Cáit Ní Riain of The Weaving told David Hennessy about the band’s new music, forthcoming English tour and what she learned from the late Séamus Begley.
The Weaving, the traditional group made up of Méabh Begley, Cáit Ní Riain and Owen Spafford, are coming to England for a string of dates.
Drawing its members from Kerry (Begley), Tipperary (Ni Riain) and Yorkshire (Spafford), The Weaving draws on the traditions of all three regions.
The tour follows the release of the track and video, Bonnie Blue Eyed Lassie.
The Irish World chatted to Cáit Ni Riain, who plays keys and sings in the band, ahead of their coming to the UK.
You must be looking forward to these upcoming gigs..
“Absolutely.
“We’re really looking forward to them and we have great craic outside of the music as well just spending time together.”
How did the three of you come together?
“We all met down in Corca Dhuibhne, the West Kerry Peninsula.
“We met at a festival called Scoil Cheoil an Earraigh and we just started playing together, and that magical thing happens when certain musicians start to play together.
“We just absolutely clicked but not only on a musical level, on a personality level as well.
“We met down in West Kerry but we got on musically and we got on personally.
“And then Owen just asked, ‘Hey, do you want to come over to England? We could do a couple of concerts..’
“And then we were like, ‘Yeah, let’s go over to England’.
“We organised a couple of concerts and then we were like, ‘Okay, this is a thing. I think we have a band here’.
“Because the music was flowing and it was brilliant.
“Then we just came up with the name at a train station between two concerts. We had a bit of a wait. We were like, ‘We need a name’.
“And then we came up with The Weaving.”
It was only in February 2022 that the trio met so the band have become incredibly established in a short space of time.
“And the thing about it is we don’t spend that much time with each other outside of when we have concerts because Owen lives in England and I live in Tipperary and Méabh lives in West Kerry.
“Me and Méabh would have played an awful lot together because I was living down in West Kerry, I just moved up the end of last year but when we are together, it’s just like fire.
“It’s just like fire in terms of the power of the music and the magnetism between us.
“It hasn’t been something we’ve been crafting away with practices or rehearsals every couple of weeks or anything.
“We organise the concerts and then we meet a day before the concert and put the tunes together and then just absolutely play our hearts out and it works because we’re all so into music individually.
“We all have our own musical lives going on as well outside of The Weaving.
“We’re all very active in our own solo projects and in other projects as well so it’s not like we’re getting rusty or anything.
“But there’s a special bond between us.”
The group are set to release their debut album.
“We’re very, very excited about this new album.
“It’s very raw sounding.
“Our sound is all about the raw earth and the deep pulse of the music, I think it really comes through in this album, that very wild, uncontrollable energy that lives within us all and that you can really hear sometimes in the Irish music and the English folk music.
“One of the lovely things about The Weaving is that we weave the folk musics of England and Ireland together which is quite a new thing because, historically, the two places are so divided.
“(But) at the level of the folk people, we share the same spirit, we share the same connection to land, to our herbs, the folk customs and beliefs.
“That’s what the album is really celebrating.
“Folk people and indigenous people all over the world deeply honour and respect each other.
“It’s just the elite people on the top that have colonised and it’s nothing had to do with the folk people on the bottom.
“We’re very excited about celebrating the deep roots of music that comes from the earth.”
So that’s where the name The Weaving comes from, weaving these things together..
“Most definitely.
“We’re weaving these traditions and they complement each other.
“We weave together and even our sounds, it feels like we’re weaving because we often give space to an instrument and then another instrument will come in and it feels like a weaving.
“It feels like we’re weaving music.”
Tell us more about this forthcoming album..
“There’s so many songs on the album.
“We have a song that comes from my area, Éamonn an Chnoic and it’s a song about the dispossession of the land when the land was dispossessed from the Irish.
“There’s a lot in terms of what’s going on in the world today, these themes of the indigenous people losing their land and it just being taken away by some colonial force and the pain, the deep, deep pain that that will cause for generations and generations.
“I just feel it so deeply because our history and what we’ve gone through as a people is huge, the Irish people.
