Track Listings       1. The Blooming Meadows/ The Lark in the Morning. Jigs       2. George White's Favourite/ The Galway Rambler. Reels.       3. The Trip Over the Mountain/ Continental Waltz. Waltz's       4. Paul  Brock's/ Mary McNamara's. Reels       5. Paddy O'Brien's/ The Flying Wheelchair. Jigs        6. The Battle of Aughrim/ Raymond Roland's. March & Reel       7. Traver's/ The Chicago. Reels       8. Kathleen Hehir's/ Moyglass Fair. Single Jigs       9. Sean Ryan's/ Martin Wynne's/ Ormond Sound.Reels.       10. The Good Natured Man/ The Fairy HP.      11. Charlie Lennon's/ Dusty Window Sills. Jigs      12. The Maid of Mount Kisco/ The Abbey. Reels      13. Taylor's Cross/ All the Way to Galway/ Barna Polka. Polkas      14. The Sailed Away from Dublin Bay/ The Pretty Girl Milking her Cow      15. The Holly Bush/ The Congress. Reels Click on underscored titles to hear sound samples with Real Player

The explosion of Irish music in 1950's London included two influential players. One, from Tyrone, a trend setter amongst banjo players, who was renowned for his partnership with the late accordeon player from Ballyshea, Co Galway, Raymond Roland. In the thriving Irish music scene at The White Hart and the Hibernian dance hall in Fulham Broadway.

The other, from Offaly with an original and animated style on the Paolo Soprani accordeon, was meanwhile leading the resident ceili band at the Galtymore in Cricklewood.

Liam Farrell and Joe Whelan are very much part of the current mainstream of Irish music in London, having played together for approaching two decades, on occasion with the London born Roscommon flute player, James Carty and with Reg Hall, who first vamped the piano with them back in the 1960's.
 
 

Musical Traditions Web Site

They Sailed away from Dublin Bay is a long album - almost an hour in duration - but a fundamentally pleasant way to pass the time. There's nothing exceptionally striking, but just four musicians enjoying their music and I have no doubts that you will do so to. Geoff Wallis

Claddagh
From the 1940s there was a vibrant Irish music scene in London, with half of Ireland living in exile,
the music was a reminder of home. There were sessions in London pubs when Dublin landlords wouldn't even allow a song to be sung. Liam Farrell from Tyrone and Joe Whelan from Co Offaly went there and stayed, and became mainstays in a burgeoning movement that continues until today, with the grandchildren of the original musicians still playing great music. In the clubs and pubs, they played for dances and parties and were members of popular ceili bands. Liam on banjo and Joe on accordeon have provided music for several generations of London Irish, and have endured hard physical work.
On this album they are joined by James Carty on flute, and accompanied by Reg Hall on piano.
Reg, a veteran of the London scene has written the sleeve notes, and as usual his knowledge in immense.
This music is really wonderful.

