Patrick Kiely: So you’re very welcome to Cork Creative Cathal.

Cathal Dunne: Thanks so much, Patrick. It’s a pleasure to be here.

Patrick Kiely: The pleasure is all ours indeed. And we’re going to get started with the most pressing topic, which is the imminent launch of your book on the 26th of August with Mercier Press. So the book called Athenry is very musical and music infuses Athenry.

The book title references the song. The initial setting is very musical with its reference to haunting heirs, particularly Liam’s Air as well, which I’m sure we’re going to touch on today to the céiles, piano ,Bac, concert pianists and Beethoven that infuse all of the stories throughout the book.

It very much reflects your life in music. So can you tell us a little bit about your life in music to get us started?

Cathal Dunne: My life is music. And the interesting thing is thankfully I like all styles of music. Literally anything you throw at me, I appreciate and I try and find the art. But I was thinking of this alot a few days now, sort of getting ready to do a little talk in the library on the 23rd of August in Cork.

My first mentor was definitely my first teacher, Benny Kyla. I went to the model school in Cork. We all did. My parents wanted us to learn Irish pretty well, and she taught us all these marvelous, simple little Irish songs. One of them being Báidín Fheilimí, remember- ” Báidín Fheilimí d’imigh go Gabhla…”.

And she’d ask us, I remember like to try and imagine what was happening and we’d been learning these in Irish and then I go into about third and fourth and fifth class still in model school. And we had these marvelous teachers Risteárd Ó Murchú, Mossie Dunnigan . And they were all like, not too far from the 1916 even.

I believe Mossy Dunnigan actually fought in the rebellion. He was the headmaster. They were teaching us all these marvelous myths about Cú Chulainn and tuath dunna and the Fir Bolg and Queen Maebh. And apparently it was all an Irish, you know? And I’d go home and I’d relate the stories excitedly back to my parents in English.

And that sort of, I believe, started or created a huge imagination thing for me. And then I went into secondary school and I hated it. Because we were all kicked and shoved and beaten and whacked. The usual, you know, the usual story of the old days. And it was like, who’s gonna get beaten up today? Am I gonna get beaten up today?

And I just…, it just all a blur. But what saved me though was after school, about three o’clock I’d go to the Savoy or the Pav or the Capital or the Lee Cinema and I’d watch a movie. And sometimes I’d come in halfway through, but that didn’t matter. But it’s the beautiful themes of the movies, the music that was played all the way through.

You see these were the days, like just television had just arrived. There was RTE one, there wasn’t RTE two. And so that was the only access to music I had. And then my first job was a messenger boy for Ms. Walsh down the street on the back Douglas Road, and I’d be delivering messages.

But the reason I got the job was I desperately wanted to buy a transistor radio and it was a small little thing, maybe nine inches, 10 inches wide. And brown, I can still smell the leather and, I would listen every night, like loads of other teenagers to radio Luxembourg. It was a pirate radio station.

Do you remember that?

Patrick Kiely: My parents do.

Cathal Dunne: Yeah. Outside the international waters or whatever. And they would beam in the latest pop music and rock music and blues music from America. And I’d be glued to it every night. Like so many other people under the curtain. We had no earphones. And interestingly, it would finish with a song called, at the end of the Day, it wasn’t a hymn, but man, it was gorgeous. And that was it. Music was a huge part of me and if anybody asked me back then, like in 50 years down the road, I’d write a book, a historical love story. I would say they’re mad, but those little seeds were there.

And the imagination of the movie. And when I was writing the book I was sort of writing a screenplay more than a book, you know? And I could sort of see and hope that maybe someday somebody might take it in a miniseries. ’cause I was doing little blocks, bits and pieces.

You know, the famine in Ireland and then the deportation to Australia and music in the book, it breaks down all the cultural barriers that we have from prisoner to guard from white man in Australia to Aboriginee in Australia, you know, their music. And Liam, our hero, was fascinated by the didgeridoo, you know, of the Aborigines. And he got into trying to learn how to play that and how to learn the aboriginal language and the interplay between the tin whistle and the  didgeridoo .

