A new album release from Tommy Sands is always a special event but “Fair Play To You All” on Spring Records is perhaps one of his most special offerings of all.
One glance at the cover or a single listen to the music will immediately delight of course but there is so much behind the cover and between the lines that you will find yourself slowly feasting on the contents for a long time to come.
The title itself is an oft used throwaway line in Ireland but in the pen-hand of Tommy Sands it becomes much more profound and an overture to the album itself.
” Tommy Sands is one of the most productive and prolific performers in the history of Irish music and indeed one of the truly great songwriters in global music.
His songs have become part of a long and venerable tradition that now reaches all over the world.
He continues to be a veritable powerhouse of creativity in world music and writes new songs that touch the nerve of all those concerned with social justice and enduring peace between people of all creeds and ethnicities.
He is a true humanist gifted with a unique ability to reach across ethnic divides particularly in his homeland, a territory that has been racked by divisions for literally hundreds of years.
This remarkable recording with the extraordinary musician Steve Cooney is sure to be an enduring contribution to Irish and world music. “
Professor Michael (Mick) Moloney, New York University.
Tommy Sands
Tommy Sands, Co Down’s singer, songwriter and social activist has achieved something akin to legendary status in his own lifetime. From the pioneering days with the highly influential Sands Family, bringing Irish Music from New York’s Carnegie Hall to Moscow’s Olympic Stadium, he has developed into one of the most powerful songwriters and enchanting solo performers in Ireland today.
His song writing, which draws the admiration of Nobel Poet Laureate Seamus Heaney and father of folk music Pete Seeger, prompts respected US magazine “Sing Out” to regard him as “the most powerful songwriter in Ireland, if not the rest of the world”.
His songs, like There were Roses, and Daughters and Sons, which have been recorded by Joan Baez, Kathy Matthea, Dolores Keane, Sean Keane, Frank Patterson, Dick Gaughan, The Dubliners and many others have been translated into many languages and are currently included in the English language syllabus in German secondary schools.
Although constantly performing on stages all around the world he prides in taking his music down from the lights and into the darker corners of society. One of his current projects, teaching underprivilegedprisoners in Reno, Nevada to write their own song with which to defend themselves in court is currently creating a wide spread stir in the world of community art in the United States. Back home in Northern Ireland he has just completed a CD written with Protestant and Catholic schoolchildren about their own areas, in towns and villages around Northern Ireland.
During the Good Friday Agreement Talks, his impromptu performance with a group of children and Lambeg drummers was described by Northern Ireland Deputy First Minister Seamus Mallon as “a defining moment in the Peace Process“.
Mary McAleese, who was cast in a romantic role with Tommy in a local play just before she became President of the Irish Republic has kept up the friendship and periodically calls upon him for advice on cultural events.
“It would take a mean bastard to dislike him”, according to Eamon McCann in Hot Press, Sands has a way with words to charm and disarm and coax a chorus out of the tightest jawed audience.
In May 2002 Tommy Sands received an honorary doctorate of Letters from The University of Nevada for his outstanding work as musician and ambassador for peace and understanding and, May 18th was pronounced “Tommy Sands Day in Reno“.
In December 2002 although the Northern Ireland Assembly had been stood down, Sands managed to persuade the Members to return for a special Christmas musical party together.
As one political after another joined him on stage for a song, Loyalist leader David Ervine was heard to remark, “Tommy Sands is the only man, without a private army, who can intimidate me.” The concert which was recorded for the Sands weekly radio programme, later received a special award at the “World Festival of TV and Radio” in New York.
The song “Music of Healing” co-written with Pete Seeger in 1994 has inspired and given title to an annual seminar to create a “Higher Quality of Disagreement” between opposing Political and Religious leaders of Northern Ireland continues at Rostrevor’s Fiddlers Green Festival to this day.
In 2009 his performance at Pete Seeger’s 90th birthday in Madison Square Garden was among the best in a steller line up which included Bruce Springsteen and Joan Baez In 2019 he wrote the music and performed in the verbatim play “Blood Red Lines” featuring victims and those bereaved in the “Troubles”.
The Rocker - The Artist Formerly Known As Zeitgeist. TAFKAZ 
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