John not really serious when he suggests knocking Jealous Wall

Eilís Ryan


He came all the way from Cork to Castlepollard, and has gone home again and written a song that proposes all will be well on the island when we knock The Jealous Wall.

 

Check out John singing Dunnes Stores Girl

 

That’s the sort of result you get when you invite the hugely talented Cork singer/songwriter John Spillane to come up to your county for a few days to pull pints for the locals. He gets all poetic, and crafts a song using skeins of colour woven from the heritage of the area – the story of the Children of Lir, the massive Ail na Mireann on the Hill of Uisneach, and, of course, The Jealous Wall itself.
But panic not: he doesn’t really mean knocking The Jealous Wall in the literal sense – he’s only being poetic, which is what he does so wonderfully well, as fans can tell you, quoting clever lines from his unique range of songs, including the memorable Dunnes Stores Girl, the song that probably first brought him to widespread public acclaim.
John’s four-day visit to Castlepollard was last week, when, as he says himself, “like a circus” he and a film crew from TG4 arrived to do some filming for a new series to go out on the Irish language station in September. It was the final town out of six in which he has been spending time, and the result will be not just a TV programme, but also an album featuring new songs he has written about each of the places he has visited – including Castlepollard.
“We’re filming in six small towns around Ireland, all small towns off the beaten track, and Castlepollard is one of them,” he says.
The format sees him come to town, spend a few nights pulling pints in one of the local pubs, and having chats with the locals, finding out the lore and legend of the area, and, in turn, entertaining them with songs. The series is to go out on TG4 on Sunday nights in September, starting on September 15.
“The production company, Forefront, suggested that I write a couple of lines about each area for a song, but I went one better, and I wrote a whole song,” he says.
Coming to Castlepollard introduced John to a part of the world he didn’t know. “Indeed I didn’t know much at all about Westmeath or that part of the midlands,” he wrote on his blog after the trip And he was impressed with what he found, he told the Westmeath Examiner in a phone interview after returning home. “I never knew it was so beautiful,” he says.
He also enjoyed the hospitality: “It was a bit of excitement: it was like a small circus coming to town,” he says.
He stayed in the Pollard Arms, and became the new 'barman’ at Kevin and Dympna Farrelly’s, and had great craic and conversation with people who love their area, including several who were fluent in Irish, such as the historian Micheál ” Conluain and his wife Gráinne; Proinnsias ” Fearghail and Matt Nolan.
Other great characters he met included loy ploughing enthusiast and garage proprietor, Tom Egan, and then, at Tullynally Castle, he was delighted to realise that Lord Longford – Thomas Pakenham – was actually author of 'Meetings with Remarkable Trees’, which John had bought several times over, as gifts for friends.
While much about Westmeath may have been new to John, one thing that wasn’t was The Children of Lir story: while at school, he took part in a rock opera version of the fairytale by Brian O’Reilly.
While John may be best-known for his Dunnes Stores girl song, he is writing all the time – but it can be a slow process. “In 2012, I only wrote two songs in the whole year, but this year, I have the six, and it’s amazing what you can do when you get going on a specific job and with a deadline.” Last year’s compositions were The English Market song, and The Connaught Rugby song.
And the real story behind the Dunnes Stores girl song?
“I went to Dunnes to get a plug for the sink, and the girl at the checkout said: 'You’re John Spillane! You’re brilliant!’,” he says.
She – Claire Cogan of Turner’s Cross in Cork – started leaving messages on his website, signing them 'The Dunnes Stores Girl’, and she told him she had a brother nicknamed 'The Baldy Man’, and he too left messages.
“And I said: 'you sound like characters out of a song’,” he says, explaining that she then challenged him to write a song about them, and thus, was born The Dunnes Stores girl. Although it might sound like a love song, there was no love story behind it – but it took off.
Clare no longer works in Dunnes Stores but she’s proud, he says, to tell people she is the original Dunnes Stores Girl.

• Spillane an Fánaí runs for six weeks on TG4 on Sunday nights from September 15.

• Check out John’s account of his trip to Castlepollard on: johnspillane.ie.

https://itunes.apple.com/album/the-dunnes-stores-girl/id147716219?i=147716839&ign-mpt=uo%3D5