Cathal Hayden

My Love is in Amerikay, Lord MacDonald’s and The Foxhunters

My Love is in Amerikay, Lord MacDonald’s and The Foxhunters are three very fine reels. As with the vast majority of “traditional” tunes we simply do not know who the composers are, but composed they most certainly were. 

The immediate aftermath of the famine left an indelible mark on Ireland, with over a million people dying and more than a million emigrating. A very substantial percentage of those emigrating made their way to North America, and with them travelled their customs, language, music and song. 

The Irish émigrés often stayed together in their various adopted cities, New York, Boston and Chicago, and their music remained strong and intact. A native of Cork, Francis O’Neill made his way across the Atlantic in the 1870s and became a policeman, rising rapidly through the ranks of the Chicago Police Department to become Chief of Police in the early years of the C20th. 

Hugely interested in Irish music, O’Neill collected and wrote down thousands of tunes from the musicians he encountered in and around Chicago and his collections and writings have had a profound bearing on the course of Irish music ever since. The three reels played here are published in his collections.

Biography

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Cathal is a fiddle and banjo player from County Tyrone. This virtuoso will be known to many from his band Four Men And A Dog, one of the most successful Irish bands of all time - their debut album “Barking Mad” is one of the most successful Irish Traditional albums in history. 

Having been immersed in music from a young age, he has received the All-Ireland Champion on both fiddle and banjo many times. Cathal has formed numerous alliances with musicians, including the renowned accordionist Mairtin O’Connor, piano accordion maestro Alan Kelly and Bothy Band piper Paddy Keegan. 

In more recent years the duet with Mairtin O’Connor has taken him across the globe and he has undertaken tours of Japan with the famous O’Domhnaill family, and China, Iceland and the Faroe Islands as guests of the Donal Lunny band. 

In addition to his many musical collaborations, Cathal has arranged scores for theatre productions for both the Lyric Theatre and Grand Opera House. 

After 40 years of playing, Cathal’s contribution to Irish music is immeasurable - he is Ireland’s greatest ambassador for banjo and fiddle playing and continues to thrill audiences across the world with his extraordinary musicianship.