The MacManus Brothers

Pretty self-explanatory
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bambooneedle
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Post by bambooneedle »

It's wimpish to whine about lack of popularity, but consider that it might not in fact be Ronan.
johnfoyle
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Post by johnfoyle »

but consider that it might not in fact be Ronan.
Yes, Ronan - we need proof!!
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Post by whar »

I'm more star-struck by johnfoyle after reading the intro page of Complicated Shadows. I simply can't get excited about Ronan.
Oy with the poodles, already!
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Post by BlueChair »

johnfoyle is mentioned in Complicated Shadows?
This morning you've got time for a hot, home-cooked breakfast! Delicious and piping hot in only 3 microwave minutes.
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mood swung
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Post by mood swung »

yeah, he's in the part about scary men who live alone with their cats...

kidding! kidding!

I think both of the Fabulous Foyles are thanked on that acknowledgment page I ordinarily never read, but did this time because it was mentioned on the board.
Like me, the "g" is silent.
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Post by johnfoyle »

Martin 'n my involvement in 'Shadows was explained in a part of the board that was lost in crash late last year.

Graeme e-mailed us in May '04 , asking us if we would like to have a look at the proofs of the book. We gladly did , noteing some minor factual errors ( wrong David Ackles album title etc.) . I queried some aspects of the book , which Graeme justified as being compromises needed when addressing a general audience. He thanked us
and that was that.

Our resultant credit in the finished book was a very welcome surprise !
Mikeh
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Riverway

Post by Mikeh »

Forget the haircuts - the Riverway single was fantastic! It was criminal that it was overlooked.
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Post by Ronan MacManus »

don't know what i can say to prove who i am... but thanks to those who said complimentary things about us, we haven't stopped playing music altogether, just not all together... and to those talking about not being star struck, i didn't ask anyone to be impressed by me joining in the conversation, but you were talking about me and my brothers, thought i had a right to have my say... nice to speak to you all
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verbal gymnastics
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Post by verbal gymnastics »

Ronan MacManus wrote:don't know what i can say to prove who i am... l
Give us a sign! :lol:
Who’s this kid with his mumbo jumbo?
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Extreme Honey
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Post by Extreme Honey »

Ya tell us Elvis's most embarrasing moment and we'll beleive you!
Preacher was a talkin' there's a sermon he gave,
He said every man's conscience is vile and depraved,
You cannot depend on it to be your guide
When it's you who must keep it satisfied
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bambooneedle
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Post by bambooneedle »

Extreme Honey wrote:and we'll beleive you
Speak for yourself.
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Ronan MacManus

Post by Mikeh »

Ronan has got a new band together called Biblecodesundays. He is the only MacManus in the band and they play music on traditional Irish instruments! Check out their website and the new stuff sounds great!
martinfoyle
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Post by martinfoyle »

Here's that link, http://www.biblecodesundays.co.uk/index.html , Ronan sounds a bit more Irish than our Dec these days.
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Post by johnfoyle »

Definitely a common source!

http://www.biblecodesundays.co.uk/5.html

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Ronan Mc Manus (right, January , 2006)

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Declan Mc Manus ( holding radio, from Scully , 1984)
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Branst
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Post by Branst »

Anyone know where I can buy the Riverway single?
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thepopeofpop
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Post by thepopeofpop »

Branst wrote:Anyone know where I can buy the Riverway single?
It's listed at Amazon UK.

I missed this thread up until now! Maybe that was Ronan after all, an imposter would probably have posted a lot more and been quite annoying.

Elvis' dad remarried in 1976, so Elvis is a lot older than his brothers. For that matter, Elvis' son Matthew is older than Elvis' brothers!
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Post by johnfoyle »

http://www.irishabroad.com/news/irishpo ... ct0505.asp

A Healthy Debut

By Grainne McLoughlin

Sláinte is one of those bands that help give Irish people in Britain an identity and sense of belonging. Having just released their debut album, Bible Code Sundays, Sláinte’s frontman Ronan McManus chats with Grainne McLoughlin about their unique approach to music and how the recent launch marks only the beginning.

