Where I had room to roam
Steve Wickham

I lived in The Quay Cottage outside Doolin, Co Clare, late 1987 until early 1988. It was a one-storey building situated on the quay, on the edge of the harbour where you take the ferry to the Aran Islands.

At the time I was working in Dublin with the Waterboys and wanted to go west to learn more about Irish music. I was already classically trained in the violin, having studied at the College of Music on Chatham Row in Dublin.

Mike Rogers, one of our crew, rented a restored fisherman's cottage for me from a woman who lived in Lisdoonvarna. It was whitewashed and had an old slated roof. Inside it was still laid out as one big room with a bedroom off it. The main room had the traditional large open fireplace complete with seats. There was a little kitchen to one side, and settle seats were laid out all around the room. I didn't do a lot of cooking in those days - it was baked beans on toast or a fish supper from the chip shop. I had yet to discover the joys of lobster and seafood.

There was also a loft, which had been converted into another bedroom, and this was where I slept. The view from my little window was fairly bleak. There were no lights in the harbour and in winter it was a black space filled by the sound of the wind.

This was my first time living out west and I found it to be another world altogether, populated by characters that I'd long since thought had ceased to exist. This was late 1987, and Doolin's music scene was alive and kicking. I was there to watch, listen and learn.

The cottage was about a mile outside Doolin. You could hear the sessions in Gus O'Connor's pub from the cottage, which was about a half-mile walk away. O'Connor's was one of several pubs in the village and I remember the first time I walked into the place. Sharon Shannon was only 19 and she was playing with (bouzouki player) Eoin O'Neill. She was on the cusp of being discovered, and her playing made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end.

Other great local talents included Miko Russell, a farmer and legendary tin whistle player. He'd swap tunes and play with other great players such as Mary Custy (fiddle), Kevin Griffin on banjo and Michel Bonamie, a Frenchman, on sax. I was just the fella from the Waterboys listening and learning to play tunes with them. After the pub, this merry band of musicians often followed me home to continue playing music.

We could play as long and as loud as we liked because I was neighbourless except for "The Dog" Guerin, an Aran islander who lived across the road, in a caravan that he shared with two Jack Russell dogs. He was a very dark and hardy man who used to row across to the islands in his oilskin curragh. He was notorious for starting rows with people, but he never gave me any grief over the music.

My home became the base for these sessions, which came to start ever earlier in the day. I remember one starting around midday when O'Neill and the singer/guitarist Niall Sheedy came.

We'd play all day, and before long I was starting to compose tunes. Looking over to Inis Oir, one of the Aran Islands, I was compelled to add an Irish verse to Woody Guthrie's This Land Is Your Land, which later featured on the Fisherman's Blues album.

I was a Dub born and bred, and while I'd always been interested in Irish music, my interest had always been very pedestrian. I was now immersed in the culture and learning about its origins and the oral tradition from the best. I got a glimpse of what pure traditional music was about - a tradition that was fast changing.

To an outsider such as me, Doolin in the mid-1980s was like a hidden Ireland. You'd see a old sean nos dancer performing and dancing on a door that had been taken off its hinges, dancing like he was on strings. I don't think you'd see that now. In contrast to that, you had the next generation in the guise of Sharon Shannon accompanying him on the accordion.

By early 1988 my Irish music apprenticeship was over. Mike Scott moved to Spiddal in Galway and all the Waterboys got involved there finishing the Fisherman's Blues album.

When I moved to Doolin I felt like I was living on the edge of the world and I was in my element. It was like I'd discovered that this was the way I was meant to live my life, and it was my time in Doolin that propelled me to want to live in the west. I moved to Sligo in 1991.