And of course, as going back he heard all this classical music for the first time ever going over on the convict ship, and I simply incorporated all the little bits of music I possibly could into the book because I sort of felt I knew what I was talking about.

Patrick Kiely: Write what you know.

Cathal Dunne: Yeah.

Patrick Kiely: For sure. And when you mentioned radio Luxembourg and how that was a formative experience. You spent time in… you did your degree in UCC’s Department of Music as it was then as well, and you were exposed to Seán Ó Riada the great composer of traditional Irish pieces. So how did that inform your appreciation of music then that kind of more classical training, shall we say?

Cathal Dunne: Interestingly,  Seán Ó Riada was another man, another teacher, when we went up to college. I didn’t know of his huge fame and all he had accomplished with Ceoltóirí Chualann. But it was sadly after he died at 41, that I started understanding and learning and appreciating traditional music as it should be through my great friend Seán O’ Shea

Sean was the lead singer, if you like, for  Ceoltóirí Chualann. And when… he was very much in demand as a singer, entertainer. And when Poor Sean died,  Seán O’ Shea asked me would I be his accompanist?

I had made a little bit of a name playing around Cork and Blackrock Castle and all these places playing, you know, doing the Lounge Act, you know, as the wonderful wafts of these gourmet food are passing by me and I i’m going to fish and chips on the way home, you know, but Sean O’Shea, I had to learn how to accompany him with great songs like Carig Fergus, so, so many wonderful tunes. And ultimately he asked me to arrange an LP for him. Getting the right feel for traditional music. And it was  Seán O’ Shea more than Sean O’ Riada got me into my appreciation of Irish music.

Patrick Kiely: How did, I suppose Irish music interplay with the pop music that you would’ve listened to on your transistor radio then as well? Was there an interplay other than the fact that there were two musical genres that you were very proficient in?

Cathal Dunne: As far as I saw it, there was no interplay. Okay. It was one scene when I played the piano and sing a pop song. And the other, when I accompany  Seán O’ Shea…

Patrick Kiely: okay.

Cathal Dunne: …on a gorgeous old air. I didn’t see the two until the Irish people, like myself, saw the beauty of the Irish songs as Seán Ó Riada’s legacy took hold around the country.

Sure. With the chieftains and all those wonderful traditional musicians, not changing traditional music, but enhancing it with their own style, and I just appreciated it more and more. And I’m glad there’s some traditional elements in the book for example, Liam and Máire and My Heroes.

And they meet at an Irish wake sorry, an American wake or a living wake. Which as you probably know, is a couple, they somehow got the money to get out of Ireland in the 1800’s, during the famine. Their parents throw at a party for them knowing they’ll never see them again. Thus the living wake.

And Liam is a masterful tin whistle player and a brilliant horse trainer. And his dad asks him to play something appropriate at the wake, which he does, and that catches, he catches the eye when he is playing it. His eyes closed, of course, catches the eye of Máire, who used to have a big crush on him in the old days when they were teenagers.

She’s gone off to the big house in Dublin to work for landlords up in Dublin in their townhouse. And the courtship started. And this song, it weaves its way all the way through the book. And there’s a dramatic conclusion at the end. It becomes known in the family as Liam’s Air. And I thought to myself, well, again, remembering all my days and the Pav and the Lee and the Capital and Savoy with these massive epic theme songs, I thought if it ever happened that there’d be a movie or a miniseries made out of it.

Why don’t I try and write Liam’s Air as such?

So I did and I brought in the orchestra. I’m happy with the result. And it’s sort of a little homage to Seán Ó Riada and Sean O’Shea because without them I wouldn’t have had the understanding of the richness and the chordal changes and the mood of tune.

Patrick Kiely: And you call out that in the book as well the ornamentation and the grace notes and the sense of spontaneity perhaps that comes from Irish music that isn’t always permitted in more rigid musical genres, shall we say?

Cathal Dunne: Exactly the technique, if you listen to a good player in any, be it squeeze box, fiddle player, tin whistle, whatever.

