Pete Cummins - singer songwriter from Ireland.
Instruments- Guitar, Bass, Harmonica, Flute, Whistles, Keyboards.
[email protected]
Biography - Pete Cummins.Born and raised in Dublin, Pete Cummins was educated by Christian Brothers in Scoil Mhuire Marino and St Josephs. He left school at sixteen and went into the engineering dept at Independent Newspapers where he stayed until 1968. By the age of eighteen he was leading his band The Circle playing in sports clubs and later the beat clubs that sprung up in Dublin in the sixties. In 1967 he studied flute under Patricia Dunkerly at The Royal Irish Academy of Music.
By 1969 he was, as a member of seminal Irish band, Granny’s Intentions, living in London and playing a residency at the famous Marquee Club and being managed by the well know John Gee who had given breaks to the likes of The Rolling Stones and The Yardbirds.
The band recorded one album for Deram, Honest Injun, which featured Gary Moore on his first ever LP recording.
After Granny’s broke up he found himself living in Castlemartin in Co Kildare and playing bass with the superstar folk singer Donovan. He helped Donovan to form a band in Ireland recruiting Irish musicians including Philip Donnelly, a musician later to play a part in Pete’s career.
In 1973 his life took a major turn when, after playing at a festival in Switzerland and meeting the then fourteen year old Guru Maharaji, he headed to India to play at a festival at The Ram Lila grounds in New Delhi to an audience of a quarter of a million people. Later he headed north to an ashram in Hardwar to study and practice meditation.
In 1976 after some years working as a craft leather worker, (a skill he had picked up while touring America with Skid Row), in Dublin’s Dandelion Market, he started The Fake; with Freddie White and although this band was short lived it is remembered with fondness by all who ever attended the gigs.
In 1979 Pete, with his wife Laura and six month old son Alias headed to the USA, bought an Oldsmobile Vista Cruiser and travelled throughout the country, eventually settling in Miami
in Florida. However a back injury forced him to return to Ireland to seek help from the famous bone setter Dan O Neill in Carlow.
In 1985 along with Johnny Moynihan, Frank Lane, Jimmy Faulkner, Garvan Gallagher and Fran Breen he formed what was to be the most interesting of all the bands he had played in, The Fleadh Cowboys; After Moynihan left, Pete steered the band along a very successful course to the Midnight at the Olympia residency. Over the next two years these shows featured a multitude of talent who would turn up announced to play with the great band. Those who appeared included such luminaries as Mike Scott and The Waterboys, Joe Ely, Nanci Griffith, Ronnie Drew, Shane McGowan and The Pogues, Altan, and a host of others. Dublin at this time was going through a period of depression and these shows, regularly attended by politicians, artists, and musicians alike, did a lot to lift the spirit of Dubliners at the time.
The country was plagued by emigration a subject addressed on the Fleadhs number one album
High Ace to Heaven, in songs Young Men of this Country, and The Texas Boxcar Incident.
The Fleadh Cowboys toured with The Pogues, supported Bob Dylan who offered to release their
album on his own label which unfortunately never happened, they were also invited to guest with U2 on the final night of the Lovetown tour at The Point in Dublin.
In 1998 the Fleadhs released their final album, Time of your Life.
During the nineties Pete dueted with Nanci Griffith on her Grammy award winning album Other Voices Other Rooms, played guitar on the final studio recording by Townes Van Zandt, No Deeper Blue, (produced by Philip Donnelly, Pete’s old buddy from the Donovan days, who he had also recruited to produce the Fleadhs first album). He also recorded and toured with The Chieftains, in the twenty first century, appeared and contributed a song to the Oscar winning Jim Sheridan movie, In The Name Of The Father, appeared in films, The Boxer, Green Journey, the Roddy Doyle TV series, Family, , The Disappearance of Finbar, A Man Of No Importance and Frankie Starlight.
In 2007 Pete released Flowers in Baghdad a single from the current CD The Brilliant Architect, the song was picked up by Neil Young’s living with war website chart www.neilyoung.com/lwwtoday it has remained there for seven months, reaching it’s highest position no 30, the song was also picked up by radical web radio station www.noliesradio.orgThe Brilliant Architect is released to retail on March 7th.
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