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I’ve wondered about writing this post for weeks given that Donal is someone I’ve had the great pleasure of working with for many years now, so in many ways it’s a massive conflict of interest…but then I work on projects and with people that interest me personally, and if I was to avoid writing about all of them I might never write a blog post at all. Donal’s time on The Small Hours is coming to an end this week, and if he was someone I wasn’t working with right now I’d have written this ages ago, so what the hell… I am loudly declaring my interest at the off, and am going to write this post anyway.

I started working with Donal back in 2006 when I was the music programmer at The Model in Sligo, but like so many others I was a long time fan from much much further back. I was embarking on a new direction for the Model’s music programme at the time and looked him up to pick his brains and see if he might be up for working with us in some capacity. A series of payphone calls (what- no mobile?) and late night emails led to numerous coffees and scribbled music exchanges, (cue my introduction to Cat Power, Joanna Newsom and Talk Talk’s Spirit of Eden) not to mention a delivery of (his) records to Sligo through a snowy winter night, and the Month of Sundays series was conceived, then launched out into the world in Sligo for the month of November.  It was the first time he’d embraced the role of curator, and the first time in a long time he’d shown his visual work, and definitely the first time in an even longer time that he’d addressed a live audience. It was definitely a challenging project, with many a last minute change or a broken down car or serious stage fright to thwart our good intentions, but the resulting gigs were beyond worth it, and still echo as some of the best musical memories of my life.

For MoS mark one, I remember many experiments with visual styles, some intentional, others not…the former including a totally silent audience following intently one night as Donal clicked through a slideshow of his early photography from a very personal series of shots that hadn’t been seen since his 1993 Galway Arts Festival show, with the only sound in the room being the click of the slide wheel in the projector as I held my breath, waiting for the planned music to kick in. It never did, but the silence made the slideshow all the more memorable.

Donal Dineen (with Mike Milosh) at Month of Sundays Cork

I remember countless wonderful performances of course; Lisa Hannigan played one of her very first live shows in Sligo, and the memory of her stunning voice is even more powerful when I think back to the chrysalis like change she’s undergone since. The girl seated in Sligo in 2006, all dressed in black and almost folded into her tiny self to become even less noticeable on stage, is a world away from the happy, vibrant, colourful girl on stage these days- though the vocal talent is no less; which you can even tell from this shaky audience video taken on the night.  That sits beside memories of experiencing Chequerboard live for the first time (and deciding on the spot that he had to be the first Model resident Music artist), or Jape bouncily stealing the show long before the Choice came calling, and most especially my first live encounter with James Yorkston. The live camera projected a close up of him up on his tippy toes reaching for a mic that was even taller than him, or captured the swing of the bow of his outstanding violinist (Emma Smith), with one song unexpectedly moving me to tears  – no small feat given the level of distractedness you usually feel at a gig you’re working on.  That night is tied up with memories of good whiskey and great chats, a pattern that was to become something of a trend in the coming years.

It was Donal’s great instinct to challenge the audience with very diverse line-ups each night, swinging from opposing musical styles throughout each gig, which totally worked. Just like he did on air, he trusted the audiences’ capacity to “get it”, and get it they did, week after week. It’s pretty funny reading back on the blog posts I wrote back then, and particularly interesting to read this little bit about the quality and diversity of irish music, and the impact of digitial – which is something that we all talk about now in 2011, but were maybe only on the precipice of realising in 2006;

“It hit home forcibly on Sunday night how much diverse music this little island is producing right now.  Maybe it’s the globetrotting we all do, either virtually or in the real world, but the breadth of music that people are making here, and the sheer quality of it is astounding. That we could go from contemporary acoustic folk (Windings), via cutting edge electronic experiments (Somadrone), to epic sonic rock (Saso) in one night, all producing a top quality sound, is no longer astonishing.  That it doesn’t get more support on irish radio and in the media is constantly infuriating.  It brings home the importance of innovators like Donal on the airwaves, and the unprecedented access the web provides for new talent to get their sound out there.  All the same, the vast majority of irish people, even those who love their music, are not aware of most of the MOS acts, and the hundreds more besides. Hopefully mos will achieve what it set out to, to introduce new music to new audiences and to give contemporary irish music a great big pat on the back.”

I’ve worked with Donal on a bunch of other projects since that first one, including the Month of Sundays tour in ‘07 (footage the tour is available here)  the two Fresh Air Festival seasons in ’09 and ’10 and any number of vague notions and mad ideas in between.  They’ve all been the same mix of incredible musicianship, creative thought, generous spirit and hard hard graft, not to mention last minute changes, near total catastrophes, glowing rabbits, transport calamities, bedsheets as film screens, ever multiplying projectors, borrowed kettle leads (I still travel with a spare kettle lead, extension lead, white bedsheet and DVD player in my car), and countless coffee cups and petrol miles, but most of all those gigs have led me to meeting the most incredible people who were, almost without exception, either stunningly talented, modest, magical musicians, the most giving audiences or the warmest, most helpful/patient venue managers, all of which Donal seems to be a magnet for.

Month of sundays Kerry (with Donato Wharton) pic by Fiona Morgan

What always struck me about Dineen though, and what’s still the case to this day, is not only his great instinct and taste for quality music, but the total integrity of his approach. He is first and foremost a music fan, and has an admiration and respect for musicians, and the music they make, that borders on the religious. Music making is almost a kind of magic for him, and the reverence he treats it with is something that artists seem to immediately feel the benefit of. Integrity breeds integrity it seems.

I remember when I moved to Sligo first I’d listen in to the show on my own at night, back when it was still Here Comes the Night, a perfect excuse to turn off the tv and head to bed with a book and a notebook for scribbling down recommendations. When it moved to the Small Hours the notebook was swapped for half remembered text messages that I’d send to myself with my sleepy best guess at who he said the acts were- long before the dawn of online playlists. I’ve lost count of the people I’ve met along the way who’ve admitted to that same haphazard system of trying to remember who they heard on the show, filling their phones with bizarre text messages until they could compare notes.

Here Comes the Night made way for The Small Hours in 2004, and now The Small Hours draws to a close, and so radio shows come and go – like most things in life- but what’s more annoying is the confirmation of what the ending of the Small Hours means; that integrity and good taste, an ear for quality and the ability to turn people on to diverse and new music, while holding irish output right up there with the best of new international music, is not enough. I think that’s what has people so annoyed, and so disappointed; that radio in this country has got to the stage where none of that seems to matter. There are a small number of excellent music broadcasters on the irish airwaves, but the vast majority of the output is being dumbed down for the so called masses.  We’re being target marketed to such an extend that genres and sub genres are dictating playlists, and we’re in danger of disappearing into ever decreasing circles of sameness. It’s getting to the point where it’s rare to encounter music on the radio, rare to have things suggested to you that you might like, instead of things the computer thinks we’ll like. There is nothing more infuriating than programming that doesn’t trust its audience’s intelligence, or our ability to adapt, and the disappearance of this show just adds another nail to that particular coffin.

It has been rightly said (here and here) that given his resolutely un-commercial approach Donal’s done well to hang on in such a commercial station for so long, but the station benefitted hugely from the quality mark of his choices. I’m sure I’m not the only one who was introduced to the station though his show, or that of early days Radio Ireland stablemate John Kelly, and then worked my way back up the schedule to become a daytime listener of Today FM. Donal (and JK) made it ok to set my dial to 102, I wonder where I’ll set it to  now?