Local singer songwriter roots about for new folk single

A new song by a Maudabawn man celebrates what we've all been reduced to in recent months – Rootin.
Brian Reynolds is the brains behind the easy going folk song released this week. Rootin seems to be channelling the current zeitgeist, but while it has only recently been lazered onto disc, it was actually penned three years ago.
“It's a word that everybody knows, everybody indulges in it – don't try to tell me you don't!
“Everybody has so much time off – people in gardens and around farmyards as they realise all the work they could be doing, tidying up or making things. Rootin!”
He was prompted to revisit the song having got great reaction when he played it at a gathering in London with a large contingent of 20-year-olds.
“I sang the song and they seemed delighted – they were singing along with the chorus even though they didn't know the chorus. Okay there were a few bottles of wine involved as well, but I thought if people that age like it, maybe there's something in it.”
He adds: “Writing a song is easy, but writing a song that will click with the general public is what you would aim to do at some stage.”
Rootin's delivery is typical of Brian's folk style. He started recording at Fiontan McManus's studio in Belturbet last October, and completed the track just ahead of the lockdown. A light-hearted video featuring Brian mooching about farmyard was knocked together for Youtube over Easter bank holiday weekend, and is already drawing good interest.
The ditty sketches a bachelor farmer, who's letting all around him fall asunder but still endlessly flat out toiling over nothing odd jobs.
'Car won't start/Battery's dead flat/The cattle's broke out/There's a hole in the gap', goes the chorus.

Brian agrees with the Celt that Rootin's an active form of procrastination.
“I know a couple of people who always seem to be working – they always seem to be busy.
“You could be coming home with your good clothes on Sunday evening and there's some guy coming out of a gap with a bale of silage on the back of the tractor.
“I think it's a universal word, I suppose every culture has a word for it.”
He names Colm and Tommy Sands from County Down as influences, as they celebrated life and people of their own parish.
“I'm writing these songs, not to be the next Ed Sheeran, and nor do I want to be, but I think if you write about particular people and characters, they'll always be there.
“It's like folklore almost, maybe you're keeping the memory alive of people who lived in a parish or a townland. A lot of the people I write about, or who feature in a song, they were unique sort of people because they stood out in the way they behaved or the things they said.”
Brian will finally have the CD single in his hands this week.
“I'll send it off to a few radio stations to see if I can get any airplay and build on the momentum.”