Two Hearts Beating As One

As many an Irish folk fan has learnt down through the decades, having one legendary musician singing up close and personal is always a thrill, but when you put two of these icons together…

Well, that’s when the sparks, and the banter, and the music just fly.

Two stalwarts of the Irish music scene, Donal Lunny and Mick Hanly would have bumped into one another many a time over the decades, and shared many a stage.

When Christy Moore stepped away from Moving Hearts, the Irish-World music supergroup formed by Lunny and a few friends back in the late 1980s, Mick Hanly took over frontman duties.

Lunny had produced two of Hanly’s solo albums in the 1970s – Kiss In The Morning Early and As I Went Over Blackwater – and, as so often happens in the Irish music scene, their paths crossed again and again over the coming years.

That they should team up again for Hanly’s recent album, Homeland, sparked a tour, which has, unsurprisingly, been packin’ ‘em in across the country.

This is going to be a very special gig. Especially given just how up close and personal The Whale likes to be…