Man, it is incredibly complex and it’s jazz-like in its sort of spontaneity. Sure. And it’s only when you, when I try to play a reel at the speed of, say, a river dance reel, that you really appreciate the wonderful depth and music ability of it all and I was in America in 1986 when Riverdance came out.

I knew Billy Whelan a little bit in Ireland. He arranged one or two of my records when I was in Ireland living in Dublin. But I don’t think people in Ireland have any appreciation of the lift he gave to the Irish psyche. I mean, I left in 1980’s, in 1983 and 350,000 other people, young people who did as well.

Yeah, Ireland was on its knees. And 10 years later, sort of, give or take, we have this incredible Irish River dance. And it shows the world, the absolute subtleties, the wonderful Irish music and the Irish dancing. That lifts the psyche of Ireland. As did U2. I mean, man and man, we have one of the world’s rock bands and they’re Irish.

We have one of the biggest shows in Broadway and it’s Irish. That was a huge. Psychic plus to the Irish, and I’m here in America sort of seeing all this, you know? And beaming away. I worked in Sweden for one month every year for about 14 years. When I was starting, I was about 17 to about whatever, 20, 30, whatever, and it was the time of Abba.

And again, a small country like Sweden, insular. Just like Ireland. With a little, like we, well of course we had a huge inferior complex due to our history, but again, I could see how they were so, so proud of them representing Sweden in such a marvelous way on the world stage. So, music, man, as I said to me, music is everything.

Patrick Kiely: That opens up a, the thread we need to pull on about 1979. And you becoming Ireland’s happy man. Oh yeah. Your experience with your Eurovision as well indeed. But you had already, you’d already sang with show bands. You released your own singles at that point as well. But like, what was your experience of your Eurovision like.

Was it a different…. from your perspective, I suppose it’s much more overproduced or it’s much more produced now? Oh yeah. What was it like in 1979 and what was it like particularly in Jerusalem in 1979 with everything that was happening in the region at that point?

Cathal Dunne: Well, first of all, with everything that was happening in the region at that time it was a fascinating weekend because in Camp David, in American, in Washington, president Sadat, Carter and Sadat and Begin were signing the Camp David Peace Treaty Accord with Egypt. So finally Israel and Egypt were at peace and there was a massive buzz in Jerusalem when I was there.

And interestingly and brilliantly for Israel, they had a song called Hallelujah. How could that Lose?

Patrick Kiely: Yeah.

And it didn’t.

Cathal Dunne: It did actually, deservedly it was the winning song that year. It was very good. But on the… getting away from that then, I mean, we were in our little shallow little contest called the Eurovision with all this historical stuff taking place. But at the time, once again, for all the wannabes like me in all the countries of Europe, there was really no way to get yourself a recording contract.

Really nothing. Except when your country’s run or leg of the song contest and, I was giving piano lessons in Dublin. I was living in Monkstown. I left Cork in 1977 and started off giving piano lessons, going from house to house for £2 every half an hour. And my rent in Monkstown was £45 a month, and some months I was sweating, that I wouldn’t make the… when Mrs. Stretch would call for her money. And so Saturday before, I’m giving piano lessons and we had a little band, nothing like the heyday of the show bands. We were just driving around smaller the crowds every night. Who the hell was Cathal and Stateside or whatever?

I go to the song contest and I win the song contest. And, you know, at the time as I said, one station in all the countries in Europe and whoever wins that goes forward to the Eurovision, you are an overnight name. And it was absolutely massive. I mean, so powerful. Interestingly the first person that gave me a call when we were in the green room, you are only allowed invite one person to the song contest. And I gave my dad an awful hard time, you know, because dad, God rest him ,Gerard, he was an academic and I was the absolute opposite to that. And I broke his heart at every stage. So to try and make it up in a small way, I asked dad would he come with me.

