Irish eyes smiling over new album

When the Londoner bar at the Bristol Hotel, Manama, was in its zenith in 1992, a 17-year-old Irish girl with a guitar stepped onto the stage. As a favour to the girl’s father, musician Eibhlin Crosse let the girl accompany the group.

“I knew her father and he said ‘my little girl plays music, would you give her a chance?’ We did – and she was so outstanding she took over.”
Fifteen years later, Jane ‘Irish’ Mythen has performed her unique brand of folk music throughout Europe, North America and the Middle East. She has played at some of the most prestigious music festivals in the world and shared the stage with the biggest names in the genre.
Now – with a little help from her friends – Irish is about to embark on one of the most exciting years of her career.
In January, with the financial support of eight long-term friends based in Bahrain, the singer recorded her first album Sweet Necessity with the renowned producer Paul Mills. In June it will be released in the US and Canada. 
Four couples, three of whom have known Irish since she moved to Bahrain in 1989 at the age of 14, were captivated by the singer’s talent.
“I’ve known them forever, since I was kid,” explains Irish, “and they were sick of me procrastinating. They told me if you build it, we’ll come. So they gave me a budget plan and told me to do it. I was just blown away.”
Musician Margaret-Ann Hanlon who along with husband Jim backed Mythen, said, “If she doesn’t make it, then no one has a chance.”
Jonty Crosse, a banker with Merrill Lynch who is also backing the singer with wife Eibhlin said: “I’m very proud of her and I’m tremendously envious, I like the fact she’s kept her passion going throughout the years.”
But Irish has not taken their support casually. “I’ve done over 2,500 gigs, and performed to audiences of 15,000, but these are eight people I really didn’t want to disappoint,” she said.
The result is an 11-track album that is intimately autobiographical, spiritedly political, broodingly philosophical – and a million miles from the over-produced voices of today’s charts.
As a child Irish was determined to sing and it was moving to Bahrain that provided the catalyst.
“When I moved to Bahrain I didn’t know anyone so my parents bought me a guitar and I taught myself how to play. I’ve been gigging on and off ever since,” she said.
She cites Tracy Chapman and Suzanne Vega as her influences, but is reluctant to pigeon-hole her sound. “I like to call it new folk because folk gives off connotations of guys waving hankies with long hair,” she says.
But it is Irish’s peripatetic lifestyle that has informed her work. By the age of 32, Irish has lived in Ireland, Trinidad, UAE, Bahrain, Sweden, Australia, and the UK.
She is the kind of woman who at the age of 18 picked up a guitar and a rucksack and hitched around Ireland for a year.
“A guy picked me up outside Galway with his Swedish girlfriend and in the evening I played for them. A year later he called me and said he was running Gothenburg Irish music festival and asked me to come and play. I was supposed to stay there for a week but ended up staying a four-and-half years.”
After fashioning a successful career in Sweden, Irish moved to Perth, Australia, despite not knowing anyone in the country and stayed for five years.
“If you’ve got music, you can go anywhere, you don’t need to speak the language,” she reasons, “I think one of the greatest things about growing up all over the world is I never saw creed of colour and this has really influenced my song-writing.”
Irish is fiercely strident in her beliefs. From 1994-5 she ran Bacchus, the infamous jazz club in Adliya but left because of the then policy of not allowing locals in. This independent spirit has shaped her music. In 1996 She obtained a record deal with the EPP productions branch of Sony, but they tried to turn her into a “pop princess,” so she pulled out.
“I have pride in what I do and I don’t feel I should compromise,” she explains, “I’d rather play for free than for cheap.”
The opportunity to create an album that was entirely her own material was heaven-sent.
In 2005, when Irish returned to Bahrain, she met Chris and Gale Fischer, a Canadian couple who run the music store Room to Rock in Hamala, who along with Alex and Reem Monroe also backed the new album.
Mr Fischer said: “We met Jane playing folk music at people’s houses. She’s a very talented singer and songwriter and her lyrics are brilliant. At the heart of folk music is grass roots appreciation, and it all came together because one among us was so great. It just seemed the natural thing to do to help her. To support her has been fantastic and we’ve learned so much musically ourselves. We wish her all the luck in the world.”
Irish also met photographer Phil Weymouth, who helped the singer by taking a series of beautiful black and white promotional photographs for the album.
The belief that Irish’s network of friends have in her is well-founded; her music is powerful stuff. After performing a deeply personal track, Father Song, at last year’s ‘Stanfest’ in Canada, a member of the audience was so moved that he called his father who he hadn’t spoken with for more than 20 years. But it is the value that her eight closest friends place on her work that she prizes most highly.
“Their help is so appreciated and their reaction has blown me away,” she said. Speaking about Mr Hanlon, a talented musician who works for Saudi fisheries, she said: “One of the biggest compliments I’ve had was from Jim, who is a sublime songwriter and greatly respected. He had such fantastic things to say about my music – it was incredible.”
This June, the Fischers, Hanlons and Crosses will go to Canada to support Irish at Stanfest, where she will perform tracks from her album for the first time.
High notes of a musical adventure only made possible through true friendship. 
l Sweet Necessity is released by Myth Records.

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