Artists of the Month: Dervish, Irish music as good as it gets
March 16, 2025
Colin Randall writes: on the eve of St Patrick’s Day, I present Dervish as my Salut! Live Artists of the Month. A brilliant band fronted by an utterly captivating singer, this is for me an easy choice…
For a measure of Cathy Jordan’s exquisite gifts as a singer, it is not even necessary to dig out one of the numerous songs she sings so beautifully.
It suffices to listen to Steve Earle’s rasping, muscular version of The Galway Shawl with Jordan’s band accompanying him and joining him in singing the chorus. And whose glorious voice is it that springs from the chorus ensemble ? Cathy Jordan’s.
Dervish celebrate their 2019 BBC Lifetime Achievement Award. Image: MCSligo
Explore the Dervish back catalogue, choose almost any song where Jordan is not merely belting out a chorus but taking lead vocals and you find so many irresistible examples of her class. Let's start with her gorgeous version of Dylan’s Boots of Spanish Leather …
... or, totally different, the jaunty tongue twister Red Haired Mary.
That exhilarating song was written by the late Sean McCarthy. Different again is The Hills of Greenmore, a tremendous song of hare hunting that sounds traditional but was written by one Owen McMahon of Tassagh, Co Armagh.
Originally called The Boys of Sligo, the band formed in 1989 and added Jordan two years later, releasing a debut album, Harmony Hill in 1993. I first caught them in action soon afterwards and was mesmerised, as I have been on each of the occasions I have subsequently seen them.
And it’s not just Cathy Jordan, her singing and bodhran playing. The band generates red-hot excitement with compelling performance of jigs and reels. The combination of impeccable vocals and pulsating instrumentals conjures pure magic and my nomination of Dervish as Artists of the Month is a celebration of the band as a whole.
As I wrote in The Daily Telegraph in 1997 when reviewing their Live in Palma album, theirs was state-of-the-art Irish music:
The instrumentals sparkle with urgency and flawless timing, and a hint of Cathy Jordan's irrepressible stage personality - somewhere between knowing schoolmarm and vamp - is at last caught on record.
Step forward, then, band members: Tom Morrow (fiddle), Brian McDonagh (mandola), Michael Holmes (bouzouki) and Shane Mitchell (accordion) and Liam Kelly (flute and whistles).
For those virtuoso instrumental moments, try The Kesh Jig Set …
And finally, it gets better. What finer honour can any artist claim than to come last in a Eurovision Song Contest. Dervish did in Helsinki in 3007 with They Can’t Stop the Spring.
Chapeau!
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Superb stuff. Spine-tingling. I'd love to see them live. The Eurovision judges must have wondered what had hit them. That is a brilliant song; no wonder it came last.
Posted by: Bill Taylor | March 16, 2025 at 09:07 PM