And when I won, and all the razzmatazz and the excitement of it, you could see dad’s like, i’m so…. disappointment whenever he looked at me, lifting. And that was bigger than winning the song contest. And then and being pulled back and forth by various RTE people, they pull me away and they say, you’ve got a phone call. And in fairness, it was Jack Lynch and I hardly knew Jack Lynch, you know? I mean, I met him a few times, but not in any sort of personal way, really. Sure. I mean, we were younger, you know? Yeah. But it was, he’s, he got on the phone and said, hello, Cathal, in Irish, and Maureen and I are delighted that you won the song contest and then in English, I never thought you could sing like that boy in his great Cork accent. And I could see the class, first of all, of Jack Lynch. And secondly, the humor. And I could see why everybody loved him, you know?

But most everybody, anyway.

Patrick Kiely: No, for sure.

Cathal Dunne: Until I got to America.

Patrick Kiely: Well, yeah, indeed. And that’s a thread we’ll pull on in a little while as well. I think we talk about your career in America and the interplay with the burgeoning troubles, unfortunately. In terms of… With the Eurovision, I suppose, as you said, you get the bump in profile and you sold a prodigious amount of records of Happy Man after that as well.

So what informed your decision then in 1983 to move to America? What was your plan then?

Cathal Dunne: My plan in 1983, I had two choices, Patrick. Immigrate or go back to two pounds every half an hour giving the piano lessons.

Patrick Kiely: Okay.

Cathal Dunne: And it was an easy choice.

Patrick Kiely: Fair.

Cathal Dunne: I knew I had to go. I had a lovely girlfriend in Dublin and it was sort of heartbreaking to think that I might have to go and all that, you know, I didn’t know how to go.

I mean, okay, I gotta go to America, big deal. And interestingly, I don’t have a single cousin in America, probably due to the fact that most of my dad’s from Waterford City and mom was from Cork City and all that. All their, you know… they never had to immigrate because they all got jobs. And thankfully they were all smart.

But I was in Dublin and I was the musical director of what they call the Cabinteely singers. It was a pop choir in Dublin and I used to beat the musical director of the Monfort Singers in Cork and Michael Casey, who was second in Command of Music and RTE was their original musical director.

And then when he went to Dublin, he became Cabinteely director. And so when I got to Dublin my first call was to Michael and we had lunch in the canteen of RTE. And he said, would you take over the Cabinteely Singers for me? Absolutely swamped with work . And the big thing was it was £10 on a Tuesday night .

And so I had to go for the audition.

And it was tough, but thankfully I got it. And I instantly had £10 every Tuesday night. But more importantly, I had 40 friends in Dublin, you know, I was on my own again.

So anyway Valerie Quirk, who’s a fabulous lady, still is, thankfully, and her husband Noel she was the musical director, if you like, at the time, invited me at that time in 1983 to a party and I was absolutely depressed.

I didn’t wanna go anywhere. But she says he’s quite a swashbuckling type of, you know, James Bond type of fella, and he lives in a semi detached castle in Killiney. And I’m going, wow, that’s interesting, isn’t it? And so I decided to go and sure enough, we arrived at his huge semi-detached castle with turrets and concrete decks going out to the water.

Absolutely gorgeous. And inevitably. I’m asked to play the piano, and this guy, Tom Devlin comes over and says what are your plans? And I said, well, I’ve got no plans. Really, everything is dead. Ballrooms are gone. The disco is king. I’m going to go to America. And he was okay. And about two weeks later, I get a call from Tom.

He’s in Michigan. His brother has had just had a heart attack. And he’s suddenly seeing the potential of the golf club as a dining place, which was a very public or very nothing golf course, to be honest. But he thought it was marvelous, and he’s knocking walls and he’s painting and he was very, again, very charismatic. The people are drawing in from, for him, not for the food or anything. And he says, I want you to come over and play. And I, he said, when? I said yesterday, and I said, oh. So, that is how I came to America on the condition that he would try and get me some other work because I had no connections at all, and he could sell sand to the Arabs, you know?

Okay. That’s how I got there. And stayed there for a couple of months. He would drive me every Sunday, fair play to him. We went to Kalamazoo, Toledo, Detroit. And finally we got to Chicago. And we went into an Irish American bar and there was a guy I didn’t know but became a good friend of mine from Clare, George Casey. He’s a very well known comedian over here. He recognized me from some of the pictures from Eurovision or something.

