With
great sadness and shock we have learnt of the death of Rich McMahon on Monday
18 May, a well-known and much loved songwriter and performer from the Irish
community of the West Midlands. Born in Coventry, raised in Wicklow but in
recent years an adoptive son of Birmingham, Rich was a talented and vibrant performer
who was lead singer of The Father Teds for some years before starting a solo
career which was bringing him wide acclaim both locally and internationally.
Rich died just days after playing a successful gig at the
Hare and Hounds pub in Kings Heath and was due to
play a gig in Nuneaton with
Sean Cannon of the Dubliners in early July. His death also comes just
weeks after the release of his second solo album, Songs of Exile, Love & Dissent, produced by award winning producer Gerry Diver, whose credits include
Sam Lee, Lisa Knapp, Christy Moore and Shane MacGowan.
I first saw Rich McMahon playing at the Kitchen Garden
Café in Kings Heath in 2013 and wrote about his gig in my April article that
year. What interested me most about Rich McMahon that night was that this was
much more than a pub gig by an Irish folk singer. McMahon’s show that night was
called ‘The Imagined Nation: Inventing
Ireland Through Words, Images and Songs'. Through a sequence of stories and
songs with images and words projected on a screen behind him, he told a story
of the Irish diaspora which struck a chord for many of us who belong to the
second, third, even fourth generations of Irish migration to the UK in that
celebrated Year of The Gathering. Nothing against anyone out there who ‘gigs’,
but this was more of a social history through story and performing art and
coming shortly after I started these regular articles about Irish diaspora and
identity in The Harp, it had a strong resonance.
But neither was Rich McMahon high-brow or academic. His
performances were musically raw and simple, in the long tradition of Irish folk
singing but with contemporary themes and new perspectives. He could get the
intimate audience of a back-street bar clapping and stomping and delivered his
music with a broad smile and a cheeky glint in the eye. Just like Paul Murphy
whom I wrote about last month, McMahon was another contender for our local
title of ‘seanchai’ (Celtic storyteller).
Another place where I had the pleasure of watching Rich
McMahon enchant an audience was at Moseley Day Centre where social worker Mick
Lynch invited him to play for and work with people with learning disability on
such a frequent basis and with such impact that, according to Mick, Friday
became known to the service users as ‘Rich Day’. Indeed, here was a man who was
truly rich by name and rich by nature – rich I mean in generosity, warmth and
inspiration.
I am sad that I will never get to interview Rich McMahon
for this spot in The Harp, as was my intention. Prior to this news of his
death, his wife Maggie had recently sent me a link to one of Rich’s songs on
You Tube called Mansion By The River
which explored the theme of the colonial relationship between the poor tenant
farmers and their protestant landlord who lived in the big mansion. The video
on You Tube features Maggie’s father Bob Matthews wandering poignantly through
the ruins of one of these said buildings back home in Ireland. Once again,
McMahon’s lyrics look deeper than the factual telling of Anglo-Irish history in
contemporary history books and touch upon the memories and emotions of real people
and communities who lived near to or on these big estates of the past and built
long-established relationships with some of these English or even Anglo-Irish landed
gentry. McMahon asks the powerful question, a bit like an old building going to
rack and ruin, has there been a wholesale neglect of those parts of our past
which are most uncomfortable to recall and discuss?
With great sadness we have
to acknowledge never being able to see this beaming face again or hear his passionate
voice and guitar live. But unlike the mansion by the river, my wish is that
McMahon’s rich body of creative work is not forgotten and that we continue to
celebrate and enjoy the artistic legacy left to us by this great West Midlands
seanchai.
