Brendan McCabe R.I.P.
Sad to report the death of Brendan McCabe last Sunday. His funeral will take place in Kilmacud on Thursday morning.
Brendan played flute for many years with the Fodhla Ceili Band, a great band to dance to. There were many times at dances that I was listening to their music and nearly missed my cue to dance! For info on the Fodhla see
http://www.setdancingnews.net/news/bands1.lp
He also taught flute in Dublin, and one tune I learned from him (and have rarely heard elsewhere) was The Coast Road.
https://thesession.org/tunes/8099
He once told me how he learned tunes when he was young. He would go to dances to listen to his uncle’s ceili band. If a tune he did not know caught his attention, he would identify what set it was in and talk to his uncle at the interval. The uncle would arrange to play it again after the break, and then Brendan would leave immediately after that while the tune was fresh in his head, and go home and practice it.