Pay The Reckoning Web Site
There's no denying that there's a wealth of great Irish music available on CD at the moment. The trad fan might feel him or herself spoilt for choice. Well, Pay The Reckoning recommends that that you do yourselves a mighty favour and invest in Liam Farrell and Joe Whelan's offering.
This is simply one of the most outstanding recordings it has been our pleasure to come across. Outstanding not because it breaks the mould. Nor does it come imbued with flash-bang wizardry. The collection is outstanding precisely because it does neither of these. It's a down to earth, solid set of tunes, played with restraint and taste by Farrell (banjo) and Whelan (accordeon), accompanied by Reg Hall on piano and given a hand on a number of tracks by the sprog of the outfit, James Carty (flute).
Farrell and Whelan are veterans of the Irish music explosion in 1950s London. The post-war rebuilding boom drew Irish people in their thousands into England and soon a tight network of Irish musicians developed. Camden Town and Holloway were among the areas of London where clusters within this network established themselves. However they came together in all quarters of the capital - Willesden, Kilburn, Cricklewood, Highbury and across the water in New Cross, Croydon, Fulham ...
Farrell and Whelan played with the best of them, in various ceili bands such as The Hibernian, The Four Courts and the Dunloe and in formal and informal sessions throughout London. They played alongside such luminaries as Sean Maguire, Roger Sherlock, Bobby Casey, Lucy Farr and Brendan McGlinchey. Visiting musicians such as Joe Burke, Paddy Carty, Paddy Fahy would seek out the crack and - again - Farrell and Whelan would get the word.
Before ever hearing a note, there's a tremendous frisson associated with the possibility of hearing music from players who rubbed shoulders and traded tunes with such legendary names. And then the CD hits the carousel and - from the opening bars of the first jig set (The Blooming Meadows/The Lark In The Morning) - all that experience immediately makes itself manifest. We weren't even thought of when these boys were first making their way in the Irish music world, but by God, listening to them play we can immediately imagine ourselves in that world of dark suits, smoky pubs and jostling dance-halls. A more innocent time perhaps, but a time when the Irish community in London - without any artificial props - created for itself a rich and vital sense of community, much of which centred on the music.
Music whose purpose was not just to please the ear. Dancing was a much more popular phenomenon than currently and most sizeable residential areas within London were host to large dancehalls where the Irish community would congregate at the weekends to fill the floors and trot the night away to the ceili bands. It's difficult at our current remove, where Irish music - even for the Irish community - has become a "niche" pursuit, to imagine the mass enthusiasm of the 50s. However, the eagerness of the Irish community for its native music at the time has probably only been surpassed by the great upsurge of interest in the tradition during the early part of the 20th Century in America.
That Farrell's and Whelan's talent was tempered in the white heat of such glory days is obvious in every phrase they play. They pull off the difficult trick of combining an individual style with an absolute command of rhythm and therefore appeal to the ear, the heart and the feet at the same time. This insistent, but in some cases, almost subliminal pulse runs through all of the sets on the album - on reel sets such as George White's Favourite/The Galway Rambler, Paul Brock's/Mary McNamara's, the superb Travers'/The Chicago Reel, The Maid Of Mount Cisco/The Abbey Reel and the glorious The Holly Bush/The Congress as well as jig sets such as Paddy O'Brien's/The Flying Wheelchair, Kathleen Hehir's/Moyglass Fair and Paddy Fahy's/The Rakes Of Clonmel.
But for our money the stand-out tracks on this album are a hornpipe set and a waltz set. On The Good Natured Man/The Fairy's Hornpipe, Farrell and Whelan demonstrate how the pulse which we mentioned earlier can be maintained even when a tune is highly ornamented. The first of the hornpipes in particular sees Whelan wring streams of crisp and starkly-etched triplets from his accordeon and yet the dynamic of the tune never falters beneath its rich top-dressing of ornamentation.
The other set which merits particular mention comprises the waltz from which the album derives its title combined with that supposedly unlucky tune, The Pretty Girl Milking Her Cow. There are fewer sounds in the world so instantly arresting as an Irish waltz played by gifted and intelligent players. We find that such tunes have a great sadness at their core - not the bitter, hopeless, wretched sadness of the grand airs - but a languid melancholy, a hold-me-tight-and-don't-let-me-go sense of dejection. Music that expresses the pain of saying goodbye - not forever as in the sense of a lament, but as near as damn it. The pain of parting; the pain of heart's desire being just out of reach. This is a set to leave the listeners swallowing hard on their drinks to dislodge the lumps in their throats, while the solemn dancers slowly circle the room ...
A word or two of praise to Reg Hall, whose vamping on the piano adds depth and colour to proceedings and to London-born James Carty whose approach to the music belies his generation. Here's a player who knows where to look for inspiration!
If any of the above seems remotely over the top, then we can only encourage you to listen to the album. You'll find that our fulsome praise is well-deserved and that this CD is a pure treasure!