“I sing a song called The Flower of Sweet Strabane which is a song from county Tyrone.
“We have a lovely, sparse arrangement of it with piano and violin and that means a lot.
“I learned that from my dad.
“I remember the first night I heard him singing it.
“Sometimes the first time you hear a song or a tune, there’s a certain beauty in it that it just hits you and it stays with you. It’s just like another door has been opened within your being.
“I remember that very well so I’m happy to have kind of taken that song on and made my own out of it.
“Méabh sings two Irish songs.
“The songs are beautiful.
“We’re very excited about it.”
Cáit grew up surrounded by music. Her family’s pub Jim of the Mills in Upperchurch, Co. Tipperary is famed for its weekly sessions.
Did you always know it was music for you?
“Was it always going to be music for me?
“I think music speaks to me deeper than anything on earth.
“It’s hard for me to deny.
“It’s the most powerful thing in the world for me.
“And then in my teenage years, I started really getting into the traditional songs and just falling in love with singers like Joe Heaney.
“I remember I used to go on long walks around Tipperary with the old string headphones going into my phone or my iPod and I used to be listening to Joe Heaney some of his tracks.
“I remember thinking, ‘I understand the shape of these songs by just walking the shape of the landscape’.
“I could feel how the songs had grown from the land and the flowers.
“It was the perfect soundtrack to my ramblings through the hills of Tipperary.
“I almost couldn’t believe that there was a music like this.
“I would go for a long walk with the songs and I basically was in ecstasy, I was so blissed out.
“I couldn’t believe that this music existed and I was so excited.
“I think music is the most powerful force in the world and I think it’s the highest art form.
“I’m very bold to say that but I think the deep medicine for humans is great music.
“You asked me, was it always music? On a deep level, yes and the more I grow and the more I really come into myself as a woman: Yeah, it’s music.
“It’s my greatest love affair.
“Music and nature and healing, but the healing is actually in the music.”
Is growing up surrounded by music something you all share?
“We do, yeah.
“Both Owen’s parents are writers.
“They’re very creative and incredibly supportive human beings. They’re amazing.
“We stay at his house when we go over to Leeds so we get to meet them and just hang out with them.
“Owen took to the fiddle.
“His mother told me a story: He was at some event. I think he was only five or six or seven but he saw someone playing a fiddle and he just pointed at it and he was like, ‘That’.
“And then his parents started taking him to fiddle lessons.
“And then Méabh obviously grew up in West Kerry in a very famous musical household and not just one house, the homestead of the Begleys. A clan, I suppose, is what you’d call The Begleys.
“She’s steeped in that lineage and we’re all really steeped in it to be honest.”
Did I read that you learned the recent track My Bonnie Blue Eyed Lassie from Méabh’s late father, the great Séamus Begley?
“Yes, I learned that from Séamus at a summer school in UL.
“We had lots of different singing teachers and Séamus was very different from them all because he was so ordinary, it was just kind of as if he had walked in off the farm which is kind of similar to my dad. My dad is that real kind of farmer and sings as well.
“It was just great craic but he taught us that song, My Bonnie Blue Eyed Lassie, so that’s on the album.
“It was very special because obviously Séamus passed away over two years ago now.
“That was massive for Méabh and it still is, of course, but it’s lovely to be able to sing that together and remember him and all of the songs that he has taught, the generosity that he had with his music and song and energy and presence.
“He gave his energy so freely.
“It’s a lovely thing.
“The song is so beautiful because he’s just saying he’s in love with this woman and no matter what anyone says about her, ‘some people say she’s very low in station, more people say she’ll be the cause of my ruination’, but he loves her, he doesn’t care.
“I just love that quality in someone when you just know you love someone despite what everyone is saying about them.
“Sometimes it might be wise to listen to other people.”
Will it be poignant at these upcoming gigs to dedicate that track to his memory?
“Yeah, absolutely.
“It will be a real tribute to Séamus.
“It will be special.
“It’s special to sing with Méabh because we both feel the song so deeply.
“You can just feel we’re together in the song.”
