By John McCusker

He's been invariably described as one of the major cornerstones in the revival of traditional music during the past few decades both in this country and further afield. And it's a tag that fits Andy Irvine comfortably as his influences from his days with Sweeney's Men and Planxty through The Bothy Band and Patrick Street aptly demonstrate.

From his early exploratory journeys 40 years ago into the roots music of the Balkans through his collaborations with the likes of Paul Brady and Arty McGlynn, his finger was firmly on the pulse of the rapidly changing mood of traditional music.

But it was with his Planxty cohorts, Christy Moore, Donal Lunny and Liam O'Flynn, that Andy found himself planted firmly at the forefront of a traditional music watershed in Ireland in the early 70s.

"Planxty probably made a very bid dent in what existed at the time," he admits. "We had no intention of changing the course of Irish music or anything like that but we certainly had a large input into, if not changing the direction of it.

"A very large number of young musicians, I found out later, were influenced by Planxty and The Bothy Band and it was certainly a watershed."

Looking back nowadays, it's difficult to imagine the staid image that Irish traditional music projected around that time. The youth of the country, by and large, had drifted off in many musical directions and Andy believes many were perhaps just waiting for a revival of sorts within the genre.

"I remember the first big gig we (Planxty) played which was in Galway supporting Donovan and the audience just went ape shit at the end of every number and at the end of the set they nearly tore the place down.

"It was perhaps the most exciting moment of my life and thinking about it later on I wondered if these people had been waiting for something like that and suddenly they found it. Perhaps it bridged the gap between common people and Irish traditional music."

It was around the mid-70s that the paths of Andy Irvine and Omagh's Arty McGlynn were to cross, probably around the Baggot Inn in Dublin where Irvine and Brady regularly gigged at the time. In subsequent years, Liam teamed up with Arty and Nollaig Casey to tour Europe, sometimes for up to six weeks at a time, taking them through France, Austria, Italy or Holland.

"Those were wonderful years," Andy recalls. "They were very hard with a lot of travelling and Arty was never a great man for the hard tour. But the money was such that you had to do a tour of that length to make a decent living."

Now living outside Letterbreen in Co. Fermanagh, Andy has slowed the pace somewhat although he still tours regularly and has firmly focused plans for the forthcoming months and years.

This summer, he has been touring with Patrick Street and doing solo stints around the country. A new album from his 'dream band' collaboration Mozaik, which was recorded around two years ago, is due out shortly to coincide with a forthcoming tour. A new Patrick Street CD is also due to hit the shelves before the end of the year. And seven years after his last solo offering, there are plans to go into the studio early next year to record a brand new album of his own material.

* Andy Irvine plays the Strule Arts Centre in Omagh on Thursday, September 6