Singing in a dialect has alway been an issue with me. I never would do it unless it was an obvious burlesque of a song. "Henry the 8TH" for instance.

Some years back, Phil Shapiro who runs a great folk show called Bound For Glory on WVBR in Ithaca New York told me he'd like to have my partner and I on the show but we sang in a dilect not our own. This was news to us.

We were doing Clancy Brothers stuff and Corrie Folk Trio and Planxty at the time. If the lyrics used were "Dinna Ken" we sang them rather than "Don't Know". But we never intentionally tried to sound anything other than what we were.

By singing the language are you automatically assuming the dialect? By singing Whoopie Tye Yi OH am I trying to be more western than I am?

The band I'm in now has the same problem. Our front man tells folks his microphone came from Dublin and that explains his on again, off again brogue. AS for me, I stick to sounding purely upstate New York.

Last year a fan of the band, who also comes from Kerry, told me "Donn-O your starting to sound good enough to fool the neighbors. The voice is coming on just fine." Bust my tail to be me and someone else can't hear it.

Oh well.

Don Meixner