Barry McCabe

Please contact us at info@barrymccabe.com for postage & packing charges. We'll try to work out the best deal possible for you.

Top quality shirt with round collar. 100% cotton. Sizes range from Medium to XXXL.

Click on T-shirt photo to view different designs/colours.

Please contact us at info@barrymccabe.com for postage & packing charges. We'll try to work out the best deal possible for you.

Top quality shirt with round collar or V-neck collar. 100% cotton from Sols. Sizes range from Small to XL.

Click on photo to view different designs/colours.

Please contact us at info@barrymccabe.com for postage & packing charges. We'll try to work out the best deal possible for you.

All these ladies shirts are one size - medium.
Available in Black & Red

Click on photo to view different designs/colours.

Sorry - temporarily out of stock!

The total price is Euro 10.00, which INCLUDES postage to anywhere in the world!

The book is only available through this website!

The book "THE MAKING OF THE PEACE WITHIN" is a glossy 20 x 30cm book, written by Suzanne Delaney. It includes 25 photos (of which 10 are full colour). There are chapters about the collaboration of Barry McCabe with Davy Spillane, background information about their project, and an in-depth look at all the songs on the CD. It also talks about musical influences such as Rory Gallagher, Peter Green, etc. The foreword is written by Barry Devlin, a well respected script writer for BBC T.V., and a founder member of the legendary Irish group Horslips! Indispensable for anyone who wants to know all the ins and outs of The Peace Within!!!

Chapters:

1. Foreword - written by Barry Devlin, founding member of Horslips (Ireland's premier Folk-Rock band) and now a very successful playwright for the BBC among others.
2. St. Patrick's Day - short explanation about how the CD "The Peace Within" came to be recorded
3. Barry Mc Cabe - details Barry's early life, growing up in a small village in Ireland and discovering what music means to him.
4. Albatross - details Barry's start in the music business with his first band Albatross.
5. A New Start - Barry talks about the ideas that became "The Peace Within" CD - mixing the blues with Irish traditional music for the first time, and working with the great Davy Spillane.
6. The Songs - detailed information about every song on "The Peace Within" CD; about the recording of the songs and the ideas behind the songs.
7. Barry Mc Cabe's Discography - a comprehensive list of Barry's recorded work to date.

Excerpts;
Chapter Three - Barry Mc Cabe

When Barry started to get serious about playing the guitar he had terrible fights with his mother. "She didn't want to hear about it at all" Barry says. "It was the standard line - get yourself a decent job!". When I bought my first amplifier it was in the sitting room beside the record player. I would connect it up to the record player to make it louder. She hated that. Also every time it looked like we had visitors coming she used to get into a flurry of dusting everything, and then came the line -"and get that thing outta here!", that thing being my amplifier. This went on for years but if I look back on it now, I think it only helped to make me more determined. The more somebody tries to take something away from me the more I'll hold on to it".

Chapter Four - Albatross

That was the first edition of Albatross and lasted around three years. Barry wanted to travel more and play all over the country. John Smith had done it all before and wasn't interested in doing it again and Joey, their drummer, had commitments at home. So Barry got two new guys, moved the band to Dublin, and proceeded to tour the country.

The next big step was going abroad with the band for a tour of France. A friend of Barry's lived there and arranged a tour for the summer. This tour became the turning point. The reactions of the audiences were great and after the tour Barry knew that this was what he wanted to do for the rest of his life. Around that time the band members still had day jobs and it was becoming a bit of a struggle to try and balance the two. They organised another tour of France the following year, this one was a bit longer, and again they got the same positive reactions. This was enough for the band to make a decision. They quit their day jobs and started an uncertain future.

First they went to Denmark where a friend of theirs had arranged a tour. She knew the band very well as she used to hang out with them before she moved to Denmark. So five guys, armed with nothing more than a beat up old van, some broken down equipment and a lot of faith and hope, boarded the ferry and burned their bridges. Now they were professional musicians!

Chapter Five - A New Start

After having recorded three live CDs and toured just about every corner of Europe, Barry realised that he needed a very well earned rest. "It's really hard to explain fully the pressure you're under by being on the road most of the year, year after year", he says. "Your lifestyle changes, but very slowly and subtly". He realises he has been very fortunate to have played some of the best halls and festivals with some of the greatest artists of our time. "But some of those encounters were a sobering lesson in the dangers that await you in the rock 'n' roll business", Barry explains. "When you see some people up close, who you've either revered or try to emulate, only to find them sad and lonely or living out of a bottle, then it's time to wake up and smell the coffee! I guess that's what started me thinking that maybe I should slow up a bit or take some time off".

During this time off it became clear that he wanted to play music again, but of one thing he was very sure. It was definitely not going to be in the same way as before. There was going to be no more back-to-back tours, with little time off to write songs or do other things. He felt that if he would do that again he would only end up back where he left off. Barry had written a lot of new material so he was very eager to get into a studio and record it.

To include both the blues and Irish traditional music on his new CD made sense, because anyone who's followed Barry Mc Cabe's career so far will know that blues is probably his biggest love in music and traditional Irish music is the music he grew up with. "Maybe it's the melancholic feel of the blues that is so close to the feel of Irish traditional music", Barry says, "or maybe it's my empathy with the under-dog in the situation, I don't know. All I know is that it's the one music I can go back to time and time again and always get what I need from it.

Chapter Six - The Songs

(Gotta) Let It Go - one of the ballads, which is the next song on the album, also has to do with inner change. "It's about the way we think and the reason why we think in that way", Barry says, "and more importantly why we should let a lot of it go as it's only things we've been told to think".

Barry started to think about writing this song when he got involved in a new relationship. "One day I was asking myself why I liked this girl so much and I realised that it was because we had a lot in common. We thought the same way about most things and by way of that we didn't have much to argue about. Then I started thinking about why people like certain things and not other things. If you think about it it's because of what we have been told by our parents or what we've seen at home as accepted behaviour. As a child you try the best you can to please your mother or your father, so it's obvious that you'll do something quicker that will get you a pat on the back than a 'clip in the ear'. So here actually begins our conditioning, or way of thinking. That was the shock I got from my new relationship. Because I realised that if I didn't like something about her, it could be a result of my upbringing as well. This of course started me to think about my father and the things he used to say to me. I realised that if I wanted to lead my own life then I had to throw out all the stuff that I had built up over the years and just rely on my own inner feelings. So the title of the song says it all in this case".

Nobody's Hero - is in direct relation to "One Of These Days", and indirectly to a lot of the songs on the CD. With this CD Barry really started writing about the things he believes in; "as I keep saying I'm trying to find out things about myself, and about life, so at no stage am I saying that my findings or solutions are the answers to anybody else's problems. Everybody's got to find that out for themselves. That's why I wanted to write an instrumental piece of music and call it "Nobody's Hero", because there is no message here. Everybody should look for their own answers!"

These are various T-shirts from previous runs. Some are very, very rare.
The BMC Band - only large
White Albatross with 2-colour logo - only XL
White Burning The Midnight Oil - only XL
Black Albatross - only XL
Grey Albatross - only large
Click on T-shirt photo to view all shirts