And he said, this is not the place for you. Go out to the south side, talk to a fellow called Tom Fox. And I’m sure he’ll book/ hire you. Off, we go out and like going from the north side of Chicago to the south side of Chicago is like going from Dublin to Drogheda. You know? It’s huge. Yeah. And packed with traffic and all that stuff. Well, we get there and talk to Tom and Tom Devlin gives him his spiel about me, da da, Eurovision, get him now before he becomes a huge star, blah, blah, blah, you know?

And he pulls a piano outta the closet or something and throws me on the piano. I do a few tunes and he hires me and he hires… this is approximately October and he hires me for January, February of the following year. I come home I know the game is up in Ireland. Tell the band, break up.

Sadly sell all the equipment and most awful of all was leaving my girlfriend and I come back, I come over to America and that’s why I came. And it’s the greatest country in the world. It’s been very good to me. When I landed in JFK, I couldn’t believe like this is 83 now. This is a long time ago.

I couldn’t believe the positivity of it all. And have a nice day, sir, and all this and ultimately it’s five words. What can I do for you? That’s America. How can I help? What can I do for you? And I love that, you know?

Patrick Kiely: Is America still like that, do you think?

Cathal Dunne: Yes. The heart. The heart of the people is still there.

Yes. It’s very divided now, unfortunately. And we’re hoping that it’ll get better, but I have great friends, Republicans and Democrats, and if they’re Republicans, we just don’t talk politics because we’ll fight.

Patrick Kiely: And in our case we’ll talk a little bit more about about your book now.

So, coming back to Athenry, I mean, the famine is vividly described in great detail in the book, and I know that you’ve used another Cork Creative guest, a recent Cork Creative guest, Michelle O’Mahony was an advisor for you in providing some of that historical detail.

Can you describe how that process worked and how the famine drove the narrative in the book?

Cathal Dunne: Well, first of all I had written the book before I met Michelle, and the book has been available in America for the last three years and basically on Amazon. And I sell it at my shows. That’s about it.

Nothing dramatic or crazy.

 I knew that I wanted to get it published. And the reaction from the book, from people was saying, like, it was very positive all the time. I even… one time, I remember a fellow last year in Florida, he comes up to me and he says, Cathal, he says, I wanna tell you something.

He says, last year I bought your book. He said, now look, in fairness, he says it was a charity buy. And I burst out and yeah, he said, yeah. He said, I was just buying it just to support you, you know? CDs are gone . B ut he said, I loved it. I really loved it. And so I am confident that it needs to get out to a bigger market.

Patrick Kiely: Sure.

Cathal Dunne: And I know the drill. You’ve gotta get, first of all, you gotta get a literary agent interested in the book. And she would then go to a publisher. She has the credibility to have the publishers have a look at it, and that’s how it works.

And 47 times I’ve been turned down by literary producers in New York, in New Orleans, in Los Angeles and Chicago. And the last time I was in Ireland I decided I would try the Irish publishers. And just simply, you know, posted it to them and said, hello have a look at this please. And amazingly,

Mercier Press, Dee Collins, God bless her, contacted me there a few months ago and said, we’d be happy to publish your book. We’ve, we like it. We’ve read it but, we want you to have a lady called Michelle O’Mahony talk to you. And there are a few historical inaccuracies in the book and she is an expert in it, and we would appreciate if you and her would liaise together.

And three or four weeks ago on whatsApp, we were on the phone for six hours a day. Intense. She’s brilliant as you know. And we went through every page, sometimes like word by word, and she just didn’t want the literary snipers, if you like, to pick it apart when it’s being reviewed. She wanted to have it authentically correct. And who… what better girl than Michelle. And she did a fantastic job. And the book is way better from her input. And it was a brilliant move on Mercier Press, I have to say. And it’s given me real confidence with them moving forward.

Patrick Kiely: Brilliant. Liam, the hero of the story, he emerges from his transportation to Australia, to quote during the book now, a more self-confident and worldly wise young man, because of his encounter with people on the boat who teach him about music and teach him how to read and write.

