Longford singer bidding for glory in TG4’s Glór Tíre

“I’ve watched Glor Tíre since it started and always dreamed that one day I might be on it. I never thought that this year I would be.”

So says Co Longford’s Brid Shaughnessy, a former wedding band vocalist turned Country & Irish singer-songwriter.

She is one of eight contestants taking part in Season 19 of the long running TG4 music series, which begins on Tuesday January 10.

“To be on the show, to have a national - and because of the internet - global audience, who can get to know your music and to get to know you, is huge,” she says. 

“Glór Tíre is a big deal in the Country music industry. It is an important platform for newcomers like me.”

While she might be a ‘newcomer’ on the Country scene, Brid already has some two decades worth of experience as a performer under her belt.

“I was the vocalist in a wedding band that was together for ten years,” she says. “We split up about 10 years ago, so I've been doing music for 20 years, perhaps longer, but I always dreamed of becoming a solo Country artist. It took a little bit longer than I planned, but I got here. Country Music was always the passion.”

Indeed Country & Irish was the soundtrack to life in the Shaughnessy family. “Big Tom was massive in our house,” she says. “I grew up listening to Sandy Kelly, Louise Morrisssey, and Susan McCann. The first record I ever got was by Margo. It’s treasured. I had a huge mix of records and they ranged from Connie Francis to Larry Cunningham to Big Tom.”

In recent years, Brid has begun developing her skills as a songwriter, and the results have allowed her to get onto that first, important, rung of the Country & Irish ladder.

“I had written and recorded my first song, ‘Pity I Didn’t Listen To Me’, then Covid hit,” she says, “but I thought, it’s made, it’s ready to go, so I took the chance, released the single, and it did well.

“It got played on the local radio stations. It encouraged me to keep going, so I released another song I had written, ‘The Loneliness You Put In Me’. That was different, more of a foxtrot, and it also did well.”

As a further marker of her progress, Brid is now working with one of the biggest names in Country & Irish music - Mike Denver - who is her mentor while she is a contestant on Glór Tíre.

“It’s incredible,” she says. “He’s been a huge amount of support. To me he is a star, so to be performing with Mike and his band is a bit surreal. It’s a dream come true.”

Releasing her singles, being on Glór Tíre, and having Mike Denver as her mentor, is exciting for Bríd, and she is well aware of the opportunity the TG4 show presents. Yet she also admits it is a “bittersweet feeling”.

“My late father would have been my biggest fan,” she says. “As a young girl, we would go for a ceilidh to somebody’s house and he would always ask me to sing. He’d bring me along to see bands and ask them to let me up and sing. That was my first taste and he knew I had an interest in it. He always loved to hear me sing and see me perform. He’d be super proud to see me now on Glór Tíre.”

Glór Tíre - Season 19 is on TG4, starting at 9.30pm on Tuesday January 10 2023. Bríd, along with Fermanagh singer, Billy Mac, will be performing on the first episode. See www.tg4.ie and follow @glortire on social media for all of the latest news and updates. To listen to Brid’s music go to YouTube, Spotify, and iTunes.