NEWS
Press Release via AS Written, August 2022
MICK’S NEW SINGLE CELEBRATES FAMOUS LANDMARK
Now known as one of Kilkenny’s finest folk and trad musicians, Waterford native MICK CITERN WALSH is about to release his third single of 2022. And once again fans can get ready to welcome another creation from Mick‘s own prolific pen.
The song was originally released as part of the Lismore man’s 2014 album, IMAGE, the third of Mick’s four long-players, with his Memories of Great Sessions, Put The Ha’ penny Down, and Collection of Songs and Music albums also available.
Mick has now re-recorded THE TWENTY-ONE STEPS (The Butterslip Song) – at a slower tempo this time – and the song will have its chance to shine in its own right when it becomes available on all platforms on September 2nd.
Written by way of tribute to one of the Marble City’s most prominent landmarks, THE TWENTY-ONE STEPS (The Butterslip Song) takes the listener through a history of the famous limestone steps, with lines as evocative as, Some lovers would have sat on those steps / In those days gone by / Wrapped themselves in each other’s arms / To stay together till the end of time.
Located on Saint Kieran’s Street in the town, the steps have their origins in the early seventeenth-century covered alley established by Nicholas Langton to link High Street with Saint Kieran’s Street, which at the time was known as Low Lane. Employing locally-sourced limestone, the steps are, according to the National Inventory of Architectural Heritage, “imbued with a picturesque quality lacking in modern methods of paving roads and streets while the inscribed patterns introduce an element of some artistic design merit to the site”.
THE TWENTY-ONE STEPS (The Butterslip Song) will follow on from Mick‘s powerful May offering, Outside The Daffodils Will Rise Again, his thoughtful, heartfelt, and emotional stance on the war in Ukraine. More recently, back at the end of June, the singer/songwriter invited listeners to share in a personal memory from his own life, taking them back to his hometown and a Dublin of days gone by with The Seventy Nine to Ballyer (Ballyer being the Dublin town of Ballyfermot).
A musician since his early school days, Mick moved to the capital city after sitting his Leaving Cert when he was just eighteen. Living in a homeless hostel for a while later inspired Mick to write his song Tomorrows Never Come. Eventually finding his feet, Mick went on to spend sixteen years working in the motor trade in Dublin, during which time he also cut his musical teeth, as it were, at sessions in venues like the Lower Deck, the Embankment, the Brazen Head, and the Portobello.
When work took Mick to Kilkenny in 1988 – where he would go on to spend another thirty years in the motor trade – it didn’t take him long to find his own seat in the local music scene there either, quickly becoming a regular at the Monday night trad session in John Cleere’s. That event is now the city’s longest-running trad session, and Mick has been at the heart of it all for a quarter of a century.
~ THE TWENTY-ONE STEPS (The Butterslip Song), the brand NEW single from MICK CITERN WALSH, will be available on all platforms from FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 2nd.
On The Right TRAX 