Cathal Dunne: Yeah.

Patrick Kiely: Not to maybe overstretch this perhaps, but would that indicate a certain advocacy and a belief on your part in the using imprisonment as a means of self-improvement in education rather than strictly for punishment and retribution.

Cathal Dunne: Well, I agree with any educational program that’s available to a prisoner in the book’s case or in Liam’s case. It is true that in the latter part of the famine years, the British people rose up in outrage of the conditions of convicts shipping to Australia. Remember, like Patrick, there was from about 1788 to about 1888, like 180,000 people shipped over, men and women. Like mostly men, for the new… as labour and some as breeders, unfortunately, put it that way for women. For the new British colony, the hardest part of my research for the book was actually convict ships. There’s very little available, you know, for sure.

I’m reading and reading. Like this germ of an idea, came along about seven or eight years ago to me. I’d written a book, my first book, about 10-13 years ago. It was a sort of a semi autobiographical thing about me and the show bands in Ireland, it was called “Put your Rosary beads away, Ma”.

And it sold very well because I was busier than I am now at shows, you know? In America.

One day when I was researching, I was on what they call the Trove website. It’s the Western Australia’s website for information mostly about aboriginals, et cetera, and their spirituality, you know?

But I came across a little unknown fact that there was a micro film in the Western National Library of Perth of an actual convict who went over on the convict ships, one of them, and he wrote a daily journal and I said, I’ve got to get my hands on that. And so, I called them and they said, oh, sir, it’s on a micro film. We don’t have it on print and it would be very expensive, blah, blah, blah. And I said, look, I read your mission statement and it said, this library is to advance the positivity and the benefits and the beauty and know the spirituality of aboriginal people.

And I said, well, I said, my hero is a guy called Kumba. And he plays a huge role in the book. And he actually, I won’t spoil it for people who might read it, but… and they said, well, let it with me. And about a week later they came back and said, I’ve talked to my superior and he’ll do it -$100.

I said fantastic. Called him, give him my card. And two weeks later I get this old PDF file of a seipia faded journal, about 130 pages, and I had the name of the ship, the weather, the conditions, the food, the actual convicts mixed with women who were going over to meet their husbands who had served their sentences, et cetera.

And the fact that they were, had teachers on the way over to teach the convicts how to read and write. Liam was illiterate. He had a spattering of English and, together with an actual convict, an English man who he befriended, gave them as we call called them in the old days, as a grind in reading and writing.

Do you remember that word?

Patrick Kiely: I was a victim of a few grinds back in the day to get through secondary school.

Cathal Dunne: My name was Cathal “Grind” Dunne, you know, but, he was very instrumental, fictitiously, in teaching Liam how to read and write. And it was there on board at night when things got a little bit more relaxed, as they got into the journey, that he heard the classical music for the first time and he was held in jail for three years in an English dock-side situation where he became virtually an engineer. So, by the time he got to Australia, he was virtually an intellectual, you know?

Patrick Kiely: Yeah. A man of many skills at that point, for sure.

Cathal Dunne: Absolutely.

Patrick Kiely: And the Trove website that you referenced there, Cathal, that’s the site that you then used for the research that you did into Aboriginal culture and music that informed the character then within the Kumba, the Aboriginal man who befriends and becomes effectively a soulmate of Liam throughout his journeys.

Cathal Dunne: Yeah.

Patrick Kiely: Okay. Excellent.

So the, at the end of the… or I don’t want to issue spoilers, but the movement to America in the book signifies the new beginning and the pursuit of true freedom, I suppose would be fair to say based on the narrative of the book and my reading of it. I suppose, how does that decision resonate for you with the historical reality of the Irish diaspora and the hope of many immigrants carried for a better life when they went to the US?

Is it that…. did America come to symbolise that pure freedom in the eighties and before that, do you think?

Cathal Dunne: Well, in the context of the book he meets American people and they’re all, like I said earlier, very positive. Seem to be empathetic and compassionate. Thought of them talented.

