Sinéad Lohan – Sailing By
Continuing our series of underrated Irish music since 1960, reader Slip Digby would like us to put some respect on the name of Cork troubadour Sinéad Lohan (top).
The dreadlocked singer/songwriter emerged onto the national stage in the mid-’90s thanks in part to her inclusion on the A Woman’s Heart tour.
Sailing By is from her debut album Who Do You Think I Am (released in 1995 by Dara Records and produced by Declan Sinnott).
Slip writes:
“It’s perfection.”
Sinéad’s follow-up No Mermaid was recorded in New Orleans and came out on Interscope Records in 1998.
She then quit the music industry to focus on raising her children.
Nick says: The South will rise again.
Sponsored Link
Absolutely loved her!
+1
I’ve a playlist that I go to a lot when I’m sitting around airports etc- good bit of her stuff on it, always nice to go back to it
That album accompanied me to many a far flung field, including Naroibi which was calling. I had the joy to hear her live once in Kilkenny – a chance meeting as I had not planned the visit, nor knew she was playing.
A heroine in my eyes!
I keep coming back to this. But I think my favourite song of hers is from No Mermaids. She lost the dreads, and I really like the shorter cut. Whatever it takes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vj0Yz6q3zEk
Ah ha, and can some tape-head, (geddit!), identify the specific Revox reel-to-reel?
If I remember rightly it was a Revox B77, using 8mm Ampex tape. They were a divil to calibrate, but were incredible machines. The 16mm version was much more precise, but the tape was much more expensive.
A part of me misses those days
In the same way that petrol- heads appreciate older cars; the Revox range really was the Rolls Royce of tape machines. I’m quite nostalgic for that period myself.
Calibration was the bane of my existence!. First you had to take apart the motherboard, and calibrate it with a tone generator. But once reassembled, parts are now in close proximity that mean they resonate. And all that work is now for naught.
It became a matter of art to get it right – deliberately missing the calibration so that when everything got together it would work. And that was before you got to the record heads.
And finally, once your instruments said everything was right, the artist would listen.
And it was always off, and round 2 started.
She was great. Lovely voice.
Hated the dreads though. Met a few new age hippies from England with the same type of dreads and they absolutely stank.
As the son of a Corkman, I love the lilt in her voice. I have heard it said a true singer should rid their voice of their accent, but I love it when they keep it. Reminds me of my other home.