Michael | Johnny McEvoy (Live in Belfast)

The inspiration for the song Michael came to me on a summer's evening in 1995. As I was playing in Marcoom later that night, I decided to visit Beal Na Blath. While walking along the road I tried to visualize that tragic evening in August 1922, when Collins met his death in this place during the early days of the Civil War. A memory came back to me of another wet August evening many years before, when I was in the Ramblers. We were traveling through the Comeraghs Mountains on our way to some session or other when we stopped to admire the scenery. While standing on the roadside in the gloom of the evening looking out over the mountains, I heard the call of a curfew as he flew through the dark valley below. A terrible melancholy came over me, and I remember thinking at the time that it was the loneliest sound I had ever heard. This memory came flooding back to me that evening in Beal Na Blath, and a song and poem started to formulate in my mind that seemed to come from the depths of my soul.
This is a recording of a performance Johnny did for TG4 on the evening of March 8th, 2012 in the Waterfront, Theatre, Belfast.
It was recorded in just one take in front of a live audience and transmitted at Christmas of that year.