SINGER songwriter Lewis Barfoot has released her new single which is inspired by her music sessions in Dunmanway Hospital.
Eileen McMahon is the new double single by folk singer and songwriter Lewis Barfoot, released last week. It is the second release from her forthcoming EP The Old Bog Road, a collection of a capella folk songs from Ireland and Britain that explores the themes of love, longing and lament.
Lewis, who used to live in Maughanaclea (near Kealkil), learnt Eileen McMahon from ‘the Elders’ at Dunmanway Hospital in West Cork where she ran music sessions with the inpatients and day-care patients:
‘The Elders would share fragments of old songs and send me home with a long list to learn.
They couldn’t always remember the whole song themselves, but would be brutally honest in telling me when I’d got it wrong. The shared experience of singing with and learning from these Elders was liminal and beautiful, I hope they will enjoy the recordings. It is an honour to keep these old folk songs
alive.
‘I never met my East Cork grandparents and I only learned their names in 2018. This project has helped me reconnect with that generation and also with my heritage.’
Eileen McMahon follows Lewis’s debut album Glenaphuca in 2021 and sophomore album Home, released in 2023 for which she received great accolades. It was recorded, mixed and mastered by Giles Barrett at Lightship 95 in London and produced by Lewis.
Lewis performed in Kinsale over the Jazz Festival fringe in the town and will embark on an 11-date solo UK tour supported by Culture Ireland.