Froots Dec 02
Now here's a little diamond featuring two stalwarts of the London Irish scene, banjo player Liam Farrell and accordeonist Joe Whelan, assisted by James Carty's flute and the hopalong piano of Reg Hall. There's an old fashioned flavour to much of the music here, but  none the worse for it, and a grand mix of tunes too. Thumbs UP.

Irish Music Magazine 11.02
John Howson’s Veretan Rcord label consistantly unlocks some rarer gems from what we might consider authentic traditional musicians, folks who have lived and breathed music and song, not as a vehicle for fame, riches and the dubious delights of world travel, but simply because that has what made their world go round and their lives complete.

Once again, Veterean have found a quartet of players who have years experience in the London Irish scene and three of them Farrell, Whelan and Hall, go back to the early 1960’s
and have played with every notable Irish musician who has passed through the London session scene these fourty years

The title track is a waltz, Trip Over the Mountain and The Continental add m ore waltz’s to the album. The rest is a mixture of jigs, reels, polkas and hornpipes.

Liam Farrell from Omagh, in Co Tyrone began playing the banjo in the 50’s, for many years in partnership with the famous Raymond Roland. Farrell has a unique style, contemporary with but different from that of Barney McKenna.

Joe Whelan who has played the Paolo Soprani box alongside Farrell for over 20 years has a lively animated style, ideal for dancing with a strong rhythmic impulse with a great sense of lift.

The liner notes  by Reg Hall, documenting the vibrant London Irish scene include photographs of The Hibernian Ceili Band, Lucy Farr, Raymond Roland Quartet and the Four Courts Ceili Band. These liner notes are superbly written and provide a deep context to musical gems on this album, but then again Reg Hall has that insider’s knowledge that you only get when you stick to the tradition for half a century. Sean Laffey

The Irish World
They sailed away from Dublin Bay features two of Ireland's greatest traditional performers, Liam Farrell and Joe Whelan.
Liam and Joe have been playing on the music circuit in London since the 1950's and have since become a huge part of the current mainstream Irish music scene. They Sailed Away features Farrell from Tyrone, on banjo while Whelan, from Offaly, plays the button accordion. James Carty joins them on flute and the piano accompaniment of London's Reg Hall.
Dr Reg Hall is a fantastic person to have on the album, being an expert on the music of London's Irish Irish pubs and dance halls and having played, over the years, with all the great names that have passed through London. James Carty's name may ring a bell also, as he is the younger brother of the renowned musician, John Carty. Carty brings to the album the youth of up-and-coming players, but still holds with the pace of traditional Irish music.
The album contains a diverse mixture of reels, jigs, hornpipes, polkas and waltzes. Their work is as eclectic as it comes, with old favourites combined with newer tunes from their vast repertoire.
Joe and Liam's ideas just seem to bounce off each other and it seems to work. They Sailed Away From Dublin Bay will bring back some great memories and maybe set off some new ones. An exciting collection of music with its roots set firmly in rural Ireland and the dance halls and pubs of Irish London. Xenia Poole

Folk on Tap
This is a CD of dance tunes played by Liam and Joe who have come to the music in the traditional way. They started playing in the 1950's and through the years have honed their playing skills until they both are as together as it is possible to get! Liam (banjo) and Joe (accordeon, their spelling) give a lengthy account of their  history in the CD's cover booklet and seem to have played with anyone and everyone who's anyone on the Irish dance in London.
Their CD, of 16 tracks of reels, jigs, waltzes, hornpipes, polkas and even a march are a must for those of us who wish to learn good Irish dance tunes played well, not too fast and not too slow. There are two or sometimes three tunes per track so this CD does provide good value for money.
For me, this CD seems to be an archive of standard dance tunes and therefore not too easy to listen all the way through in one sitting. There is little variety, except for the connoisseur and it would therefore  be good for dance sides without a band. Martin Lee

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