Greetings everyone and thank you for all your support and encouragement this past year. I must congratulate firstly my fellow banjoists Tony Trischka and Bela Fleck for their performance at President Obama's inauguration in Jan 09. I met Tony in Dublin in Dec 08 and he had a surprise for me, he was recording a track in Dublin with Hollywood actor Steve Martin. Steve has an album due out this year which will feature Mary Black singing one of his songs. We had a drink and a session in The Cobblestone pub in Dublin. I was really honoured to meet Steve Martin as he is a great bluegrass banjo player with a lovely touch on melodies.

I've just finished a Christmas tour with the Sharon Shannon Big Band also featuring Mundy and Shane McGowan. Shane was fantastic, a real legend of Irish music.
Later in Sept at the Longford Banjo Festival I had the pleasure of working with our Irish banjo icon Barney McKenna. We did a workshop, and some of his tunes especially the old 1920s jazz songs are beautiful. He plays in such an inspiring way that all young players should try and listen to his music.
The TV programme Faoi Lan Cheoil, with me teaching Sunderland footballer Andy Reid was a great success. Andy came across great and showed he could really play the banjo, I thought the song with Gino and Four Men & a Dog was a highlight.

Exciting news for me is that all of my albums can be purchased from this website from March 09, even more exciting is I have a new CD ready for release. I enjoyed the studio so much last year I kept going since last Feb and have almost completed another album which will be entirely different from the next release. I thought about a double album but the material is vastly different on both so I'll let each cd have it's moment in the sun.
Keep an eye on the gig listing as I plan to do more live shows this year.

Regards to you all.
Gerry