Niall Fennell

NIALL FENNELL has a wealth of experience in the music world as a French Horn player with the Army Band and as a singer with the Press Gang. He continues to be involved with many musical groups in Limerick and Clare, including horn player with the Limerick Orchestra. The Press Gang were a very well known Dublin based a capella group during the sixties and seventies. They were the first folk group of their kind in Ireland and introduced a revolutionary sound to the Irish folk scene at the time. The Press Gang were a regular feature in the famous Tradition Club in Paddy Slattery’s of Capel Street. The group was comprised of Tom Crean, Dave Smith, Seán Corcoran (now of Cran) and Niall Fennell.

In the late sixties, Niall was involved in the formation of an experimental group which attempted to marry different instruments into a new sound. The players were Liam Og O’Flynn, Alec Finn, Rick Ward and Phil Lynott and featured guitar, fiddle, uillean pipes, french horn and bass guitar. The sound included vocals. The group practiced Beatles and Rolling Stones music and some traditional Irish music too. Unfortunately they never went public. It is conceivable that this experiment may well have had an influence on such groups as Planxty, De Danann or The Chieftains.

Niall occasionally sang with Pat in Limerick in a club run by Tommy Hayes (Stockton’s Wing) during the early eighties and made a point of meeting and singing every time they were in the same geographical location. They mainly sang the songs of Ron and Bob Copper and learned to adapt the styles and words of the various songs which they had previously sung with the Press Gang and Garland respectively.