It seems talent runs in the McManus family. Half-brother to Declan McManus — better known as Elvis Costello — and son to legendary musician Ross McManus, Ronan McManus is set to follow in similar footsteps.

Having started Sláinte over 10 years ago alongside his brothers, the group were content to play the London pub circuit. But when Ronan met Andy Nolan — who was then the accordion player with Shane McGowan and the Popes — they really started to piece together a serious group consisting of some of London’s finest musicians.

Now Sláinte — which encompasses Patrick Franklin, Enda Mulloy, Joseph Moran and Carlton Hunt alongside Ronan — have just released their first and much-anticipated album Bible Code Sundays.

Drawing on the influence of traditional Irish music and modern rock, the lads are delighted with the finished product.

“We’re really happy with it,â€
johnfoyle
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Post by johnfoyle »

http://www.irishabroad.com/news/irishin ... 180407.asp


Irish Voice, New York

April 19 '07

A religious Experience

THE next big thing in Irish rock came across the pond and splattered the crowd with ear splitting thrills at Rocky Sullivan’s. Based on the meager crowd on hand to witness it, many people had apparently split town for the Easter break.

That was a shame. The Bible Code Sundays is aptly named, as the band is a religious experience.

Fronted by Ronan MacManus, brother of Declan who is the artist currently known as Elvis Costello, these London rockers delivered an adrenaline fuelled set of hard charging original rock tunes.

Rather than sprinkle in an occasional flute or accordion trill to give an arrangement the ol’ Celtic feel, the Bible Code Sundays put everything on the table arrangement wise during their woefully short set. The furious fiddle raced with the flute as MacManus rode roughshod over the whole Celtic noise with acerbic modern rock guitar chords.

The band does know how to slow it down to produce a tearjerker when need be. “Mayo Moonâ€
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Re: Ever Heard of Riverway?

Post by johnfoyle »

http://www.irishabroad.com/news/irish-v ... 01008.aspx

Image

The Bible According to MacManus
October 30, 2008

Off the Record by Mike Farragher

DO you remember a time when Shane MacGowan had a working set of choppers? How about the time you heard bands like the Saw Doctors and Black 47 for the first time?

Here’s something that makes you feel old — those bands are about to mark their 20th anniversaries!

While seeing those bands today is still a nice kick, when was the last time you got knocked over the head with fresh new music in the Irish rock genre?

Your wait is now over, though. The music of Biblecode Sundays takes you back to that time, offering a wildly original voice to the Irish rock genre with their CD Ghosts of Our Past.

Led by Elvis Costello’s kid half-brother, Ronan MacManus, Biblecode Sundays
bring that famous sibling’s defiant energy while neatly avoiding any comparisons. Songs like “Pirates of Clew Bay” and “See You at the Crossroads” have a big, meaty rock undercurrent that flows beneath banjos and flutes; if Bruce Springsteen snorted some Lucky Charms, it might sound something like this.

The band can put down the whiskey long enough to write a tearjerker that will hit every Irish immigrant in the gut. ”The moonlight where we used to walk/I left you standing there/I left you alone/I could swear the my sorrow you could see from my shadow,” MacManus sings to his lover before he boards “the coffin ship to New York” on the gorgeous “Mayo Moon.”

This six-piece band of “Irish Londoners” are music industry veterans who have been breaking festival records in the U.K. and Europe. The group is led by McManus, Andy Nolan (ex-MacGowan and the Popes) on accordion, Carlton Hunt (ex-Bad Manners) on drums, Enda Mulloy (son of Tom from the legendary Mulloy Brothers) on harmonica, bass and vocals, Joe Moran (ex All-Ireland champion) on flute, whistles, guitar and vocals and one of the best young fiddle players in London, Patrick Franklin.

I first caught a glimpse of the band last year during a raucous, unforgettable set at Rocky Sullivan’s, where they were playing to small crowds in an attempt to build a fan base over here.

They literally shredded their instruments. There was only one string on Ronan’s guitar when he walked off the stage.

They were selling the U.K. release of Ghosts of Our Past at the merchandise table at the time, but they have since revamped and remixed each song for their proper U.S. release on Cosmic Trigger Records (cosmictriggerrecords.com).

