From Frosses Hall to the Millennium Forum - it’s been quite a year for Onóir

They will be a year on the road on April 16th - and it’s been quite a year. From rehearsing in Frosses Hall in January 2023 to twice filling the Millennium Forum in the spring of 2024, the journey of four music lovers from south Donegal who took the name Onóir has caught the imagination of audiences from all over the country.

The journey is really only beginning because next up is America in August and plans are being made for England and Scotland before year’s end.

Venues catering from 100 to 1,000 have been sold out, some within minutes of going on sale. The performances of this new group have got a staggering response in the North West and over the year they have now visited most counties in Ireland with their dynamic show.

The group is made up of four very different lovers of music - three of them from the parish of Inver: Tom McHugh from Inver on vocals and drums; Deane Connaghan from Mountcharles on keys and vocals and Declan Gaughan from Frosses/Drimarone on guitar and vocals while you have to travel to Ballintra to find the fourth member, Diarmaid McGee, who apart from providing vocals and guitar, is also a sort of a front man for the group and at times a budding comedian.

All four are so different in musical tastes yet so talented but also very self effacing and down to earth. Any hint of a grandiose notion would be dealt with quickly, something which comes across very clearly in their company.

Their success story, which is really very short so far, is also one you could only dream of. From playing pub gigs and weddings and holding down day jobs, to selling out the Millennium Forum in Derry and now bound for the Milwaukee Irish Festival in the US which attracts an audience of 100,000. Surely that falls into the bracket of overnight success.

While the band will be one year on the road on April 16th, the beginnings of Onóir go back to the Covid lockdown and August 2020.

Tom McHugh and Declan Gaughan were a double act working the pub scene and weddings, as were Diarmaid McGee and Deane Connaghan.

They would have known each other and would meet in places like McCaffertys in Donegal Town between gigs. Declan, Deane and Diarmaid would also have been training together at Jiu-Jitsu.

With the music industry at a standstill they messaged each other through Facebook to try and record a video together and when the video of the Auld Triangle made in Murvagh woods was launched, so were the humble beginnings of Onóir.

“We were just out of the first proper lockdown, when we made the Auld Triangle video. The Facebook message said it will take nine or 10 hours to do everything. The plan naively was to do the audio and video all in one day. And it took like 150 hours and two weeks of work.

“And the night we recorded the video in Murvagh we had to be home before 12 because the second lockdown came that night,” says McGee

“We have gotten much quicker,” laughs Connaghan.

“Daniel O’Donnell wrote a wee article in the Sunday World after we released the Auld Triangle, so we said we’d make another one. We came up here (to McGee’s) and started into Caledonia and when we listened back to it, we said no, we’ll not,” laughs Tom McHugh.

But a year later they went to McGrath Castle in Pettigo and recorded The Parting Glass and they realised they might have something.

It was Tom McHugh who felt that there might be something to work on but Diarmaid McGee felt that it was just  a matter of getting back to normal life and making videos the odd time.

McHugh set up a WhatsApp group to try and spur them on to make the next step.

Those early days were really shots in the dark for the quartet.

“If we were doing something like the Auld Triangle video now, we’d be ready for it but back then we hadn’t a clue,” says McGee.

“We recorded it in Diarmaid’s bedroom,” said McHugh, where they had four duvets  stapled to the wall to improve the sound.

“We were slow on the uptake to be fair,” said Diarmaid. “I think it’s fair to say Tom was pushing more; I think he felt it was something you could have a career at.”

“I liked it because even though I like the one-man gigs, I love being in a band and then I felt why not do it with guys who are good,” says McHugh.

“What made you stay with us then?” laughs McGee, the joker in the pack.

“We wore him down,” says Connaghan.

McGee said that in the beginning they had only one set of headphones and after the arrangements were put in place for the Auld Triangle by Deane Connaghan, when they listened back, they were going ‘Holy s—, that’s a sound right there.”

That was probably the eureka moment for the band.

They got a break when Martin McFadden from Kilcar arranged a showcase for them in Kilcar with a visiting crew from the Milwaukee Festival, and while nothing came from that, they were later to get an invitation to an audition in Galway which will see them travel to the US this August.

