The Wolfe Tones are to receive The Irish Post Lifetime Achievement Award
IN 1963 The Wolfe Tones odyssey began. The lads had a strong sense of their country’s history, and as it looked like they might play a few gigs together — for a few months anyway — so they named their band in honour of the great Irish leader Theobald Wolfe Tone. In 1964 Tommy Byrne joined the band — a singer with one of the most distinctive and evocative voices in Irish music. The journey that would take them to the world’s biggest and most prestigious music venues in the world was underway.
The Wolfe Tones have enthralled generations of Irish music fans across the decades with their own unique style.
This year, in these islands alone, they’ve headlined festivals from West Belfast to the Electric Picnic to the Finsbury Park Fleadh.
Brian Warfield spoke to The Irish Post in October 2024, saying: “We are very proud to have supported the Irish communities in England, Scotland and Wales throughout the sixty years we’ve been together, and more than proud that the Irish communities supported The Wolfe Tones for that number of years, and may I say, through thick and thin.
“It’s been a wonderful journey, one that will be etched in our memories forever — from the National in London to the Barrowland in Glasgow, and all the clubs and dancehalls of England, Scotland and Wales in between.
“We thank you all.
“We thank The Irish Post for honouring us with such a fantastic accolade at the end of our 60th year. We are humbled by the great honour bestowed on us.”
From humble beginnings in Dublin to the hallowed halls of Carnegie Hall in New York and the likes of the Paris Olympia, Tommy Byrne, Noel Nagle and Brian Warfield have been, quite simply, a musical phenomenon.
Brian told The Irish Post: “I would define our music as a direct descendant of the ballad singers, the bards. The bards told the history of Ireland – in the early days – in poetry and music. They went underground after the Siege of Limerick, and went into the cottages of the country, because no longer had they the support and protection of the chieftains. I see our music in a direct line from that. Our music is about the history that made us the nation we are, and our music of the last decades has also been the history of the times we’ve grown up in – the Troubles. If you’re singing about Ireland, how can you possibly ignore that?”
Brian Warfield’s compositions are among the finest commentaries on events which are indelibly etched on Ireland’s long, hard history. His songwriting is so memorable because he believes in what he is writing: “First of all I’m telling the story of my country, our country. That’s what we sing about. Not comical songs about ‘thick paddies’, or songs that denigrate our nation, but songs about our history, our great people. We are the land of Joyce, of Connolly, of O’Connell, of Yeats — and Wolfe Tone.”
“We believe in playing good music well — without any frills,” and there is certainly a charm to taking the opposite tack to the likes of bands which attempt to combine Irish traditional melodies with African rhythms and the latest house band grooves.
But ultimately the Tones earn their place in the canon of great Irish bands because they have kept alive an integral side of our music which most other bands have spurned.
Speaking about their Finsbury Park show earlier this year, Brian Warfield told The Irish Post: “The Irish diaspora across the world have always been massive supporters of The Wolfe Tones, and no greater support was had than from the Irish in Britain! I wrote ‘My Heart Is In Ireland’ as a tribute to the Irish in England, Scotland and Wales. The Irish in Britain hold a very special place in our hearts, there are too many shows to mention but the great nights in The National in Kilburn will never be forgotten.”
The Irish Post Awards
Thursday, November 7
The Irish Post Awards take on November 7
JW Marriott Grosvenor House London
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(IMAGES: main masthhead image by Gareth Clancy for RollingNews.ie)All other photos by Debbie Hickey/Getty Images)