Music is in Sharon Shannon's blood, as JOANNE MACE discovers

IF ANYONE was ever going to imagine an idyllic musical Irish childhood, their notions would probably come quite close to performer Sharon Shannon's reality.

Growing up as the offspring of set dancers in Ruan near Corofin in County Clare, she and sisters Mary and Majella and brother Gary began playing as soon as their lungs were big enough to puff.

Sharon started with the tin whistle at seven and, by 11, she had managed to add the fiddle and the two-row button accordion to her list, before deciding to focus on the latter.

"I was stone mad for music... obsessed," she recalls. "But it was normal for young kids to be given tin whistles or fiddles. I think I actually have a lot to thank my brother for as he encouraged us loads and it was Gary's idea that we all take up a different instrument each. So I decided that the accordion sounded easiest for me."

Her other passion was horse riding - "I still do love horse riding. My father is mad into horses so he was really delighted" - but Sharon dropped out of competitive show-jumping at 16 to focus on music. This was rewarded when she played the music for the touring production of Brendan Behan's The Hostage, helmed by Jim Sheridan.

"I got a call from a friend of mine who was working on the Brendan Behan play and he suggested they give me a shout. It was a really lucky shot and Jim is such a lovely, great guy."

And then the big break came. While playing with Arcady at a gig in Dublin, Mike Scott from The Waterboys heard her playing.

"Basically, he then asked me to come along with them on their tour! I was only 21 and a bit nave but they treated me very well and it was a great laugh. I stayed for about a year-and-a-half, until they broke up, and then toured with Christy Moore.

"It also opened up a lot of musical doors to me, and before I had joined I had started recording my first album but never got it finished. Then, by the time I got back to it, I had completely different ideas about what the music should be so I basically had to start again."

Sharon (pictured) has gone on to establish a varied and extremely successful career, having also been involved with the massively successful A Woman's Heart project, alongside Eleanor McEvoy and Frances Black, as well as constantly reinterpreting songs by artists like Grace Jones and Fleetwood Mac.

"I am just a traditional musician at heart - that's what I was brought up with. But at the age of 16, for the first time I was exposed to lots of music as opposed to just traditional - and I love all kinds of music. I'm listening to new music all the time and that keeps what I do fresh."

Having been such a success in the US, where she once performed at the White House, does she have any plans to return there or maybe set up a permanent base?

"Actually, I just found out yesterday that I'm going to be going to the US again this summer and I haven't been since before September 11 - even though, for every year before that, I've been three or four times.

"Some of the festivals are cheesily Irish, with dancing leprechauns and shamrocks, but others aren't like that at all. I have done theatre gigs, bar gigs and even church gigs, so it's very varied.

"I'm a pure homebird, though, and it's at home where I work best, whereas other musicians I know like to write on tour in hotel rooms or on buses."

So does she ever see the family for a reunion session? "We don't play much all together - though my youngest sister plays in the band so I play with her all the time. But one of these days we'll get something together."

Sharon Shannon will be playing The Anvil on Friday, April 23, at 7.45pm. Tickets, priced at £13.50, are available from the box office on 01256 844244.