Published: Wednesday, 16th September, 2009 5:00pm

Building a bluegrass following from rural Westmeath

Being the lead singer of successful bluegrass band Carmel Sheerin and The Ravens is much more than wowing audiences with her vocals for Maghera woman Carmel Sheerin, as Carmel has taken on the responsibility of being the group's organiser - booking gigs and arranging rehearsal venues.

While it is mainly a family band, consisting of Carmel, her brothers Tom, Dessie and Danny and their friend Jonathan, Carmel plays not so much a sisterly role, but more of a motherly one, ensuring everything is taken care of, such as booking tickets for the band's upcoming trip to Nashville and even ensuring that everybody fills out their visa forms in advance of the trip. "If anything goes wrong I'll be blamed," she joked last week.

But regardless of the organising and the responsibility of ensuring everyone is doing what they should be doing and when they should be doing, it's all worth it for Carmel, whose main passion in life is music.

And while bluegrass music doesn't have a huge following or market in Ireland, it clearly makes Carmel happy and she said she absolutely loves what she is doing. She said people often ask her what bluegrass music is and her response is: "It's as close to country music as you'll get, but it's all acoustic instruments."

She explained that she worked for many years singing in pubs, something she gave up in recent years, and said she hated that, she hated spending all of her weekends playing gigs and not really having a social life for herself, but what she has with Carmel Sheerin and The Ravens is so much more than that.

"We're not playing all the time. We play maybe once every two weeks because we play mainly at festivals and in theatres and I enjoy that. Last week we played down in Sneem, (Co Kerry) and it was like a two day holiday," she said.

Coming from a musical family of 13 it was somewhat inevitable that Carmel would fall into music, but clearly it's not just a hobby as the band has previously won Best European Bluegrass Band and has a major following in the US and across Europe.

Carmel first got involved in music at the age of 13, explaining that her parents had always played music and had been accompanied by their children and as the older children moved on, Carmel began singing with her parents and playing music. When her brother moved on and her dad decided to give up playing music, Carmel formed a two-piece with her sister. Her whole family was involved in music in some way and at the time her brothers were in a bluegrass band and were writing some songs. They asked Carmel to sing one the vocals on one of the songs and Carmel Sheerin and The Ravens were born.

That was about eight years ago and Carmel hasn't look back since, happily juggling music with working for her brother's company and babysitting her 24 nieces and nephews!The highlight for Carmel over the past eight years was when the band picked up the Best European Bluegrass Band in Holland in 2006.

Speaking about it this week Carmel said she hadn't even realised at the time it was a competition. She explained that it was an annual bluegrass festival where 40 bands from all over Europe were selected to perform for half an hour each and at the end of the night Carmel Sheerin and The Ravens were announced as Best European Bluegrass Band 2006. They then went on to represent Europe in the States.

Carmel said the band played in five states over three weeks and were playing every night and she said it was quite exhausting. This time, however, the trip to the US will be somewhat more leisurely as the band heads to Nashville on October 5, accompanied by family and friends.

"This time we're going for nearly two weeks and we'll be playing six gigs in two states," said Carmel. And while the band has a huge following in the States, with many fans emailing regularly to find out when they will be back Stateside, Carmel said the trip will also be a holiday for the band.

The added attraction for US fans is that the band is a family one."They love that it's a family band," said Carmel. "They really love bluegrass over there, we've quite a big following in the States."

She added that while the band stocks its albums in music stores in the midlands, the majority of their sales are online and most of them are outside of Ireland, mainly the States and they are also popular in the Czech Republic.

And with a family that is steeped so much in music it is no surprise that Carmel's inspiration comes from within the family."My favourite singer and inspiration is my brother Danny. He shocks me every time we play, he's an amazing singer," she said.

While Carmel leads a busy life, juggling music, work and spending time with such a large family, she wouldn't have it any other way and her advice to anyone who thinks it is difficult to juggle work and music is that it is simple and if you really want to play music you'll fit it around the rest of your life.

The upcoming trip to Nashville will allow Carmel to pursue her passion while also spending time with her family. The band will play six gigs and also spend time recording their new single, which they plan to have out before Christmas, but it won't all be work as Carmel joked: "We're staying right beside one of the biggest shopping centres in the world." And this will allow her to pursue her other passion in life - shopping!