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New Video Out Today! My Heart Lies In Miltown Malbay…

My song, ‘My Heart Lies in Miltown Malbay”,  the impending first single from my new album Landmark,  has gained momentum over the past while, and big thanks is to Eoin O’ Neill who has given it so much airplay on Clare FM. I was over the moon to have Jon O’ Connell, Jim Higgins, Shona Blake, Anne Rynne and Gerry Hegarty in Malbay Studios a few weeks back to record the video with the talented Martin O’ Malley ably assisted by Sean O’ Malley.

This song started out as another song, as some of them do, with the current chorus a much later addition. It’s about the place I call home, the beautiful Miltown Malbay in West Clare. A woman approached me shortly after I arrived  and asked me “if I had done a winter here yet”. Indeed the winters can be hard, the weather often bleak and wet and cold, but I have learned to find beauty in the bleakness and now having done fifteen winters here, thankfully ” the women of this town” are always here to sing with, to walk with, to talk, laugh and cry with in every season , and I am so grateful to all of them for their friendship.

In the song, I also mention Paddy Mac (RIP). Paddy McNamara was our neighbour and a great character who often sat outside his house watching the world go by and would be well able to forecast the weather by the hour as I set off on my walk. On this walk I do a loop circling the Blessed Well Road, Spanish Point and Miltown Malbay. Sometimes stopping at the Blessed Well, to sit and think and take a sip of the clear well water.

In the last verse I sing about my first visit to Miltown. I first came here in the 80’s with my mother Bréedh Watts. We travelled down in July for Willie Clancy week to stay in the house I live in now. It was the first time I breathed air into a concert flute and I still remember the dizziness I felt on trying to fill the instrument. Thanks to Joe Collins for the great start he gave me with my music. My tin whistle classes that year were a complete revelation to me as I learned The Dusty Windowsill, The Jig Of Slurs, The Salamanca and Miss Johnson’s. I came away from Miltown that week with a renewed sense of what the music was all about. I still run away to Galway to the big city lights, to catch up with family and friends, see a gig or sometimes just to feel the beautiful buzz of Galway city, but I love to come back to the quietness of the Mullagh Road and Miltown Malbay.

Thank you for allowing me into your inbox. I would be grateful if you could share and like the video on social media.

Claire x

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