By: Kevin Ransom

Detroit-area fiddler Mick Gavin has been organizing the annual Crossroads Ceili shows at The Ark for “about 12 or 13 years now,” he says. But this year, the concerts will showcase a Celtic-music figure who is probably the best-known guest artist the Ceili has ever booked.

That would be Ashley MacIsaac, who started out as a child-prodigy fiddler from Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, playing that region’s style of traditional Celtic music — before crossing over into rowdy, exuberant Celtic rock in the mid-90s, when he was just in his late teens. That’s when he began doing flashy, flamboyant live shows — for which he donned wild costumes and often ran out into the crowd, screaming at the audience as he played fiery fiddle runs.

He also caused a stir during that era when he wore a kilt onstage, and would often kick up his leg while playing. He even “flashed” the camera — and therefore the TV audience — in such fashion on Conan O’Brien’s show, raising his profile, and perhaps his notoriety, even more. On later albums, he alternated modern-rock and punk sounds with his trad-Celt roots.

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To say thanks for your support we wanted to send you some NEW music for the holidays.

We’ve included some details about the artist, Mickey Harte, and are excited about working with him in the new year.

Enjoy this awesome new song from Mickey:

Christmas Day by Mickey Harte

At the age of 15 Mickey Harte began his musical career entertaining audiences, singing and playing guitar in venues around the N.W. of Ireland. This quickly developed into a full time job when he and some musician friends formed the band “Kryptix” writing and recording his first original album at 17 with the band, while at the same time finishing 2nd level education at St. Columba’s College, in  his native Co.Donegal. he completed 5 years and successfully passed  the leaving cert exams.

From there Mickey moved straight into 3rd level education studying the “Rock school-Performance” course at Senior college, Ballyfermot, Dublin, and was awarded a Merit grade  from city of Dublin V.E.C. continuing to perform with his band for some years and gaining valuable experience on the road. Eventually, Mickey felt the need to go his own way and embarked on a solo career as a full time singer/songwriter, playing acoustic clubs and theatres and supporting many well known irish and international artist during that period.

Mickey returned to collage to further study his music and completed a 2 year btec natoinal diploma course in popular Music at N.W.I.F.H.E. Derry City. recieving a distintion. In 2002 Mickey reluctantly auditioned for a brand new T.V. talent show called “you’re a star ” on R.T.E. the programme took Ireland by storm and Mickey became a house-hold name after winning the competition out right. as part of the winning prize he represented Ireland in the 2003 Eurovision song competition in Riga, Latvia. Signing a record deal with sony records U.K. and recording the #1 album “sometimes right, sometimes wrong” with U.K. producer John Kelly (paul mc cartney, chris rea, kate bush), and We’ve got the world” became the biggest and fastest selling single in Irleland that year.

In 2004 mickey moved on from sony to set up his own label “swerve music” and to date has released 1 full length “Live and Learn”,  2 ep’s and 6 singles on swerve and is currently working on 2nd full length for release spring 2010.

Recently Mickey signed a publishing deal with elevate music for the album “live and learn” and some of his past catalogue, www.elevatemusic.net and is currently working as a contributor and mentor on RTE’s “star search” for young peoples programing. www.rte.ie/ice  click on(star search). This has in turn led to a project called “Musicool Europe” established with friend and TV presenter Brian Ormond. and veteran songwriter and performer Francie conway(song writing coach-the rock school,Dublin). The project is an educational and Music based programme for young performers, musicians and bands. www.bebo.com/musicooleurope

The last 12 months have been busy for mickey with gigs both in Ireland and Europe(Germany, Switzerland,Spain, france) and other side projects including writing the theme music for TV’s celeb boxing programme “lords of the ring” summer 09 and various contributions and performances on the ryan show (2fm), RTE’s late late show, and TV3′s Ireland AM, Expose, Irelands top 10′s.

For further info: www.myspace.com/mickeyharte
Email: handonharte@gmail.com

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