Life's Journey

Life’s Journey is a culmination of all of the journeys and roads which music has taken Don down. It is a record of the stories, poems and melodies that he has carried with him through life.

It contains a lot of his favourite ballads and traditional reels and also four deeply personal self-penned songs dealing with love, longing, family and heartache.

The album flows quite wonderfully with help from the high calibre musicians who contributed to the recording who include Mairtín O’Connor, Seamie O’Dowd, Jim Higgins, Michael Chang and Eugene Killeen.

The album opens with a very different version of John Martyn’s May You Never. Don has sped-up the original and drives it home with great confidence and it’s a great choice for the opening track. The musicianship on the song is of the highest quality but not for one moment does the polished accompaniment ever overshadow his vocals anywhere in the album.

Roll Back The Clouds, originally by Christy Hennessy, is a song about the hardships a struggling musician can face; trying so hard and getting nowhere, a song that reflects Don’s life and career.

Speaking of the track Don said, “It’s a great song and story, which I can relate to, but also, it’s a song anyone could relate to and can put their particular situation in the same context.

Manuela tells the tragic story of the Swiss student Manuela Riedo and is a heart-breaking song, which was written and composed by Eugene Kelly, and is delivered with great dignity by Don.

He has chosen a great mix of folk and ballad songs for the album but it’s in his original songs where we see his true poetic nature and thinking. His original songs are kept very close to his heart, and, Gossip (You’ll Always be My Mother) deals with his love for his mother and his anger at seeing her upset or hurt. Don simply spells out his love for his mother and sings the song beautifully to a softly plucked guitar.

This is the brilliance of his original tracks, they are upfront and straight writings about his real feelings. The Promise of Spring deals with the pain of being away from home and missing loved ones and Summer Holiday is about looking forward to the holidays and the special bond families have when they are together.