“We revisited the album when we thought it was being released,” says MacManus. “We pulled out the guitar parts out there that we didn’t properly release before.

“We learned a lot since we recorded our album and we put that into this revamped recording. We were just finding our feet back then, and we wanted another chance to give it a harder edge.”

They needn’t have bothered. While this version of the CD sounds brighter than the original, the stellar songwriting takes front and center stage over the production.

The album is released on iTunes and through Cosmic Trigger Records, and MacManus is stoked to make new friends on this side of the Atlantic. I spoke to him over the weekend about growing up in a musical family and thriving in a dying London pub scene; here’s how it went.

I read where the pubs are literally drying up in England, with closures every day. How does that affect an Irish pub band like yourself?


The financial crisis hasn’t been touching us at all. We’re booked every night. People will always find money for a drink. I also think the tougher the times get, the more people will need to go out for a good night.

Have you played over in Ireland and if so, what is the reaction? How do English and Irish audiences differ from the ones here in the States?

We haven’t done that many gigs in Ireland. We play during holidays sometimes when we visit Mayo.

Birmingham and Manchester is really where our fan base is. Australians seem to dig our music.

I think that we are Irish exiles, and we are more appealing to the fellow exiles in London and American. When we played at Boston it was so like what we were used to that we didn’t think there were any differences at all.

I’ve gotta ask the obligatory Elvis Costello question — what was it like growing up with him and what does he think of your music?

Declan (Elvis’s real name) was already famous by the time I was a year old. All the brothers played. Declan was from my dad’s first marriage, then there are four of us from the second marriage. Four brothers in five years. We have a drummer, flutes, and the like.

We would always be singing and my dad liked everything from the Wolfe Tones to Miles Davis. He really gave me a rich musical palette to choose from.

The Irish stuff was the first thing he lashed on it. He encouraged us to keep the tradition alive, and that culture is in my blood. For our future, it’s important to embrace our past.

I don’t see Elvis all that much. He’s got his native New Yorker sons and divides his time between here and there. When we do connect, he always gives me encouraging words.

I saw him twice — once as a support to The Police this summer, which was a great performance of hits. The other time was on his own a few years ago, and he played all of this obscure stuff that was lost on most of the audience.

When he plays for his audience he can be more indulgent. They are geeky nerdy people that know everything, so he can play that. I should know: I am one of his geeky fans! He really has written some pretty amazing stuff. My dad told us that at the end of the day we are there to entertain the crowd.

What does dad think of your music?

He loves it. He did a poem. He wrote a song called “Stranger In My Land” about his trip back home to Dungannon, County Tyrone. It was a weird feeling for him. He always felt a connection with the town and when he got there, he realized that he no longer belonged there. That’s something many of us can identify with, and those are the stories we try to tell in our songs.
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Re: Ever Heard of Riverway?

Post by johnfoyle »

http://www.ecweekend.com/arts/story.asp?id=48258

Image

3/12/2009
Irish motivation
Ear Full
The BibleCode Sundays to play The Banshee


There’s something about the The BibleCode Sundays’ album Ghosts of Our Past that suits this time of recession. Born out of the London pub scene, the band boasts a pop sensibility that mellows its Celtic punk edge. The result is a rock that faces a gritty reality not with a buoyant spirit of perseverance. Taking the risk that the band’s Ronan McManus might think us delusional, we pitched him this idea via telephone last week while he was in London. “There are a lot of downtimes in the Irish story, so that sort of grit tends to be there. If our songs have reflected that, that’s great,” he said. “The Irish came to America and they started at the bottom and sort of worked their way up. So there is an uplifting element but there was a lot of dirt and grit and grime. You’re down but you’re looking up rather than on the edge of a cliff.”

The BibleCode Sundays remixed and re-mastered their previously self-released album after signing with New York label Cosmic Trigger. McManus likened the improved sound to “pulling a pillow away from the speaker.” The band’s first U.S. tour in support of the album will bring it to The Banshee in Scranton on Parade Day-eve before heading to Boston to open for The Drop Kick Murphys’ sold-out St Patrick’s Day show.

