Notes from the Boneyard: Irish roots

by Mark McCausland

Nice morning, so I decided to take a spin on a Kurt Cobain ancestral pilgrimage.

Not in Seattle Washington, but here in County Tyrone.

Kurt’s great great grandparents Samuel and Letitia Cobane – the spelling changed when they emigrated to America – were from the area of Carrickmore, just outside my hometown of Omagh.

Interestingly, John Lennon’s grandmother was also from Omagh.

And so was the mother of the King of Skiffle, Lonnie Donegan, the man who you could say, started it all.

But it goes back even further than that.

Millions of years back.

Because the mountains that surround Omagh are actually part of the Appalachian mountains, the same mountain range that spans through America and some of Scotland.

Yes, it was all one big mountain range before the continents split and parted about 200 million years ago.

Then in the 18th century, Irish settlers dwelled in those American Appalachians and took their songs with them, and Celtic melody fused with African rhythm and became mountain music, bluegrass, country and beyond…

So was it somewhere in his DNA that the music that spoke to Lonnie Donegan was American music, particularly the blues, by the likes of Leadbelly?

And wasn’t it in hearing Lonnie sing those songs of Leadbelly that made John Lennon pick up a guitar in the first place?

And wasn’t one of Kurt Cobain’s most-loved performances a cover of a Leadbelly song?

Is it just a coincidence that all three of those guys also have their family roots in the same small town in Ireland?

What could it all mean?

And what’s Leadbelly got to do with all of it?

My brain was beginning to fry, my mind in a knot, driving at a snail’s pace up there on the Cobain trail.

I finally came to the conclusion that none of what I’m talking about makes the slightest bit of sense.

But yet it also all kind of does…

A surreal dream as Kurt suddenly came on the car stereo singing ‘Where Did You Sleep Last Night?’.

I looked around.

I was lost for sure.

Lots of crossroads up in those hills.

I must have passed through a dozen of them.

They reminded me of that old myth about Robert Johnson, another blues legend, selling his soul to a certain someone at a similar junction on the other side of the Atlantic.

Where’s the devil when you need him?