Danny McGilloway is playing with words

In the footlights this week is Derry Folk singer and songwriter, Danny McGilloway, of legendary group ‘Thundering Down’ fame.

The Derry Now starter for ten, ‘What McGilloway are you, Danny?’ elicited an unexpected, non-music related response.

“My father was Danny ‘Spasm’ McGilloway and my mother was Vera Walsh. Like myself, my father was from the Brandywell, although my family moved to Creggan when I was five years old.

“My father and I both played for Derry City FC. I played from 1969 to 1971, when they went out of the League and my father would have played between 1947 and 1953. He then went across the water to Wigan Athletic but came back home after a year because he was missing the family.”

Singer - songwriter, poet, playwright and painter, Danny McGilloway.

Although he keeps a watchful eye on Derry City’s results, Danny’s main focus these days is nurturing his creativity, be it through his writing, music, playing or teaching. 

Danny has been part of the Folk circuit for years. 

As well as ‘Thundering Down’, he has performed extensively in Irish pubs and clubs throughout England, Scotland and Europe. He also shared the stage with some of Ireland’s top Folk entertainers including, Christy Moore, Francis Black, Dolores Keane.

“One of my personal highlights was playing in Dublin alongside Pete St John, who I would consider to be one of Ireland’s top songwriters,” said Danny. “You only have to think of ‘Fields of Athenry’. 

“I have also gigged at a number of festivals in Europe such as the Strib festival in Denmark, the Jersey Irish Festival on the Channel Islands, and the Camden Festival in London, where I met American blues singer, the late, great Johnny Silvo. Johnny told me my voice was like that of a ‘guardian of heaven’s pearly gates,’” smiled Danny, who is also an aficionado of McCallion’s Irish Pub in Kaufbeuren in Germany.

Danny described his self-penned songs as dealing with subjects close to the Irish heart, “love, loss, emigration, peace and issues of a contemporary nature”. 

He added: “My songwriting is something that is very, very important to me. I have been writing songs and poetry for a long time. However, I have also written short stories, as well as four plays. 

“One of my plays, which is called ‘The Rose Garden’ is currently being assessed by a producer  in London. The play focuses on West Donegal during the late 1940s, early 1950s. It is about a father, who like all the fathers at that time, went across to England or Scotland to work, leaving the family behind in Ireland. 

“So my play is about a young family of three or four. The father went away to work and he was sending money home but after a period of time, it stopped, but I don’t want to give too much away.

“With a bit of luck, you never know and if not, as someone said to me, at least they’ve got my name,” smiled Danny. 
Danny spoke passionately about another of his plays, which he would love to stage in Derry.

He said: “It is about a Protestant and Catholic family and I think it is just great. It’s called ‘Living on the Edge’, the edge of the War, just after the War had finished. 

“It is set in Derry, where the two families were very good neighbours at one time and then, when the War unfolded, they separated, like a lot did in those days. But, when the War had finished, both fathers met each other in the city and one invited the other down to the house. It goes on from there and we hear the stories and the mayhem and the goodness and the badness. It is just two families then.

“Another of my plays is about the women in Armagh Gaol. It is about one of the women who decides to go on hunger strike but the intrusion of her mother draws her away from that course of action. It also deals with her welcome home when she gets out of jail.”

A keen landscape painter, Danny also has an eye for photography. He has successfully exhibited paintings and photographs here in the city.

A prodigious songwriter, Danny said the most potent tool for this trade was imagination. 

“In my opinion, the difference between a poem and a lyric is that a poem is meant for the eye, while a lyric is meant for the ear but both reach the mind and touch the heart. 

“Once you have written a song and considered all of the pros and cons of the lyrics, the uppermost and final consideration is, ‘Does it sing? And, not only does it sing but does it sing effortlessly?’

“That is what I love to do in my songwriting and then when I am performing them, I find it easy to put it over. Also, the cadences of the lyrics must leave the most subtle breathing space, as must the music. 

“How do you get the ideas for a song?’ is another question. Explaining how a child would be born is easier because there, at least, nature has provided some clues or rules to follow,” laughed Danny. “Ideas can come from anywhere, at any time, maybe by something you have seen or something someone may have said.”

In essence, Danny believed, when a song was being born, the song writer had no rules to follow.

He added: “When I am writing a song, I tend to agonise over a rhyming word, which can become more time consuming than writing an entire song. 

“But, when you have finished the lyric and you are pleased with it, you put it aside. It’ll not self-destruct, and you try to re-do it, rewrite it completely. I have seen myself writing full songs and tearing them up and putting them in the bin because I wasn’t satisfied with what I had.”

One of Danny’s favourite songs which has been getting a lot of airplay on Derry radio station Drive 105 recently is called ‘The Lady on the Boulevard’, which he wrote two years ago.

“I am also hoping to get back into the recording studio in the near future to record an EP, on which the backing vocals will be provided by Róisín McClean, who is a beautiful singer, along with my very talented granddaughter, Kelsey Evans, on piano.”