In the Gold Fields of Bathhurst near Sydney, he befriends, as you’ve probably read, several people, one of them being pretty, pretty intelligent Irish American, and he persuades him to come over and start a stud farm in Sacramento. His intent is to get to Sacramento and send for Máire and Tomás.

But things unravel and get a bit complicated and change the plan.

Patrick Kiely: Well, that, that’s well last in narrative arc.

Cathal Dunne: Yeah. Yeah.

Patrick Kiely: We won’t give too much away. Yeah.

Speaking of, just briefly about another character as well, that you have this character, Henry Harry, or sorry, Harry Kitchener.

Cathal Dunne: Oh yeah.

Patrick Kiely: I think it would be safe to say a neurodivergent character.

Cathal Dunne: Yeah. Yeah.

Patrick Kiely: In that he has that strange genius and which is unlocked via piano and his relationship with Tomás which is crucial to his progress. Is there a particular inspiration that you had for Harry’s character and what research did you undertake to kind of unpick Harry’s perspective within the book?

Cathal Dunne: Yeah. Again, when we were in secondary school I had a great friend in Cork called Jimmy Ramsell. And we would go play piano and dance and sing a little bit at a school for Down syndrome kids at the time. And you sort of, you learn a lot very quickly and you learn how obsessed they are with music.

And music is music as you know. And it just occurred to me in the book, wouldn’t it be an interesting subplot, really if Máire, who has nothing in… literally nothing, to have a perfect child. And Elizabeth, the landlord’s wife who has everything, overtly, have a child with special needs.

And there is no terms like that mentioned in the book, but essentially Harry has autism and he’s virtually a savant. And I thought, would it be an interesting counter play? And again, bring in the music once again because I know what I’m talking about when I’m talking about music to a certain degree.

Patrick Kiely: Sure. And, it’s a very modest way of putting it.

Cathal Dunne: Ah, no it was interesting and if I ever write a sequel, I have another nice idea about Harry and Tomás being together.

Patrick Kiely: Okay. And within this book and the sequels to come, I mean, the book is a very lively pace and it presents multiple narrative viewpoints throughout. Liam, Máire being the principal heroes.

I mean, the book, as you said, and you’ve called it out already, it reads to an extent like a screenplay. So what are your hopes for the book in the future? What would you like to see it be adapted into?

Cathal Dunne: Kathleen and I are crazy about Outlander. Have you heard, have you seen that?

Patrick Kiely: Yes, indeed.

Cathal Dunne: It’s probably a bit light for your tastes, but to cut a long story short it’s set in 1766 in America or sorry, Scotland initially.

She goes through stone. She’s a nurse during the Second World War in Scotland, and she goes back in time and falls in love….

Patrick Kiely: Catriona Balfe -the Irish actress.

Cathal Dunne: Yeah, she’s gorgeous and we sit there. Kathleen is in love with Jamie. I’m in love with Claire, and we are all very happy and we love it.

So I see it as something along those lines.

Patrick Kiely: Okay. So you’ve already identified a potential leading lady for the the role of Máire in Caitriona Balfe?

Cathal Dunne: No, actually, no. No.

I hate to say at this point, Caitriona could perhaps be the mother maybe, Máire or Elizabeth, you know?

Patrick Kiely: Fair enough.

Cathal Dunne: Not because, I mean, she’s wonderful and gorgeous.

Patrick Kiely: No, that series has run for many seasons. And again, due to the globe trotting nature of Athenry as well, it has that similar potential. No doubt. Okay.

Yeah.

So ba back to the book itself. It’s available from Mercier Press from the 26th of August this year, 2025.

Great timing as well in that it marks the 80th anniversary of Mercier Press and the 180th anniversary of the famine. Very prescient timing indeed. So, could you give us an idea of what kind of events will be structured around that in August when you visit Cork, later in August this year to support the book.

Cathal Dunne: The only one that is set in stone at the moment is the 23rd of August, Saturday at four o’clock at the City Library. We have the Heritage Week in Cork, and thanks to a friend of mine in Cork called Jim Williamson, he organised for me to be part of this book week. And to give a book talk. And then thankfully soon after that I get this lovely email from Mercier Press, so it very serendipitously, if that’s the word, came along and it all joined together. So everybody is welcome to come along and hopefully we can go for drink afterwards. Anybody who’s interested, and I’ll be talking about… reading some little bits from the book.

