Legendary Irish singer Andy Irvine will play The Crane this week, promising a night of enjoyable folk as well as traditional music. Irvine began life as a musician in Dublin during the 60s. The first musical partnership he made was with Johnny Moynihan and Joe Dolan, which turned into Sweeney's Men in 1966.
He later left the band to head to Eastern Europe and soaked up musical influence that emerge later in his work and would have a major impact on the sound of contemporary Irish music, including the original Riverdance score.
An accomplished player of the mandolin, bouzouki, mandola, guitar-bouzouki, banjo, harmonica and hurdy-gurdy, Andy was one of the founding members of the popular band Planxty, which was formed in the 70s and quickly revolutionized Irish folk music touring and recording to great acclaim.
The group were an instant success, with Irvine being praised as the sole composer of the band. Besides Planxty, he was also involved with the group Patrick Street and multi-cultural group Mozaik, which featured Irvine, Donal Lunny, Bruce Molsky, Nikola Paroy and Rens van der Zalm.
In 1997, Andy decided to break from recording companies, distributors and record stores and started releasing his own albums. His new self-released CD, 'Way Out Yonder', is more ambitious than his previous solo work.
"I could have gone down the well-worn path of having somebody write a eulogy, but I'm not really into the highways of music business hype," he says.
Andy Irving will be playing upstairs in The Crane Bar this evening, Wednesday 21 July at 9pm. Admission is €20/members €17.50.
