Post by Deleted on May 21, 2020 16:14:57 GMT -5
This Irish song is usually credited to Dominic Behan (and sometimes Dick Shannon), though it didn't become popular until Dominic's brother Brendan Behan wrote a play in 1954 which featured this song, "The Auld Triangle" as its opening. The play was titled ‘The Quare Fellow’, became a hit in Ireland, and so people started singing this song. The play (and the song) concern a convict in Mountjoy Prison in Ireland who is due to be executed; he’s reflecting on his situation and his life. The ‘Auld Triangle’ was a large metal triangle mounted on the gates of Mountjoy Prison, which the warden would beat on enthusiastically to wake the prisoners and mark changes in the routine.
The song’s been covered by a plethora of other musicians, most famously, perhaps, by Luke Kelly and the Dubliners, but also by the Dropkick Murphy’s, the Pogues, The Clancy Brothers, The Oysterband, and Chris Thile, Chris Eldridge, Marcus Mumford, Justin Timberlake and Gabe Witcher for the soundtrack to the Coen Brothers' 2013 film Inside Llewyn Davis and more recently by Glen Hansard.
I will say that while I’ve been doing “first take” recordings, I failed on this one. Actually, my Harmony Singer pedal failed when I was trying to use it as my backup singers. There’s an Am chord in the chorus that it kept singing as an Amaj chord. As any musician can tell you, that doesn’t work. At all. So I’ve only used the Harmony Singer on the last chorus… though you can still hear it having problems. *sigh*
The song’s been covered by a plethora of other musicians, most famously, perhaps, by Luke Kelly and the Dubliners, but also by the Dropkick Murphy’s, the Pogues, The Clancy Brothers, The Oysterband, and Chris Thile, Chris Eldridge, Marcus Mumford, Justin Timberlake and Gabe Witcher for the soundtrack to the Coen Brothers' 2013 film Inside Llewyn Davis and more recently by Glen Hansard.
I will say that while I’ve been doing “first take” recordings, I failed on this one. Actually, my Harmony Singer pedal failed when I was trying to use it as my backup singers. There’s an Am chord in the chorus that it kept singing as an Amaj chord. As any musician can tell you, that doesn’t work. At all. So I’ve only used the Harmony Singer on the last chorus… though you can still hear it having problems. *sigh*
As usual with Irish tunes (and folk songs in general), everyone who covered it tended to muck around with the lyrics, which is why there are no particular 'definitive' versions of the tune. I've heard several alternative verses myself.