Tom Dunne
Tom Dunne first saw the light on May 29, 1947, in Tombrick, Ballycarney, County Wexford. The rolling fields in the shadow of Mount Leinster are rich farmland, and fertile country for traditional music as well when Tom was growing up. His first musical influence was probably his Aunt Nellie, who had a grand old-time style on the melodeon, a one-row button accordion that is now seeing a revival in the Irish music scene.
Tom’s first formal instruction came from Tom Ferris, whom he still regards as an extremely talented and underrated button accordionist. Ferris was the top local exponent of the B/C tuning system, an advance in technique popularized in the 1950s and ‘60s by the late Paddy O’Brien of Tipperary and by Galway great Joe Burke. Connoisseurs of Irish accordion style will detect a decided Burke influence on Tom’s fingering and ornamentation.
Tom met his other musical mentor, Kerry fiddle great Paddy Cronin, at the 1967 All-Ireland Fleadh cheoil (music festival) in Clones, County Monaghan. His first trip to America in 1976 was, in fact, a pilgrimage to Paddy’s home in Boston. On the same trip, Tom journeyed down to New York City, where in the Bunratty Bar at the corner of Jerome Avenue and Kingsbridge Road, he met and played with Paddy’s fiddling brother Johnny and with both Joe “accordion” and Joe “Banjo” Burke.
Back in Ireland in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, Tom teamed up with the fiddlers Tony Linneen and Maurice Furlong and pianist Valerie Stamp to form the Slaneyside Quartet. With the group Tom made four appearances on “Ceili House,” a celebrated RTE radio program presented by Sean O’Merchu, and two memorable television broadcasts.
In 1990 Tom met his future wife, Anne Vogt, and two years later moved to her native New York City, where he soon became one of the mainstays of the Big Apple’s thriving Irish traditional music scene. In the theater world he was a musician on The Long Black Coat with David Byrne and John Waters.
Today you can still find Tom playing with many friends at favorite watering holes like The Hutton, The Landmark, The Wheel Tapper, Paddy Reilly’s and at the Irish Cultural Center.