Playing Liam’s Air. Playing my new song that’s I’ve just written about Cork, “Cork my home” and probably Happy Man and maybe one or two more.

Patrick Kiely: Great.

Cathal Dunne: I hope to do a few radio interviews while I’m there. Michelle is helping me promote it among reviewers and whatever we can get. And the hardest part, like the easy part, even though it wasn’t easy, was writing the book. The hardest part is to promote it because I, I thought music was hard to, you know, to get yourself out there.

Man, everybody and his mother has written a book.

It’s cracked.

Patrick Kiely: Yeah. It’s, there’s a lot of noise. Oh yeah. And it’s just having the signal to break through. But I have no doubt it’ll be successful. And you have Michelle in your corner too, so it’s, we have high hopes, and of course we’d post any links to all of these events in the podcast show notes as well, so people can view those and also see the link to the book as well.

We ask this of everyone Cathal to close and it’s the advice, what wisdom you’d like to impart to listeners, what advice you would give to those who are exploring the possibility of writing historical fiction or writing a book of their own. What advice would you give them based on the process that you followed for your first book, your semi-autographical book, and also now for Anthenry,

Cathal Dunne: Very simple. First of all, don’t depend on it to make money. Alright? None of us are John Grisham, you know? So that’s the first thing. Don’t do it for money. Secondly, if I can write one, anybody can write one.

How I wrote it was, my Kathleen, my wife of, American wife of 36 years, she’s a voracious reader. And essentially I started writing this. I was driving 30, 40,000 miles a year in my prime there about 10 years ago. That’s a lot of driving, and a lot of thinking, you know, and I can think of plots and I’m researching and then trying to put it into, as I said into how I see it on stage, whatever screen. Sure. And I would write 20, 30 pages and I’d come home after a long week and she’d read it and she’d say, you need to extend this character. This is a bit hokey. S he was marvelous. And then she would, in essence, polish it up.

I had another friend who is in Florida, Judy. She is a retired librarian / creative writing teacher, and we would send the 20 pages to Judy. And Judy would do her thing on the 20 pages, and that’s how the process for me. So as I said, first, number one, don’t expect to make money. Number two, if you have some good friends, anybody can write a book, provided your ego will allow you to send it out and take ferocious criticism and panning and everything. And… but at the other end, have a better book.

Patrick Kiely: For sure.

Cathal Dunne: If you have friends and you have some story, everybody has a story, you know, or it could have been a grandparent or something that you can write about.

T hat’s the easy part. As I said, the hard part is to get it out there. I was lucky for years and years I was on the stage and I could talk about my book and so I sold a good feel that way.

Patrick Kiely: And now you’re going to be on a stage in Cork very shortly and you’ll have an opportunity to speak about the book again.

Cathal Dunne: Yes.

Patrick Kiely: Excellent stuff. It all comes back around and again, and it’s nice to say Cork is centered to it once more. And you’ve always been a great advocate for the city.

Cathal Dunne: Well, I’m proud to be a Cork man.

Patrick Kiely: “Everyone is proud” from people of Cork. That’s true. That’s true. No. And justifiably so.

For sure. Thank you very much Cathal, for taking the time to join us. I appreciate you taking time out of your day in Pittsburgh to join us on Cork Creative and to speak about your book and your process and your phenomenal career in music. It’s great to hear it and to hear that historical context too for everything from the seventies and the eighties and everything in between.

It’s been a, it’s been a fantastic podcast episode and thank you for taking the time.

Cathal Dunne: You are absolutely welcome. I just feel very lucky that I was able, I didn’t set the world on fire musically, but I was able to make a living at what I love doing.

Patrick Kiely: That’s all any of us can aspire to do in the grand scheme of things.

No, indeed. Thank you very much for your time, Cathal, and the very best of luck with the book launch on the 26th

Cathal Dunne: And good luck with your podcast.

Thank you very much.