Veteran country singer Brendan Quinn has been around the music scene for 45 years. From being a guitar player in a local showband ‘Robin and The Breakaways’ to leading his own country band ‘The Bluebirds’ for almost twenty years, Brendan has seen and done it all. In the early Sixties, the Breakaways used to open for some of the bigger bands and that’s when he met his long time friend Arty Mc Glynn, then playing guitar with the Plattermen. ‘Arty was the man in that band, he had a big Fender Showman amp and a Gibson 335 and he played everything from the top twenty to country to Trad jazz’ says Brendan. He used to follow the career of another guitarist Henry Mc McCullough, then playing with Gene and the Gents but lost touch when Henry moved to England to form Eire Apparent. Brendan went on to have top ten hits all through the Seventies and Eighties, made regular TV appearances, toured The US, hung out with Merle Haggard and moved Vancouver Canada for some years. In the early Nineties he and Arty, who played pedal steel on Brendan’s first record in 1969, formed The Kickin’ Mule. Sally O’s pub in Omagh was the place to be on a Monday night. Brendan recalls, ‘we never rehearsed, but we had some magic nights in there. I loved it because we had all these great players who wanted to play, and you never knew who might show up on any given night, it might be Arty or Ted Ponsonby or Henry Mc McCullough’. These days Brendan has been in the studio along with Arty, Henry Mc McCullough, Rod Mc Vey, Nicky Scott, Nollaig Casey, Liam Bradley and Ted Ponsonby, and has recorded 14 new tracks. Says Brendan ‘we did this record in Amberville Studio in Cullbackey which is the best facility in Ireland outside of Dublin, a credit to studio boss Enda Walsh and it was a fantastic experience. The vibe in there was just great. When you hear these two guitar masters playing off each other it was just magical. This is the best record I’ve ever done’ Brendan has released two tracks from the session as a promo for the album. Day’s Gonna Come is a great song about global warming from Donegal man Jody Gallagher and What a Joy Love Is, one of Brendan’s own songs, He will be touring extensively with this album so watch out for him in your area.
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