Did you spend a lot of time with Séamus yourself?
“Yes, I did.
“I moved down in May 2022 and he passed in January 2023 so it was only six months actually but it felt like much longer than that because I was nearly playing in the pubs in Dingle 3, 4, 5 nights a week and he would have been there most of those nights so we shared a lot of music, we shared a lot of songs. He would sing.
“I loved when he sang.
“I loved listening to him sing, and playing but singing in particular because that’s my love.
“So yeah, I got to know Séamus very well, very, very well and I had that lovely six months of sharing music and song with him, and presence with him, and laughter and just getting to know him.
“Yeah, he was a very ordinary man, and extraordinary in many ways.”
You could see from the outpouring after his passing how widely loved he was..
“So widely loved.
“And I think that’s why, because he was so himself.”
I saw you at Return to London Town last October, how did you enjoy that?
“It was great.
“Yeah, we had a great time.
“Historically London has such a great place in Irish music, in terms of the musicians that would have met and played, and the music that came out of London, the traditional Irish music that came out of London.
“So many Irish went to London and I could really feel that in the hotel that weekend, the love for Ireland from all of these people, that maybe second generation or maybe first generation that moved over years and years ago but just that the music is their key to carry them home even psychologically or in their heart, he music is us so even if they’re not in Ireland or they don’t want to be in Ireland, having that music is that bridge so it’s such a lovely celebration of our culture in a place that was historically.
“A lot of people went there.
“A lot of people lived there and it took a lot of people in so it was brilliant and to meet up with lots of other musicians and just spend a weekend in London, in Cricklewood we really enjoyed it.”
Also there that weekend was Doireann Ní Ghlacáin. You featured on her TG4 series Ceolaireacht examining musical traditions in different regions including London.
Was it an honour to represent Tipperary music like that?
“Yeah, most definitely.
“North Tipperary you hear a lot of different musical styles: Sligo, West Kerry, East Clare.
“I feel because I’ve grown up with song like there’s a real Tipperary dent on a song but these smaller regions aren’t really known about.
“It was an honour to represent the music of North Tipperary on Ceolaireacht and put our songs on the map.
“Tipperary has so many incredible songs and that was part of the work I did for my masters thesis, ‘What is the function of songs in North Tipperary, historically and presently, of traditional songs?’
“I explored a lot of the local songs.
“There’s amazing, beautiful songs.
“It was lovely to share one of those on the show with Doireann.”
You are not the first member of your family to be featured in The Irish World. We have featured your sister Áine with award-winning plays such as Paddy Goes to Petra and Kitty in the Lane which, of course, you wrote music for..
“My sister has been very successful.
“She’s an incredible playwright and it was a privilege to write some fiddle music for her shows.
“I love to work with different art forms.
“I love to just work with musicians but I love to work with theatre, with poets.
“It’s very exciting and interesting to play music for something like theatre because you have to work with the script and try and enhance the feelings that are happening on the stage with music.
“It does give us a deeper access point into our feelings so that’s been a great honour to work with Áine.”
What has been a highlight for you so far, not restricted to your time with The Weaving..
“Well this weekend I’m doing two concerts with Liam O’Maonlaí.
“I’m playing two concerts with him in Belfast which I’m really looking forward to.
“But that’s in the future.
“From the past definitely some of my musical highlights have been with The Weaving, just us playing together.
“I’ve played with so many musicians but there’s something really special when the three of us come together and we’re all in good musical form.
“We played an incredible festival in Wales called Fire in the Mountain, we got a most incredible reaction so that was definitely a highlight.
“We’ve also played things like the National Concert Hall and those kind of places which are lovely.
“It’s lovely to be invited to play in such establishments where incredible musicians have played before.”
The Weaving play Cecil Sharp House in London on 4 June, The Hullabaloo in Shipley on 6 June, Café #9 in Sheffield on 7 June, Hyde Park Book Club in Leeds on 8 June, Chapel Sessions in Southampton on 11 June and Whitchurch Folk Club in Basingstoke on 13 June.
For more information, click here.
