Excellent new album from Sean Keane

The launch was in the Roisin Dubh in Galway City and Sean was in terrific voice and the night was really inspirational. The man truly has a great voice - warm and yet edgy at the same time - and a way with songs that can only come from being steeped in and loving the tradition.

I played his version of the Sting song 'Fields of Gold' on my programme last Wednesday (I still think it ranks up there with Eva Cassidy's version as a real classic) and by serendipity a new CD from Sean arrived a few days ago called 'The Irish Scattering'. It's a recording of a live concert performed in Galway celebrating, not just the terrible Diaspora following the potato famine of the mid 19th century, but the other journeys the Irish have made; the wandering scholar monks who kept learning alive during the Dark Ages and the Irish soldiers like the Enniskillen Dragoons who left Ireland to fight in the bloody European wars.