LISA O'NEILL - A LEGEND IN HER TIME

 

Every now and again, an artist comes along who changes the game. Bob Dylan springs immediately to mind. Yet, Dylan without the sense of mystery would have been just another Woody Guthrie imitator.

Dylan, though ahead of his time, seemed rooted in the past. Small wonder, because soon after his arrival in New York he immersed himself in the newspapers and lore of the Civil War period and emerged as a truly original artist.

When I first heard Lisa O’Neill, I felt a shock of recognition. I was once again a young boy, sitting atop my grandfather’s shoulders outside Enniscorthy GAA grounds. We were part of a hushed crowd listening to Margaret Barry as she sang in a nasally voice while strumming her banjo.

To her credit, Lisa had ignored the tidal wave of modern influences, dug deep into Ireland’s past and uncovered the itinerant street singer.

Lisa hadn’t copied Maggie Barry, it’s more that she instinctively inhabited certain aspects of the street singer’s psyche and times.

I immediately began playing O’Neill on Celtic Crush/SiriusXM, but to my surprise there was very little response from the normally curious Crushers. I put it down to the originality of her songs, and to what at first seemed  an awkwardness of delivery.

But make no mistake, Lisa O’Neill is the most original artist to come out of Ireland in a long time.

Born in 1982 in Ballyhaise, County Cavan, nurtured by the quiet beauty of her rural surroundings, she was always aware of music and began writing her own songs at an early age.

Many of the significant new bands and singers emerging from Ireland nowadays are “from the country.” Previously, most tended to be from the greater Dublin sprawl or the bigger towns.

This new rural sensibility tends to draw from the land and long neglected local tradition; yet, their style is spiced with city experience – perhaps, because so many rural teenagers now attend university.

At the age of 18, Lisa left Cavan for Ballyfermot College to study music, and has lived in Dublin for the last 24 years. Because of her grounding in folk music she became a part of the new Trad scene that centers around The Cobblestone and other inner-city pubs.

For a taste of this new Tradition, listen to Lisa’s striking duet on Factory Girl with Radie Peat of the mighty Lankum.

But there’s always an experimental twist to Ms. O’Neill. As rural Irish and traditional as she may be, she was introduced to the banjo (her main performing instrument) by Billy Bragg while at a workshop in Tasmania. These “young Irish” do get around.

One of the things that attracts me is her fearlessness as a songwriter. Is she confessional? Surely, but it’s more like she scans her own heart and boldly follows  its inclinations.

I persevered and played a number of O’Neill’s songs on Celtic Crush, including her amazing cover of Bob Dylan’s All the Tired Horses which had brought her much attention as the finale of the Peaky Blinders series.

But it wasn’t until I played the almost lullaby-like Goodnight World that listeners began writing me about her. One described her as “a voice of the true Ireland that touches you without you knowing why.”

I echo that assessment and have no fear of Lisa getting stuck in any kind of Celtic Twilight, though her 2023 album All of This Is Chance is poetic in the best sense.

She’s already moved on with a 6 song EP, The Wind Doesn’t Blow This Far Right. It has more of a political edge, and features Mother Jones, a song celebrating the life of “the most dangerous woman in America,” labor activist Mary Harris Jones.

Not to mention the searing Homeless in The Thousands (Dublin In The Digital Age); these two tracks become even more vibrant when set against O’Neill’s chilling treatment of the Yuletide classic, The Bleak Midwinter.

There’s an original oddness to her voice that takes a little getting used to, but Bob Dylan sounded equally strange amidst the pop confectionery of the early 1960’s.

Still, I’d bet a pound to a penny that Lisa O’Neill will become one of the most cherished, and challenging, voices of Ireland down many’s the day to come. Up Cavan!