In its brief existence during the mid-1960s, Irish folk group Sweeney's Men had two Top 10 hits and released just two albums. But despite its short lifespan, the musical and lyrical innovation of Sweeney's Men - Andy Irvine, Johnny Moynihan and Joe Dolan (later replaced by Terry Woods) was to leave a lasting influence on Irish ballads and folk music.
The bouzouki is a common instrument at sessions nowadays, but Moynihan was the first person to introduce it into Irish music, recalls his fellow band member Andy Irvine. Nicholas Carolan, Director of the Irish Traditional Music Archive, agrees, describing both Moynihan and Irvine as "pioneers of the bouzouki in Ireland". Meanwhile, The Companion to Irish Traditional Music, edited by musician and writer Fintan Vallely, cites their enormous impact on subsequent and better known groups, including Planxty, the Bothy Band and de Dannan.
From their formation in 1966, Sweeney's Men were unlike anything which had preceded them. Their lyrical influences were broad and their repertoire included folk songs from Scotland, England and America as well as from Ireland. Specific singers such as Ewan McColl, Peggy Seeger and Woody Guthrie were influential, recalls Irvine.
The first incarnation of Sweeney's Men lasted just one year and was the result of session gigs in a small hotel in Galway. Dolan and Irvine had a summer residency at the Enda Hotel, joined at weekends by Moynihan who was working as a draughtsman in Roscommon. But that ended after a row with the owner and "Johnny suggested going on the road", says Irvine.
They did so in a cobbled together Volkswagon van, containing an engine from a Volkswagen car. "We were a real threat to life, travelling around the country," says Irvine. At the time they were managed by Eamon Doherty, now better known as the artist who created the fountain in Galway's Eyre Square, and sculptures such as the Anna Livia and the sculpture outside the Central Bank.
Singles such as Old Maid in A Garret and Waxies Dargle brought them into the Irish Top 10 and although these were not polished by today's standards, they were fresh and experimental. There was no tradition in Ireland of putting instruments to songs, observes Irvine, and doing just that put them outside the bounds of traditional music.
Irvine, who was later to form Planxty with Christy Moore, Donal Lunny and Liam O Flynn, stresses that "the central aspect of Sweeney's Men which continued onto Planxty was the interplay between mandolin and bouzouki which Johnny Moynihan and I invented. Later, Donal Lunny and I took it up and brought it further." This string interplay was complemented by O'Flynn on the uilleann pipes which gave Planxty more musical complexity, says Nicholas Carolan.
Sweeney's Men, meanwhile, were of the 1960s. They were idealistic and didn't like what Irvine describes as "the commercialism of the Clancy brothers". Their name was a tribute to the legendary pagan figure of Sweeney, cursed by a cleric to roam birdlike in the trees and immortalised in the poem, Buile Suibhne- the Madness of Sweeney. It was suggested by Joe Dolan, who now lives in Oughterard and who, since leaving the band, has returned to art.
Dolan's memories are of a group of friends, who came together because they enjoyed each other's company and music. Before that, while studying art, he had played guitar with the Swingtime Aces Showband. "We used to busk together, then we went more formal and decided to spend a summer gigging around. Johnny and Andy especially had a lot of English, Scottish and American material," says Dolan.
Partly because they were unhappy with the songs available in Ireland, they looked elsewhere, says Irvine. "At the time it wasn't easy to get a decent repertoire of Irish songs. Colm O'Loughlin's Irish Street Ballads was about it. And, you'd hear music at fleadhs and fairs, but you'd never hear songs, except maybe Sean South From Garryowen."
Collecting material from America, Scotland and England, the band imprinted their own style on it. If words came without a tune, they'd put music to them. "If a lyric came with music we didn't always change that. If we liked the words but not the tune, then we'd manipulate the tune a bit. The main criterion was that the song would have been traditional in some culture."
They came across different versions of folk songs, frequently collating these to produce a new version of a song such as Molly Bawn, recalls Irvine. Some people didn't approve. And life on the road wasn't a barrel of laughs.
"The number of people Imet meet who say they loved us is enormous, but the reality is that Sweeney's Men weren't all that popular in their day. If all those people had gone to gigs, we'd have been huge," laughs Irvine. They did have a regular following, especially in places such as Dublin, Cork and Galway, but if a gig "was in Charleville you'd think, `Oh Christ, that's going to be tricky' ".
"Later we started getting gigs in dance halls as guests of showbands, playing to 2,000 and 3,000 people during the half an hour when the showbands were on their break." Irvine still shudders at the memory. Audiences were frequently drunk, and there were always sound problems. "The showbands had only two microphones, one for vocal which was loud and another for the brass section which was quiet. These didn't suit us, but they wouldn't change the settings for any ballad group. I remember singing Old Maid in a Garret in Wexford when I couldn't hear one sound from the stage."
In 1967, Joe Dolan left the group to serve as a volunteer in a kibbutz in Israel during the Egypt-Israeli War. He was replaced by Terry Woods. A year later Andy Irvine left, travelling to Eastern Europe and developing a love of music from that area which he would later bring to Planxty.
"I've seen the word intelligent used about Sweeney's Men and it would be right," says Nicholas Carolan of the Irish Traditional Music Archive. "In the middle of the 1960s things had been getting stale on the Irish ballad scene. Things had become imitative and derivative. Sweeney's men came along and sang songs that nobody else did, with a repertoire that covered England and America. They were very influenced by American old time music. They were also a little elusive and that built up a legend a bit, as did the fact that they disappeared for good so quickly."
In the 35 years since leaving Sweeney's Men, Irvine has continued his musical journey and his latest album Way Out Yonder is available on the Internet and at his gigs. Still an idealist, he'd rather make his own living than deal with record companies. Moynihan can also be seen performing regularly at sessions, although Joe Dolan doesn't gig. "Have you ever been married?" he responds when asked how he could give up music. "It's like if you stop being married."