Out On The Ocean

I lived in The Hague for 18 months and loved it for more reasons than I can really put into words. This is Sunday morning.

Just listen to this. Sean Williams shares her memories of learning from the legendary Joe Heaney. We talk music; ornamentation; Oirishness; messengers from the otherworld; liminality; being visited by Heaney in a dream and corrected on your writing, cleaning up his apartment on Phinney Ridge. We talk the sacred, alluring and dangerous; immigration and emigration; 'you lived away for so long,' thre...

Friday Harbor is as beautiful as you might imagine - a small, saltwater town on San Juan Island on the north west edge of Washington State. If you head out there on the weekend, north from Seattle, up Interstate 5 to the ferry that leaves from the once thriving cannery and oil town of Anacortes, Friday Harbour can feel like a safe haven from the week just gone by. Some folks think it's a bit too c...

This is a podcast about living and this episode has a lot of it: the Fitzroy underground scene; the excesses of youth; being in a band; being in a society sleepwalking towards environmental catastrophe. You know, happy stuff. Doomscrolling, yelling into the chasm; books, crooners and gentrification. AND crackin songs. In this episode Stan plays: I Fell Over Flag of Progress A Little Light 21st Cen...

In the almanac of Ireland on RTE the writer Manchán Magan talks about the word magh – a measurement of distance in the old Irish – the distance that a bell or a cock-crow can be heard. Magh. I’ve been thinking of that idea for a couple of years now since I first heard it from my friend Colette Kinsella who produced that show – a fantastic radio producer and like-minded lover of sounds and the way...

And so in the end up where did Granny Brown go And what about Granda Leo Aunty Julia, Uncle James and their wee dog Rona Bernard, and Gerard and Roy Something to do with roving at night Something to do with the water A backyard lit by the kitchen light Something to do with the water Mum and dad, Bernie and John Ellie and James and Gerald, John Cochrane, John Francis and Uncle Ben Mary, Marie and J...

Maguire's Strand, sun worship and the Barwon Estuary on a transcendent blue morning; biting flies, flights of memory, amazement; pathways to the past and the glory of the present; '78, '79. The last days of summer.

Episode 4 of Out On The Ocean tells the first part of the story of Harold Moss - listen to that first. Thenmeet us back here. Recorded on March 14th 2016 in Tacoma, Washington, this second recording picks up the story from the early 1960s, and details the formation of the Tacoma Urban League; Harold's work with the NAACP; his route into local politics and the events that led to him being appointed...

In this, the first of two episodes, Harold Moss describes his childhood in Michigan, his move to the Pacific NorthWest as a National Guardsman, and the reality of how racism played out in his everyday life, from childhood right through to when he and his wife tried to buy their first house. It's a compelling piece of audio, in part because he is such a great talker, and in part because the issues...

I'd heard of Aoife Dermody long before I met her, on the day before she was due to move back to Dublin after a spell in Melbourne. An activist, a singer, a teacher, a musician. On a sunny, chilly morning we met up in Preston, and ended up chatting about all manner of things - including Joe Fitzgerald and Joe Heaney, two true originals. In fact, this is the first of three episodes that sort of circ...

It was a glorious night when we saw David Munnelly and Shane McGowan at Casa Bruti in The Hague. Dermot, was there - an old acquaintance who I went to a few pubs with while living in The Hague, though I never learned his surname. Santi and Marianna were there, dearest of friends much missed these days. And a wheen of other lovers of the finest of music and food, warmth and gezellig-ness. And what...

I was lucky enough to spend an evening chatting with Mrs. Kitty Moran in early 2021. About life: childhood, songs, rugby league, Ireland, England, nursing and all points in between. What a woman - wise, funny, and one of those people who you sense was just 100% herself. If ever I need reminding of what a blessing and a gift it it is to record someone, I listen to this. So it seems like the perfect...