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Welcome to Thom Moore’s page here at podcasts.ie. We have included some unique audio recordings of Thom’s work for you to listen to.

Thom Moore was born in California, though he spent his formative years (1950-1961) in Ethiopia and Lebanon. He moved to Ireland in 1971, settling in County Sligo. He formed the band Pumpkinhead in 1973, performing original material and Irish traditional music. Their only recording was released in 1975, the very first release (LUN-001) of The Bothy-Band house label Mulligan, but the band itself was dissolved a year later. He then founded a new group Midnight Well, which also recorded in Ireland with Mulligan Records (LUN-011) in 1977. In 1979 he returned to California, where he found himself an instructor of English grammar, punctuation, and vocabulary at a school in Van Nuys, a position he held until July 1987. Whilst in California he was still writing songs and performing weekly with an Irish traditional band.  One of his songs from this period, Carolina Rua, was made popular by the Irish singer Mary Black in the summer of 1989, and he decided to return to Ireland and resume his musical career in the autumn of that year, although work took him to Russia for yet another six years. Variously employed there as an interpreter and then an English teacher, he kept his links with Ireland and divided his time between both countries, until returning to Ireland with his new family for good in November, 1995.

Thom is probably best known as a songwriter, with hit songs for Mary Black such as ‘Carolina Rua’ and ‘Prayer for Love’, and for Maura O’Connell songs like ‘The Scholar (The Train to Sligo)’ and ‘Saw You Running’, as well as such generally-recorded classics as ‘Cavan Girl’. His albums include ‘Gorgeous & Bright’, which was released by Starc Records in 1994, and ‘Dreamer in Russia’ with Sound Records in 1990. His latest release ‘Seven Things Aloom’ was released on Silverwood in 2013.

                                 

His creative work, which he considers more literary than musical, shows the distinctive influence of the various countries and cultures of his experience, but most of all the influences of Ireland and of Robert Graves.   Thom’s latest CD ‘Seven Things Aloom’ was released in April 2013 and our podcast features a recent interview with Thom about the new album interspersed with some of the songs from the album

If you would like to find out more about Thom and his work you can visit his website by clicking here.