Watch: Crystal Swing’s Mary is fueled by her unwavering faith

Religion has always been a huge part of Mary Burke’s life, so much so that the Crystal Swing frontwoman jokes that the Blessed Virgin appeared at the first wedding she played.

“My own faith was handed onto me from my parents, and my father used to pray with us every morning when he was taking us to school,” she tells The Echo over tea in her kitchen.

“We used to say ‘Our Father’, ‘Hail Mary’, ‘Glory Be’, ‘Angel of God’, the ‘Act of Contrition’, and ‘Eternal Rest Grant Unto Them O Lord’, and I did the very same with my own children afterwards, and that was actually the seed that planted the faith in me.”

Active

Growing up in Leamlara, the young Mary Murray was always active in her local church, arranging flowers, becoming a lector, and later a Eucharistic minister when she was older, and when she met her future husband, Michael Burke, one of the first things he did was bring her to the church in his native Curraghagalla.

Their shared faith has been very important to the couple and their family, she says, and she believes it has played a great role in her musical career too.

“I went out on the road as a one-woman band, and I loved Our Lady very much, and when I started playing in bars at first, I was saying ‘I’d love to get a wedding’.

“I got booked for a wedding down in Youghal, I was playing for the reception, and I couldn’t believe it when I went in, there was a big, huge statue of Our Lady on the stage on my very first wedding and that statue was there all night.”

She says the couple who had married had met through the Knock marriage bureau and they were so grateful they had brought the statue to the wedding reception.

“So myself and Our Lady, I always said Our Lady was at the first wedding I did.”

That night was just over two decades ago, when her children Derek and Dervla were still very young, and she began first to fulfil her dream of becoming a performer.

Performer

“I never wanted to be anything else only a performer, I had been asked to join bands when I was young, but my parents felt it mightn’t be safe for me as a young girl.”

Still, she recalls, she was always on stage, involved in concerts and drama, and she did some modelling, and if her husband Mike might not be a natural performer, he became her sound man and bought her her first keyboard.

In time Derek and Dervla joined her on the road, forming Crystal Swing. In February of 2010, something happened which she says changed their lives.

“Derek and Dervla came on board, and we went down to Mount Melleray of a day to pray. Derek was studying for his Leaving Cert at the time, and Dervla, Derek, Mike, and myself had a lovely experience that day, and honestly I believe a miracle happened down in Mount Melleary that day.

“Two or three days later our video went viral, and the dream fell into place,” she says.

That video was ‘He Drinks Tequila’ and suddenly Crystal Swing was a sensation, appearing everywhere, it seemed, all the time. Within a month, they were on The Late Late Show and selling out the Cork Opera House and the National Concert Hall. That St Patrick’s Day, US chatshow host Ellen DeGeneres played ‘He Drinks Tequila’ as her video of the day, and weeks later they flew to Hollywood to perform the song live on the show, with Derek doing the ‘Hucklebuck’ with Ellen.

“After that, it was like the whole world opened up to us, it was just amazing, in effect all of our dreams [came true], we got to travel the world, we just had a fantastic 10 years out of it,” she says.

Solo

These days, Dervla is a full-time carer for her little boy, who has special needs, and Derek is going solo, “he’s doing fantastic”, and Mary is working on her own too, although they still play together occasionally, and they played together earlier in the summer.

Mary says Crystal Swing “has been such a long story, but I would definitely say that God has been in the whole thing, and I can see that now”.

One tangible aspect of her faith is manifested in her collection of religious statues, which fills one room of her home. She has collected the statues for the past 14 years, getting some in Mount Melleray, some in Knock, and some in Medjugorje. Most of the statues are instantly recognisable, even to a lapsed Catholic.

A statue of the Holy Family stands on the shelf beside multiple statues of the Virgin Mary, as well as Jesus, the Angel Gabriel, the Angel Michael, Padre Pio, St Francis, the Child of Prague, St Patrick, St Thérèse of Lisieux, St Martin de Porres, and Francisco, Jacinta, and Lucia of Fatima. Lucia is depicted separately as an older woman, a nun, the only one of the three to survive into old age.

As we finish our interview, Mary opens the door to the living room, where her keyboard is set up. 

Humour

Demonstrating that, for a woman of great faith, she also has a wicked sense of humour, the centrepiece of the room is a startlingly realistic life-sized cardboard cutout of her good friend, the patron saint of country and Irish music, Daniel O’Donnell himself.

“My neighbour gave him to me as a gift for my 60th, and everyone gets a shock when they see him. I didn’t have a party per se, but we had a Daniel night, and everyone had their photo taken with him and we had a great time.”

She’s met him loads of times, she says, and he’s a lovely person. When asked about some Christian fundamentalists condemning Daniel O’Donnell (for his support of marriage equality), she says simply: “Let God judge him. Personally, he’s always been very nice to us.”

In a follow-up text, Mary says religious statues are becoming rarer and harder to find these days, adding: “The statues are expensive to purchase but they are worth every cent.”

She says several people have come to visit her prayer room, and she says they have reported that they have found great peace there. And they’re not alone.

“My grandchildren love the statues,” she says. “They call it Holy Mary’s room”.

She ends with a phrase that could probably sum up her religion: “My faith gives me great peace”.