Couple write song that’s a love letter to their Cork city home

WHEN musicians Mary Greene and her husband Noel Shine were asked to write a song to commemorate the 40th anniversary of Cork Folk Festival, the result was a ‘warts and all’ love letter to the city.

Their single, simply called CORK, is an affectionate look at a day and a night in the life of the city that the two blow-ins - Noel, from Clare, and Mary, from Waterford, who claim honorary citizenship through their two Cork daughters - both love dearly.

From the River Lee, Páirc Uí Chaoimh and the Echo Boys, to the singers in the early houses and ‘the girls from Penneys serving many, bagging dresses and dressing hens’, the song is quintessentially Cork.

Commissioned four years ago to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Cork Folk Festival, CORK was very well received at the time, but it is only released as a single last week. Noel was one of the founders of the annual music festival, which is now in its 44th year.

Having both grown up in musical families, Mary and Noel have been surrounded by music all of their lives, and it wasn’t surprising that their talent rubbed off on their daughters, the aforementioned Cork duo of Ellie and Sadie.

Mary recalls coming to Cork as a teenager, thumbing a life from Dunmore East with her guitar to go busking, and with nowhere to stay the night.

She first saw Noel playing a gig with Cork singer/songwriter John Spillane, long before they were officially introduced, little realising that night that she was watching her husband-to-be. She moved to the city when she was 21.

“As an outsider, there’s something about Cork that draws you in, I felt it the minute I hit the city,” says Mary.

It’s a warm, welcoming embrace. There’s always somebody encouraging you, especially in the creative arts.

“When somebody asks you ‘What’s your job?’ and you say ‘songwriter’, in other places you’d be asked, ‘but what’s your real job?’ That doesn’t happen here, people accept the creative arts as a job,” Mary says.

Their band Greenshine, the family trio comprising Mary, Noel and Ellie, has long been an important element of the local and national folk scene, and has received extensive airplay from RTÉ and radio stations all over the country.

Their material straddles the boundaries of contemporary, folk and roots, and includes many self-penned songs. The band is known for its striking family harmonies and excellent musicianship.

Noel is a multi-instrumentalist, turning his hand to guitar, bass, mandolin, banjo, bouzouki, and traditional whistle, and this musical dexterity had seen him much in demand as a session and band player from artists as diverse as The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem, and funk and soul legends The Republic Of Loose among many others. Mary brings rhythm guitar to the mix and her voice is a wonderfully versatile instrument. She has added her talents to the albums of Christy Moore, John Spillane, Mick Hanly and Frances Black, as well as cult psychedelic outfit Dr. Strangely Strange.

As a duo, Noel and Mary have released three critically acclaimed albums to date: The Land You Love The Best, Unspoken Lines and Mary’s solo, Sea Of Hearts.

In 2013, Ellie joined her parents’ band officially and Greenshine was born. The trio released their first album of the same name which counted Christy Moore and Sharon Shannon amongst its fans.

In the summer of 2016, Greenshine released their second album, The Girl In the Lavender Dress, with a single of the same name. The single went on to be the most played track on RTÉ Radio 1 for a month and the third most played Irish track for the year.

It reached No. 1 in the iTunes Ireland singer songwriter charts, and gathered amongst its legion of fans the Canadian songwriter Ron Sexsmith.

When writing the song for the Folk Festival, Mary and Noel thought about all of the things Cork people hold in such high esteem about their beloved city. The single, Mary explains, is a throwback to previous form of folk music.

She says: “Today’s folk style can be quite edgy, veering towards the dark. This is no bad thing. 

It’s powerful and has a lot of intensity, but we wanted to offer an alternative that’s a little lighter and the aim and hope is that ultimately people will come away uplifted by CORK.

“Even in the rock sphere, the music of bands like The Frank and Walters is very uplifting, there’s a lightheartedness to it and a humour that often comes in.

“The kind of thing Jimmy Crowley brought to the fore in his brilliant Northside ballads.”

Along with Greenshine, CORK features the talents of Eoin O Riabhaigh on uileann pipes, Martin Leahy on drums and percussion, and David Murphy on pedal steel.

One poetic line from the song alludes to the homelessness that is sadly now a part of all Irish cities: ‘Sad hearts huddle in a dream of houses as puddles shiver in the neon light.’

“Every city has an underbelly, we can all do better,” says Mary. “For every citizen of every city and town, we can do better to provide homes for everybody.”

CORK is available now from www.greenshine.bandcamp.com.

 Greenshine will play De Barras, Clonakilty, on June 20 with ADT at 9pm.

CORK

Rivers rising, otters diving, steeples climbing to the sound of bells

Runners racing, pipers gracing and naomhógs facing the harbour swells

Poets rhyming, to love inclining, throwing rhymes to the humming cars

Flowers on the hills and the window sills and the sound of tills in the early bars

The city’s history’s a story written by the hearts of Cork who have laughed and cried

Lee, you beauty, wash away the dust of the dreams that made it and the dreams that died

The girls from Penneys serving many, bagging dresses and dressing hens

A young girl dreams that one day she’ll be running with the team in Páirc Uí Chaoimh

Ripples rippling as day is dimming and the full tide’s brimming under Patrick’s Bridge

Buses bustling, old men shuffling, taxis climbing up along the ridge

The city’s history’s a story written by the hearts of Cork who have laughed and cried

Lee, you beauty, wash away the dust of the dreams that made it and the dreams that died

Singers singing their voices ringing from the Spailp on a Sunday night

Sad hearts huddle in a dream of houses as puddles shiver in the neon light

Up and down the streets of midnight high heels tapping out a tune

The dark park’s waiting behind the railing as Echo Boys dream beneath the moon

The city’s history’s a story written by the hearts of Cork who have laughed and cried

Lee, you beauty, wash away the dust of the dreams that made it and the dreams that died