Gareth takes part in music video for health workers

Gareth takes part in music video for health workers

22 April 2020

COUNTRY star Nathan Carter has praised a rendition of one of his most popular tracks performed by singers in honour of healthcare workers north and south of the border.

Local singer Gareth McGreevy pulled together the video performance of May The Road Rise To Meet You last weekend as a way of thanking NHS and HSE workers across the island of Ireland during the coronavirus health crisis.

The Rock Me Mama hitmaker described the effort as “wonderful” and shared the video with all his fans.

The  video performance involved 50 singers and 20 musicians from all over Ireland, including some from Saul GAC, who all sang or played remotely, and would normally have been competing in county and All-Ireland Scór competitions organised by the GAA.

They include Saul’s All-Ireland ballad champions, comprising of Gareth, his GP sister Angela, Grainne Laverty and Sarah McVeigh. Saul GAC had 17 singers and musicians in total involved with the video.

The idea came to Gareth, a former musical director of the Downpatrick-based St Patrick’s Choral Society and current chairman of St Agnes’ Choral Society in Belfast, just last Thursday.

He said: “The GAA wanted clubs to keep performing and to see in video performances in a virtual Scór for its Facebook page.

“We first got together in Saul about three weeks ago to record Remember Those Who Had to Fly Away, a song we had learnt for a concert in The Great Hall in Downpatrick two Christmases ago in memory of our own much loved mentor, the late Phil Stratton, as it was the song with which we won our first All-Ireland title in 2009.

“It’s a song close to our hearts in Saul. As a club we have had a turbulent year in terms of loss, with the deaths of the ladies senior coach Sonia Kinsell and young Niall Laverty.

“As it went down so well on Facebook, someone suggested to me that I could put together a collaboration as I knew people from Scór from all over the island.”

Gareth put a call on Facebook last week to those who wanted to get involved, giving them a deadline of Saturday teatime to send their videos of them playing or singing.

The 32 year-old said: “I sent everyone a guide track so everyone was singing along to the same time and in the same guide and basically turned around in 24 hours. It has received over 20,000 of views and over 1,000 shares already and gone all over the world and it only went live late on Sunday night.”

Gareth is from Teconnaught but now living in Carryduff. The coronavirus lockdown has impacted on his work and musical theatre plans.

He had been due to play the Fred Astaire lead role in the musical Top Hat in the St Agnes’ Musical Society production at Lisburn’s Island Centre last month. An up and coming TV producer, Gareth is now working from home as a production with RTE has been put in hiatus.

Gareth’s Virtual Scór video can be seen on his and Saul GAC’s Facebook pages and on YouTube.