Musician and teacher Clare Horgan lives in Ballinskelligs, Co. Kerry. Last year she released her second album Away O’er the Water which featured local songs and covers she is passionate about including The Road from Killorglin to Cahersiveen and The Boatman of Ardcost. An award-winning Sean-Nós singer, she studied at Leeds College of Music in the 1990s. Her new album will be a collection of songs from Kerry which she hopes to release this summer.
What are you up to right now?
Right now I am in the legendary Butler Arms Hotel in Waterville where Charlie Chaplin spent many a summer. I am sheltering from the Wild West wind and drinking tea with Sylvester Donnelly, one of the ghillies from Lough Currane, after a long walk on Ballinskelligs beach.
Who are your heroes?
Shirley Horn, Mary Coughlan, John Martyn, Sinead O’Connor, Billie Holiday, Hank Williams.
What’s been the best decade of your life so far and why?
Each decade has had its highs and lows but I suppose when I look back on things my time at Leeds College of Music in the ’90s was an absolute blast with the chance to front a 20-piece swing band and do lead vocals with a huge multicultural Gospel Choir. I went from a small village in Kerry to a big city where I shared a lovely Georgian house with wild and immensely talented Jazz musicians, many of whom have gone on to great things and can be seen on the likes of Later with Jools Holland.
What record sends a shiver down your spine?
Here’s to Life, by Shirley Horn and Maidin Bhog Álainn, a collection of local Sean nós songs by the great masters of the art from Iveragh where I grew up. Sadly the last of these legends, Eibhlín de Brún, died a few years ago and the album has been allowed to go out of print.
What is your favourite place in Ireland?
Derrynane Harbour.
What makes you angry?
Injustice, sexism, exclusion.
What book influenced you most?
The Bone People by Keri Hulme.
What was the worst moment of your life?
Being the front seat passenger in a head on car crash in 1993. It took me years to work up the courage to learn to drive after that. I passed the test a few years ago but I’m not sure if I will ever drive in the UK since I learned on roads with grass growing up the middle of them.
Which local star in any field should the world outside Ireland know about?
Excellent local comedian Bernard Casey from Portmagee.
If you could change one thing in your life, what would it be?
The length of my legs!
Can you recommend an interesting website?
What is the best lesson life has taught you?
“Retrospect has become prospect by a silent change of gear.” For me, this means that we should suspend our disbelief that things won’t get any better and just get up every day and get on with it until one day things have just become good again.
What is your favourite film and why?
The Kid by Charlie Chaplin. I did a brief stint teaching English in a school in Waterloo last year and whatever poem or book I tried with the boys seemed to switch them off but the whole room lit up when they saw The Kid — a boy their own age and from exactly the same place as they were, having all these adventures.
What do you believe in?
My late grandmother, Nancy McCarthy.
What trait do others criticise you for?
Talking too much!
Where do you live and what are the best and worst things about that place?
I live in Ballinskelligs, Co Kerry. The best things are the darkness, the silence, the immense waves crashing off Horse Island and my neighbours.The worst things are the isolation and having to leave it to access most things like Oriental food, Salsa dancing, a swimming pool, other young people…
On what occasion is it OK to lie?
To a dishonest person to protect an honest one.
What do you consider the greatest work of art?
Aside from my new album, of course that’s a tough one. The song Wang Dang Doodle by Howlin Wolf and Koko Taylor is right up there and King Lear.
What is your ultimate guilty pleasure?
Eastenders.
Who is was the love of your life?
A percussionist from Devon, sadly no longer with us, called Peter.
See More: Clare Horgan, Ten Minutes With
