About the Author
Conor Murray, his brother Kieran, and Bobby Clancy, March 2001.
A little brief bio about myself: I was born April 4, 1984 in Washington D.C. The family and I moved to Somerset, Massachusetts when I was about eight months old. Quietly slinking through North Elementary School, Somerset Middle School and Somerset High School, I am now near completion of my degree at Bridgewater State College, where I am a Theater Major, idly pursuing my dream of becoming a screen actor. Also, I’m an English Minor. Additionally, I’ve been dabbling in music for years, becoming familiar with the bodhran, as well as violin, piano, spoons, harmonica and kazoo. So a career in writing, acting in films or singing and playing in a band is what I’d love to do more than anything.
My parents’ names are Holly and Tom and my two siblings include older brother Eamon and younger brother Kieran. Eamon, Conor and Kieran - beautiful sounding Gaelic names. As a matter of fact, most of the offspring of my mom’s siblings were blessed with Gaelic names: Shannon, Sean, Keenan, Liam, Kelan, Brenna, Briana, Spencer, Molleigh, Shea and Mairin. My aunt Erin, Gaelic for Ireland, named her children Lauren, Drew and Kirby, as did my Uncle Kevin who named one of his sons Justin, a hero of the family who recently returned home from Iraq.
The purpose of my explaining all this to you is to point out that those names I mentioned are the eighteen grandkids of Buddy and Pat O’Donnell, two of the biggest Clancy Brothers fans in the world, hands down. They, my grandfather specifically, raised my mother and her siblings on the Clancy Brothers during the 1960s and 1970s. My grandfather spread his influence onto my father when my parents were married in 1977. My father, in turn, influenced me, beginning with a Makem & Clancy concert in March 1988, one of their last concerts together. I feel very lucky having had the chance to see that magical duo. I was barely four but I can still remember the concert to this day.
After a string of concerts in the late 1980s and 1990s I jumped on the band wagon and became a fan of the Clancy Brothers in late 1998, a fascination which grew so much that I decided to actually do something with my fixation and write a book about them. Seven and hundreds of hours have been spent researching this book. There being so little written about them, most of my research hails from countless television interviews, documentaries and album liner notes, newspaper articles and souvenir program biographies, in addition to Liam’s autobiography which I recently read again in early February for the umpteenth time, paying close to attention to weeding out any inconsistencies or careless mistakes in my previous drafts. Yet more research has been done through Liam’s, Robbie O’Connell’s and Tommy Makem’s respective websites.
This project, The Clancy Brothers With Tommy Makem & Robbie O’Connell: The Men Behind the Sweaters, began in August 2003 and now, as of this update in February 2006, the book will begin its first print run of 1,000 copies to be ready for the shelves in early March 2006, just in time for the Fiftieth Anniversary of the formation of the Clancy Brothers & Tommy Makem.
Conor Murray
Tommy Makem and the author, Conor Murray, March 2003