AS A founding member of famed folk act De Dannan and as a solo star, Dolores Keane is one of Ireland’s best-loved singers.
The Co Galway native’s distinctive soulful voice has seen her dubbed `the queen of the soul of Ireland’ by Nanci Griffith.
Many will know Dolores for her superb renditions of Paul Brady song The Island and Dougie McLean classic Caledonia – both of which featured on the hugely successful A Woman’s Heart album in 1992.
The singer, a mother-of-two, has battled and beaten both alcoholism and a breast cancer diagnosis and is now touring with her brother Sean – another successful folk star – for the first time in 30 years.
Speaking from her home in Caherlistrane, Co Galway, Dolores says she is loving being on stage again after a tumultuous few years.
“It’s been great to get out there again and to meet people. It’s a special thing,” she says. “When I got cancer I was off the road for two years or so. Thanks be to God that I got the all-clear last year, although I still have to go in for check-ups and all the rest.”
She says getting diagnosed with cancer was a huge shock, especially as there was no history of the disease in her family.
“I just noticed a lump in my breast and I asked a friend of mine and that was that. Maybe it was better that there was no history, because if you know it’s in the family then you can expect the worst. I hadn’t a clue.
“I’m a good patient and I don’t moan and I do whatever people tell me to do. I take it all in my stride; I think that’s the only way to be.”
She says the doctors who treated her were over the moon when she got back performing live again.
“They were delighted. They were all at the gigs,” she laughs. “It was nerve-wracking doing gigs again but then I’d get nervous before any gig. Because of the treatment I was getting, it strips you of your immune system and so some arthritis has set in now. That’s been a bit of a bugger, but I’m not going to give into that either.”
She’s a remarkable woman and her story was put on the small screen last year, when Liam McGrath’s documentary A Storm in the Heart was shown on RTE.
She says she adheres to the dictum “a problem shared is a problem halved” and was happy to go public on her addiction and her battles with depression and cancer.
“It did affect me when I watched it but I was delighted that I did it. The message that I wanted to get across to people is that it’s important to talk about things and not to sit at home and say 'Oh, it’s nothing’. Things are usually never as bad as people envisage in their own minds.”
Dolores and Sean grew up in a musical family and after taking in countless sean-nós sessions throughout their youth they both started making music themselves.
“We just grew up with music. Nobody got us into it or sat us down and said 'Play your scales’ and nobody taught us how to play instruments. The instruments were just there,” she says.
Now she and Sean and their band are touring again and play a host of northern dates, starting in Newry on Wednesday.
“A promoter just said to us that it would be a good idea to do stuff together and it’s worked out really well,” she says of the tour with her brother. The pair used to be in the band Reel Union together.
“We hadn’t played or sung together in 33 years or something. We did the odd Keane family gig in that time, but it was very seldom. I was always busy doing my own stuff. We used to do marathon tours in the States and stuff and Sean lived with me in London when I was there. We’re really enjoying it. I always loved the gigs in the north and I’m really looking forward to these gigs.”
After this tour, Dolores is hoping to organise a run of solo dates and hopes to tour the US next year.
“Music has got me all over the world and it’s been a fabulous experience. We’ve been to America, China, Hong Kong, Bermuda, Australia, New Zealand and all over Europe. Getting paid always seemed like a bonus.”
Are there any songs she never tires of singing?
“I love The Island and Galway Bay and Caledonia and Never Be The Sun. Caledonia is a song people always ask for; I can’t not do that one. But as soon as I introduce it, people sing it back to me so it’s an easy gig for me,” she laughs.
She says she has worked with some great acts over the years, among them Nanci Griffith, Emmylou Harris and Planxty.
“It’s lovely to work people like that. They’re all so talented and so unassuming. I got to go to Nashville and met the Everly Brothers [Don and Phil]. I actually got the brothers talking after they hadn’t spoken in years. We were in a place called The Hut and I was sitting down with the two of them and I didn’t know anything at all about the rift between them.
“So I was saying, 'That’s a fabulous song –didn’t you two used to sing that?’ They said, 'Oh, we did’ and the next thing the two of them started talking.
“Then I went off and said to [musician and film-maker] Philip King, 'The lads are great craic, aren’t they?’ And he said 'Who?’ And I said 'The Everly Brothers. They’re out there telling me stories...’ and Philip said 'Do you mean they’re talking to each other?!’ So I got them talking again, but just through ignorance,” she laughs.
:: Dolores & Sean Keane play the Canal Court in Newry on Wednesday, the Market Place Theatre Armagh on Thursday, the Glenavon House Hotel in Cookstown on Friday, the Strule Arts Centre in Omagh on Thursday September 24 and the Millennium Forum in Derry on Friday September 25.
