By Tania Phillips
He didn’t really learn to play the guitar or play music until he was in his twenties but now Mick McHugh couldn’t imagine doing anything else.
Dublin-born Mick, who moved to Australia 18 years ago after meeting his Australian wife, is now frontman of The Gathering who will headline the music portion of the Celtic Fest for the second year in a row.
“The Celtic Festival contacted us for last year’s event, they had seen us on-line and liked what we do,” he said.
“We call ourselves a kick-arse Irish Band. We’re aiming for a good party. Obviously we’re doing Irish music but we make sure it’s upbeat and fun and really engaging with an audience. As well as doing traditional Irish dancing music, like the instrumental fiddle tunes and the well-known stuff, we also mix it up with other bits and pieces that you might hear at any other pub on a Saturday night but with an Irish twist – an Irish feel.”
He said his love of music and the formation of The Gathering just happened naturally.
“I was born in Dublin and met my Aussie wife in Dublin 20 years ago, we’re both musicians and we moved to Australia. I’ve been out here 18 years now and music has been my fulltime job. I do my original music as Mick McHugh. But when you’re suddenly 10,000 miles from home and people start asking for all these Irish songs. It just kind of happened naturally, an Irish man, singing Irish music in an Irish pub – it just built.
“In terms of the name, I set up The Gathering because whether it’s ancestry from generations back or people who moved here from Ireland over the years, they’re looking for that connection to their Celtic heritage and I try to do that. I see it as my job, bringing people together. I try to make sure everyone in the room feels a part of it. So that’s how it became The Gathering because it was about bringing people together to have a good kick-arse Celtic time.”
The band are regulars at Irish Murphy’s in Brisbane and Finn McCool’s in Fortitude Valley and at Surfers Paradise.
For Mick it really is often about connecting people with their ancestry, tapping into that genetic memory from a couple of generations back – the feeling of longing and belonging for and to a place they have never personally been.
“We have had people who have had feelings like that and they have gone overseas and then they come to our gigs, it’s really special,” he said.
“Music is in my blood – we’ve been talking about that Celtic thing, that connection to your home, it’s something in my DNA but I didn’t actually play music until I was 22 . I realise now it was osmosis – the way I was brought up,” he said.
“Every family gathering music was sang – just with all the cousins. You’re only a little kid and every single person would sing a song – any occasion. At the end of the evening, the kids are all there with the adults and everyone is singing. I never sang or did any of those things I was too shy but I realise that it all went in.”
And the other reason that the songs he does with The Gathering resonate with him and with the audience is the history according to Mick. The stories they tell connect the past to the present and maybe that was part of the reason that a young man who trained in engineering ended up asking a flatmate to teach him to play the guitar and eventually found his voice singing out-loud to his Australian girlfriend. The reason that this same man moved to Australia and became a singer-songwriter and through The Gathering passes that history on to a whole generation of Celts on the other side of the world.
The reason you will see Mick McHugh and The Gathering at Warwick again this year.
