Wearing my RTE Radio One/Roots Freeway hat, I travelled recently to Clarinbridge in County Galway, to the home of Clareen Banjos, to present Jimmy O'Regan from Tralee, Co.Kerry, with his beautiful Clareen 5-String Banjo, which he won in a competition on the Summer Series of my Roots Freeway radio show. We were lucky enough to have been sponsored by Tommy Cussen for two beautiful instruments to give away on the show. The first prize to be won was a Tenor Banjo which I presented to the winner at the Johnny Keenan Banjo Festival in Longford last September, and the second was this wonderful hand-made Bluegrass Banjo won by Jimmy. We had an enormous entry to our competition, which was based on having to do a serious amount of research on the History of this instrument, and out of the thousands of answers we got, there were very few incorrect or inaccurate applicants. To my mind, this explodes the old myth that when you are offering prizes for a competition like this one that you have to 'keep it simple'. Sincere thanks to Tommy Cussen and Clareen Banjos for the superb prizes.
On my new series of Roots Freeway I am offering listeners the chance to win a gorgeous Martin Acoustic Guitar, so stay tuned in to RTE Radio One on Saturday nights at 11pm.
