and Liam Clancy from Carrick-on-Suir, Tipperary, to form a vocal quartet in the mid-1950s who would eventually spark a global resurgence of interest in Irish folk music. What made that accomplishment by the quartet so remarkable is that they started out together right here in New York City, not in Ireland.
In a subsequent duo with Liam Clancy and finally as a solo performer, Tommy Makem continued to make memorable music in a career that will move audiences and influence other artists long after his death.
FOR A FULL ARTICLE ABOUT THE LIFE AND MUSIC OF THE LATE TOMMY MAKEM, TURN TO PAGES 24-25.


Printed text and photos together (front cover and pages 15 and 24-25) can also be seen in the online digital edition of the IRISH ECHO at

http://editions.pagesuite.co.uk//Openpagesuite.aspx?pubid=1486&pubname=Demo

DOVER — As news of iconic Irish folk musician Tommy Makem's death spread throughout the world Thursday, tributes, messages of condolences, and fond remembrances poured out.

During more than 50 years of music-making, Makem, who lived in Dover for most of those years, built up a fan base of millions and touched the hearts of just about anyone who saw him perform or had the privilege of meeting the man they called the "Godfather" of Irish Music and the "Bard of Armagh".

Though his spirit lives on everywhere, in Dover there are plans to keep Makem's memory alive in a tangible way.

Even before Makem's death, a small group had begun meeting to discuss the possibility of placing a memorial to him within the city. Former Mayors Wil Boc and Jack Buckley, musician and friend of Makem's Eugene Byrne, Makem's son Shane, and Tommy Hardiman had hoped to get the statue up before Makem's passing.

Makem died Wednesday night following a yearlong struggle with lung cancer.

"His impact on Dover has been monumental," said Boc Thursday. "He is an international star and a local here. I think Tommy was able to do both things. He was able to play on the international stage but he was a hometown Dover boy at heart who gave his heart and soul to the community."

Before spending the later parts of his life as a successful solo artist, Makem, a banjo player and baritone vocalist, played with the traditional Irish folk group The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem. Many credit the group with popularizing Irish much in the United States, and they gained worldwide acclaim, largely during the 1960s folk revival.

Though he was diagnosed with cancer in the spring of 2006, Makem continued to play shows and on July 4 received an honorary doctoral degree — his third — from the University of Ulster. His last performance took place in May of this year in Chicago.

Boc and cohorts plan to incorporate as a nonprofit called "The Bard Foundation" and expand their scope to include raising money for a memorial scholarship fund. So far they are not taking any donations for the statue project, but estimate the cost will be between $60,000 and $70,000. Locations are still being staked out, but some potential spots include Immigrants Park on Main Street, Henry Law Park, or somewhere along the waterfront.

There are also plans to erect a similar statue in Makem's hometown of Keady, located in the County Armagh, in Ireland. Makem emigrated to the United States in 1955.

"It would be a memorial to Tommy, one of our first citizens here in Dover, but it would also commemorate the rest of the immigrants that came to this country," said Byrne, a fellow Irishman.

Right now, supporters may make a donation in lieu of flowers to the recently established Tommy and Mary Makem Fund, c/o Shaheen and Gordon Law Firm, 140 Washington St., Dover, N.H. 03820, or to the charity of one's choice. Makem's wife, Mary, who was a community fixture for many years, died in 2001.

Despite Makem's worldwide acclaim, many in Dover and surrounding communities were unaware that such an esteemed figure was one of the Garrison City's own. Makem's humility and distaste for celebrity may have contributed to that, some say.

But his importance in musical history is undeniable.

"It's like people who live at the foot of Mount Washington, you take it for granted after awhile," Boc said. "As far as Irish music goes, he's the Mount Washington."

Makem's funeral mass is planned for 11 a.m. next Thursday at St. Mary Church, where he was a communicant. A three-day wake will be held at the Tasker Funeral Home, 621 Central Ave., during the following times: Monday, Aug. 6 from 7-9 p.m.; Tuesday, Aug. 7 from 2-4 p.m. and 7-9 p.m.; and Wednesday, Aug. 8 from 2-4 p.m. and 7-9 p.m.

Because parking is limited, those from out of town who are planning to attend the funeral are being asked to park at Dover Middle School, 16 Daley Drive. Buses, donated by C&J Trailways, will take those people to the church, the grave site and back to the school.