Then in February of last year, Tom McHugh said it was time to take the jump and he contacted the Balor Theatre in Ballybofey to get a gig.

When they got the go ahead for April 16th, they did 10 weeks of rehearsals in Frosses Hall, the Sandhouse Hotel and in McGee’s home in Ballymagroarty. “We hardly saw anyone, it was four or five days a week.

“The night the Balor gig went on sale we were here (in McGee’s). We went over and made a cup of coffee to see how things would go. And it was ridiculous, everybody is sitting there gobsmacked 20 minutes later or something, it was sold out. It was absolutely mental,” said McGee.

“We actually thought that we’d put on one show and between us all we’ll manage to get 200 in before the date comes around. We weren’t expecting that.

“We did three in the Balor, the first  and then the following weekend we did two in a row. I think the first show took about 53 minutes to sell out. Then the second show sold out in 12 minutes and the third one sold out in six minutes.

“So we’re sitting there saying, Holey Moley, maybe it’s time to see if other venues take us.

“In fairness to Conor (Malone), he is a great patron of the arts. He had a show on the 9th of April and the Balor Theatre was free then until our opening performance on the 16th. He said to Tom, ‘you can load in on the 10th’ and our show wasn’t until the 16th and that’s unheard of.

“We spent the whole six days in Ballybofey and only for that we would have been a helluva lot more nervous going into that.”

After that it was full speed ahead, An Grianan in Letterkenny, two nights sold out; the Abbey Arts  Centre in Ballyshannon and then further afield, until February of this year when they twice sold out the Millennium Forum in Derry.

It was a long way from rehearsing in Frosses Hall in just over 12 months. “The Millennium Forum didn’t have the meter on the wall for the heat like we had in Frosses Hall,” jokes the lads, who had to get the key of Michael Thomas.

Their gigs in the Abbey Centre in Ballyshannon were productive in another way as they found a sound man, Ciaran Patton.

“Ciaran  did the sound for us in the Abbey Arts Centre in Ballyshannon and once we heard what he could produce, we asked him if he wanted a job, so he’s on the road with us all the time now,” says McHugh.

Dealing with their new-found fame is hardly troublesome for the quartet. 

“You look at it differently when it’s happening. For us, we’re not the kind of lads, we’d take each other down a peg if we were getting too far ahead of ourselves,” says McGee.

“You think you will wake up and the rug will be pulled from under your feet; you’ll be back pulling pints or carrying mortar on a building site, or whatever. You are just grateful to be there,” said McGee, who added that it was mind-blowing to stand on the stage in such places like the TF in Castlebar and the Millennium Forum.

“I remember saying to Declan when we were doing the two-piece, wouldn’t it be lovely to be doing a couple of theatre gigs, thinking that it was a real far-reach. Now we’re doing it every weekend,” says McHugh..

“It’s a different type of gig to a pub or a wedding, because most people aren’t listening. Musically it has improved all of us,” says Gaughan.

“Being in front of a theatre audience where nobody’s talking, makes you sharp,” says McGee.

“There was something exciting about going to those places as well, like Castlebar where we are not as well known, to see what the reaction would be like. That was our first time around, so the second time  you’d be wanting to see would you get more. There’s something exciting about that too, the challenge of selling the gig to people.

“Because up here we’re blessed with most people knowing us and they’re selling out very, very quickly. So it’s more of a challenge down the country,” says Connaghan.

The group recalled travelling to Castleisland in Co Kerry for a venue that held just 105.

“We got the 105 in and you were meeting people after that night. A couple came over from West Cork because they followed us online. The internet has changed everything, the sky’s the limit,” says McGee.

“We forget up here you know somebody in every audience. Down there it was just people who liked the music.”

With Diarmaid McGee acting as the front man and sometimes comedian, they know that they have to entertain.

“The gig is so different to what we were doing. It is so easy to do it in that environment. There’s the dynamic between us.  Because no matter how nice the music is or the singing is, nobody wants to sit through two and a half hours of just music.

