John Sheahan was the quiet one in The Dubliners or as he sometimes refers to himself during his 48 year tenure with the group, as ‘The mortar between the Bricks’. In that cast of beardy and hairy rogues and rascals, Sheahan stood out by not standing out. Brought in to stand shoulder to shoulder with founder members Luke Kelly, Ronnie Drew, Barney McKenna and Ciarán Bourke, Sheahan’s playing brought a touch of elegant class to that gallery. The Dubliners may have swung with gnarly gusto on those full-bodied ballads and rousing airs, but Sheahan’s fiddle added a veneer of the other to the proceedings. Sheahan is the one who has survived those wild days and “Seven Drunken Nights”, the one who is around to tell the tales and crack open his diaries to remember those times when the band would play the Royal Albert Hall in London the night after a gig in Templemore. Today while his hair and beard are undoubtedly whiter, the sound of his violin still catches the grace notes of the tunes in the same light now as then. Most of all, though, Sheahan is about the music. From adventures and high jinks with The Dubliners in all their various iterations to trading ideas with the new school: From Declan O’Rourke, Damien Dempsey, Glen Hansard to Imelda May. Sheahan always has a glint in his eye, always has clear sight of where the music is going and always has the soul of the tune in his mind’s eye. Jim Carroll