Donegal sisters The Henry Girls grew up in a homeland so rich with music that an exceptional talent as performers and instrumentalists was always inevitable. Still, the extent of their intuition for harmony and composition never fails to surprise and delight. We spoke to Karen, Lorna and Joleen about famous connections, feeling star-struck at ceremonies and gigging in the Sahara Desert.
So, how did you come to be known as The Henry Girls?
KAREN: Our surname is McLaughlin, and we’re from a peninsula of Inishowen where there’s a lot of McLaughlins, so everyone has a clan name. We got Henry from our grandfather and his father. So the whole family –uncles, aunts, cousins – are known as the Henrys. We’re all girls in our family so we were always referred to as the Henry girls, and it just stuck!
You’re obviously very close as a family. How do you separate your working life from your family relationships with each other?
KAREN: Well I’m married with three kids and I live in a different town from the girls. My kids are all small and at school soI have a hectic lifestyle outside of the band. We get together for family occasions, Sunday lunches and birthdays, that kind of thing.
LORNA:I teach two days a week and Joleen teaches three days, so we’re not 100% full time with The Henry Girls. We’ve all been in and out of different bands too, which is the norm up in Donegal, everybody knows everybody! So there’s lots of different things going on.
Your childhood was filled with music, so you must have a natural affinity for it. Have you had any formal training?
LORNA: We’ve all got music degrees! We’re all Grade 8 piano players…
KAREN: I’m actually only Grade 7… poor in comparison!
Over the years you’ve collaborated with some important Irish musicians such as Donal O’Lunny and Moya Brennan. Which collaborations have been the most memorable?
LORNA: Getting to do backing vocals for Mary Black was great. She’s legendary. We were on three songs from her album, Stories From The Steeples. One was a duet with Imelda May, so we did backing vocals for both of them! That was really nice, when we heard all of our voices together we were chuffed.
Is there anyone elseyou’d like to get the chance to collaborate with?
JOLEEN: Hozier!
LORNA: Bruce Springsteen!
KAREN: It’s nice to work with other types of music, completely different from what we do. We’ve performed with musicians from different countries, we actually worked with a kora player from Ghana! So it’d be nice to do something else completely out there.
Between this year and last year, you’vetoured in America and all over Europe. What’s been the reaction to your style of Irishmusic abroad?
KAREN: We had a really good tour in the States, we’ve been invited back everywhere so that’s good! I think people can really connect to the music, especially on the East coast; there are a lot of ex-pats there, and people are interested because we’re Irish. Also we aren’t your typical Irish folk band, and people seem to like that, because you can take whatever you want from it. In Germany it’s going down quite well, there’s a record label distributing our stuff there.
So it’s definitely not just an Irish thing!
KAREN: It’s actually probably even better received abroad!
LORNA: I think outside of this country Irish trad music is seen as a bit exotic, whereas at home there are so many musical Irish families that nobody bats an eyelid. The response here has been great too, though. RTE have been really supportive, they’ve been playing our stuff a lot and getting us on the radio.
Could you pick out any favourite gigs over the last few years?
JOLEEN: That’s difficult! We launched our album at An Grianan theatre in Letterkenny in February. It was great because most of the people that played on the album were onstage with us. We had a choir, a brass section, including Karen’s husband! Drum kits, percussion, and guitars… It was big band!
LORNA: We even had dancers! A few years ago we played at The International Nomad’s Music Festival in the Sahara Desert, that was crazy. Wedrove for about 12 hours from Marrakesh into the desert, so even the journey to get there was amazing. To be in the village in our little bivouacs was something else.When I was on holidays in Marrakesh I went to the festival myself as a punter and I loved it. We sent the musical director some tunes, and he liked them so he had us out to play. Karen was actually pregnant at the time. Then last December we went on tour with Dervish in Austria, and we played in a cattle mart at the bottom of the Alps.
KAREN: Oh yeah, It was a very modern place with an amphitheatre area. We played in the area where they bring in the cows. It was really lovely though, with the Alps all around, and the acoustics were great. But it was smelly around the sides. There were a lot of cow jokes!
LORNA: We also played a double-header with the West Cork Ukulele Orchestra in the Mitchelstown caves, about half a mile under the ground, which was pretty special. Good craic!
You’re obviously no strangers to experimentation. You were nominated for an IFTA for your work on the score of A Shine of Rainbows. How did that come about?
LORNA:We had our own trad session every week at home for years, and one week we were playing in the pub and the producers of the film came in and decided ourswas the sound they wanted for their film. So we didn’t go looking for it, we were really lucky. It was like a fairytale story. They wanted to keep it authentically Irish, and because we play more than just traditional music in our own sets, we had to consciously keep it within that genre.
KAREN: We watched some of the rushes of the movie to come up with ideas. It made you think about how music can change a scene. Every time we moved the music around the atmosphere would change. We worked with an orchestrator in LA on it. It was a great experience, we’d love to do something like that again. It was great hearing it all filled out with the strings and the orchestra sound.
LORNA: The icing on the cake was getting to go to the IFTA ceremony. It was weird looking around and Colin Farrell was walking by, there’s Juilette Binoche, Jon Voight, Saoirse Ronan… It was like being at a wedding because you knew so many faces. Everyone was at round tables and dressed up fancy, it was a bit surreal!
So your fifth album, Louder Than Words, was released earlier this year. What sets it apart from your previous work?
KAREN: On Louder Than Words and our last album, December Moon, we worked with a producer from Scotland, Calum Malcolm. We produced our first three albums ourselves and worked with all local people. Those albums were good but they didn’t get as much radio play. So for these last two we saved up and went to Calum. He worked with Blue Nile, Lau, Deacon Blue, Simple Minds, Wet Wet Wet… He’s a renowned producer! He came to Donegal to work with us on Louder Than Words, so that meant we could have a lot of extra guest musicians and friends play on the record, like the Inishowen Gospel Choir. This one feels a bit more homely.
Is that why you talk about ‘turning professional’ in 2010, even though you’d already released three albums?
LORNA: It is. In 2010 we got commissioned to work with a bluegrass band from West Virginia, and that was our first serious collaboration that we invested a lot of time in. Then we toured around Ireland for the first time, and it opened our eyes because we had spent most of our time in Donegal. We’d been playing at weddings, doing local things. So we’ve been travelling a lot since then, and it’s made a big difference.
You’re touring Ireland with Clannad at the end of this month, which must be a dream come true!
KAREN: It was great to be asked to be part of it. Moya Brennan’s daughter is doing support for some of the UK tour, and a band called The Young Folk. We know Moya quite well, she’s a great promoter of new acts and young musicians. She’s always trying to help you get yourself out there. So it’s great to be under her wing. So we’ve got five nights all around Ireland, in somelovely venues. We’re really looking forward to it, Clannad are lovely people!
The Henry Girls set off on their tour as support for Clannad on October 29th. They play the Olympia on November 2nd.
JOANNE ARMSTRONG, MUSIC JOURNALIST 