RIP Liam Clancy

Liam singing "Roseville Fair" (Bill Staines) with Gemma Hayes, from his 2008 album, The Wheels Of Life.

I loved him the first time I heard him.

Dylan said Liam Clancy was the best ballad
singer he ever heard. I can understand him
saying that. Long before I went to Ireland, The
Clancy Brothers were known to me. It was
always Liam that I heard. When some of his
solo albums came to me, I understood why.
I wanted to tell a song like he did, gather
people in that heartful place we share.

The last time I was in Ireland I found a
few more albums of Liam's. One of them,
The Wheels Of Life, was a new release,
from October 2008. He already knew, then,
that his time was not long. In "I Knew This
Place," from the pen of David Mallett, Liam
sings...

"The day is done, the lights are low
The wheels of life are turning slow
And as these visions turn and go
I lay me down to sleep..."

When I learned of Liam's death this
morning, I felt a draft move through the
room, as if my own mortality just had its
hand let go by another, older hand. As if
my own life had lost its breath a moment.

Liam Clancy moved me. Not every time, but
often, and when he did I was filled with feeling.
Liam's songs take me from the superficial
distractions of the world around, bring me to
the heart again, into that calling that songs
faithfully return us to.

"And the next time I see you we'll be down
at the Greeks' / There'll be whiskey on
Sunday, and tears on our cheeks..."

Thanks, Liam Clancy.
Rest now.

DL

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Видео RIP Liam Clancy канала paganmaestro