“They’re there to be entertained,” says McGee.

A flavour of the humour always comes through when Tom McHugh sings The Town I Loved So Well and no matter where they are, he will get a standing ovation.

And up steps McGee saying: “There are wee, bustin’ our asses and he gets the standing ovation every time!”

But they do take their music seriously and that is reflected in the return of patrons to their concerts.

“A lot of it is finding a balance for the show where you try and highlight everyone. Declan can light up a guitar with his mind and we have to show people he can do it. The last song in the set ‘Over The Hills’. Nobody is coming to an Onóir show and think they’ll hear a Gary Moore rock tune,” says McGee, who feels they have to add their own stamp to the show.

“The whole ethos from the start was, the Auld Triangle had to sound different; the Parting Glass had to have our wee fingerprint on it, and it’s the same with the Irish ballads, we have to make them sound different. We have four different voices.”

What of the future? Well they have started writing their own material and obviously America is a big deal.

“Our aim is to do the Irish Festivals in America and hopefully go back and play to a theatre audience in America,” says McHugh.

Apart from their gig in Milwaukee, their America tour will see them perform in Gaelic Park, Chicago; Lacrosse, Wisconsin and Peoria, Illinois.

“We’re in talks about doing a London gig in November as well,” says McHugh.

For now their gigs in Ireland are on weekends and it is something they were all used to anyway. Indeed McHugh says they are very thankful to all the pubs who kept them in work before the group was started.

“I think that will change when we become better known. As we build the whole thing, a lot of places will say we’ll take weekends only because they only take midweek gigs off established names and acts, which is understandable.

“And that would be the absolute dream as who doesn’t want to be out on a Wednesday night making money rather than being out on a Saturday night,” says McGee.

“We have to mention Sean, Diarmaid’s dad, who has been doing the bookings for us since we started. Only for him, he has got us all over the country,” says McHugh.

“There’s a lot to this kinda game. It’s that kinda industry where people only see the flashy front end of it,” says McGee.

The boys are based now at the back of the McGee homestead with the garage their home for preparation for the gigs, which could last from 11 am to 4 or 5 pm on any day. Charlotte’s cooking keeps the Inver boys coming back!

“We are so blessed around home, as Deane says. We cannot believe that people want to come back to the shows. It’s our mission now to keep it so good that people want to keep coming back.”

The pace of the whirlwind success turned another corner recently with their appearance on the Today Show on RTÉ with Daithí Ó Sé performing their own original song ‘Take It From Me’

And just like everything about the group, there is a great story behind the song as it was only finalised in the last few days before the TV appearance. And to appear on the show they were given three weeks to pen the original number.

“Obviously you’re not going to pull out of it. We tried for three weeks to find the process of writing a song and nothing was clicking. We  would try something else. Declan put chords in a guitar case one day; Tom had an idea of a melody.

“So Tom put the foot down, he got out the guitar case.  Declan and Deane put the chords together. Then myself and Tom did the lyrics. That was just five days before the appearance.

“When we went down to Cork that night, we went and got grub and went back to the hotel. I’d say they thought there was going to be a party in the hotel lobby because we were carrying instruments up to the room to practise. 

“We spent two hours practising that night; got up again at quarter to seven the next morning, spent another hour with the fiddle player Damien McGeehin.”

The group, who bring in Ballyshannon native Farah Bogle Devaney and bass player Mark Molloy from Inch Island when touring,  now want to push on and produce an album of their own material. “We’ve found a system that is working for us now. I don’t think we’ll ever produce a song without all of us having an input into it,” said McHugh.

Life is now much different for the four. Deane and Declan continue with their Jiu-Jitsu while Diarmaid says he dabbles in it. April will be a busy month for Declan as he marries Ashling Stewart from Donegal Town towards the end of the month with a honeymoon booked for Nashville, New Orleans and Chicago, no doubt getting some valuable inside information for the group’s tour in August.

April 16 is the first anniversary of Onóir’s first gig in the Balor Theatre and if the last 12 months is any gauge, Donegal has another superstar group to call its very own.