Mc Manus, who sings and plays guitar, shares a father (Ross, a well-known band leader from the ’50s-’60s) with Declan McManus, better known as Elvis Costello. A little more than four years ago he was playing covers in a band called Slainte with accordionist Andy Nolan and three of his other brothers. When those brothers left to pursue other interests, BibleCode’s current lineup fell into place and it wasn’t long before they entered the studio to lay down some originals. Crowds were soon requesting the new tunes and as the band looked beyond the London pub scene, it realized a name change was in order. “There are a lot of bands called Slainte,” he laughed. “And there’s a Slainte pub in nearly every city in the world.” The BibleCode Sundays was the title of an album of covers released by Slainte before it was adopted. It refers to an encryption in the Torah believed by some to prophecy future events (e.g. the assassination of John F. Kennedy). “We went through a phase where (debating) conspiracy theories was the big thing,” he explained. “We’d do two gigs back-to-back on a Sunday and they weren’t the nicest of venues to play so we tended to drink through them. So we’d end up at 3 in the morning wasted talking about all these things in the book of Revelations.”

The themes of Ghosts of Our Past, however, focus more on stories of the Irish Diaspora. “Immigration is a big theme in Irish history. My family came through Liverpool and then down to London, which was really Protestant run at the time and if you were Catholic you couldn’t get a job on the dockside unless you lied about being a Catholic. It was really sort of a dodgy time there,” said McManus in reference to the album’s opening track “Dockside Lullabies.”

For more information, visit http://www.biblecodesundays.com.

http://www.biblecodesundays.co.uk/bcshtml/giginfo.htm

http://www.banshee-pub.com/

http://www.cosmictriggerrecords.com/id54.html

http://www.cosmictriggerrecords.com/id54.html
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Re: Ever Heard of Riverway?

Post by johnfoyle »

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Re: Ever Heard of Riverway?

Post by Man out of Time »

I see that most of the Brodsky Quartet are on Ronan Macmanus' solo album "Strawberry Hill". The credits for the album list a "String Quartet" comprising: Paul Cassidy, Jacqueline Thomas, Ian Belton & Lucy.

I also note that a lot of the Youtube links for Ronan and the Biblecodesundays were posted by Mark Hillary. He is also the only person I have found so far who was at the recent EC gig at Ronnie Scotts to promote National Ransom. He posted his camera phone photos from the gig on Flickr.

I will have to look out for future appearances by R Macmanus in the Ealing area.

MOOT
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Re: Ever Heard of Riverway?

Post by Man out of Time »

Man out of Time wrote:I will have to look out for future appearances by R Macmanus in the Ealing area.
It seems that Ronan MacManus continues to play at the Rose and Crown in Ealing (West London), at "Tweetups", which appear to be regular gatherings of Twitterers.

Here he is in a photo taken from such a gathering in February 2011:

Image

Image copyright QH Photography http://www.qhphotography.com.

MOOT
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Man out of Time
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Re: Ever Heard of Riverway?

Post by Man out of Time »

As well as playing pubs in Ealing, it seems that The Biblecode Sundays are touring America. Here they are in Boston joining EC for American Without Tears:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYlcrkoxGzs

and Little Palaces:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xqrZOE8Vk1Y

MOOT
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The BibleCode Sundays

Post by Man out of Time »

After joining the Revolver Tour at the Royal Albert Hall and in Glasgow, It seems that Ronan and the Boys will be back in the USA today, playing The Plough and Stars in Philadelphia, PA.

http://biblecodesundays.com/tour.cfm

They then go on to play three nights at The Blackthorne Resort in East Durham, NY. Then back to the UK for a series of pub gigs.

Their American trip will preclude them joining any more Revolver dates in the UK (like tonight's). In my view, there are actually too many of them to supplement The Imposters. It would work better if they joined one of Elvis's solo dates and could spread out without the Songbook taking up room on the stage.

There are some songs in the EC songbook that work well with an Irish/Celtic flavour to them, like Tramp The Dirt Down and it would be good to hear that combination one day.

MOOT
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