Box-player Pat Friel releases new album

Renowned button-accordion player Pat Friel has released a new album, ‘Moonlight In Mayo’. The much-anticipated follow-up to ‘The Humours of Westport’ will include reels, jigs, hornpipes and a number of well-known songs, including ‘Moonlight In Mayo’, ‘These Are My Mountains’, ‘Say You Love Me’ and ’My Lovely Achill Island Home’, written by Westport musician Lenny Grimes.
Pat was first taught how to play the accordion by his mother, Julia, who came from Letterbrock, eight miles west of Westport. His was a musical family, and four of his five brothers also play the box.
Pat played occasionally for house dances, especially after the Stations, when the priest said Mass in the house. Back in 1958, Lennie Grimes, Frank Baynes and Pat Friel decided to form a band. Croagh Patrick inspired the bands name as they all lived in its shadows. The Croaghpatrick Trio proved to be very popular, and they went on to play all the local dance halls in the area.
In the showband era of the 1960s, Pat played the bass guitar in a band called the Frielmen, which played pop and country and Western. Twenty years ago, he started the local Comhaltas group and was three times named Connacht Button-Accordion Champion. He went on to form one of the most successful céilí bands here in the west of Ireland The Heather Breeze Céilí Band.
Pat’s musical talents have been inherited by his two daughters, who are both musicians and teachers. His daughter, Sandra, plays the piano, piano accordion and concertina, and sometimes plays with Heather Breeze.