More Roads to Glenamaddy

IT'S a long time since Big Tom put Glenamaddy very firmly on the music map with the hit song Four Country Roads but now, over three decades later a young Kilkerrin-Clonberne Country singer has similar ambitions. Home to Glenamaddy is the title of the song and while the young singer's stage name is Jason Travers he is better known in his home area of Co Galway as Padraig Burke. This stage name was adopted by Padraig over two years ago when he started out on the dancing scene fronting his own band. Now after releasing a number of singles under the name of Jason Travers an album is also in the pipeline before the end of this year. This song is about an emigrant yearning to go Home to Glenamaddy and it will strike a chord with people from this area living abroad as well as appealing to the dancers here at home â€â€ it is a song that has a good dancing feel to it. No doubt that is important for Jason, as his fans are those who frequent live dancing venues. For him and his band to succeed he will need to try and break further into this market where other young Country singers such as Mike Denver, Nathan Carter and Patrick Feeney have become so successful. This is a well sung and well produced song and Jason has hired two of the leading lights on the recording scene in the country, Frankie Colohan and Tony Maher of The Conquerors, to arrange and produce this single. But it will be hard for a young artist such as Jason to emulate the success that Big Tom had with Four Country Roads today, even with emigration being worse now from places such as Glenamaddy than it was in the early 1980s. But Big Tom's Four Country Roads was one of those songs that had something special about the way it sounded, like it or hate it you simply could not ignore it. Perhaps it was Patsy McDermott's unusual guitar riff in the songs intro, just as Phil Lynott's guitar riff in Whiskey in the Jar was possibly what made that song stand out also â€â€œ but in a very different music genre of course! Big Tom was an established star also when he hit the top echelons of the charts with Four Country Roads while Jason Travers is still only climbing the ladder on the Irish Country music scene and that is a time when it is all the more difficult to get a career song. But this young Galway man is managed by Noel O'Keefe from Cork who has guided the fortunes of veteran Country singer Paddy O'Brien over the years and his experience as a manager could be vital for Jason's success on a scene where there are far fewer live dancing venues than in the times when the other Glenamaddy song became a hit with dancers and record buyers alike. On Friday November 30 Jason and his new band will be playing locally at The Abbey Inn, Abbeyknockmoy when no doubt this new song about taking the road Home to Glenamaddy will get an airing. â€â€ TG