Down’s wildflowers prepare for stardom

Down’s wildflowers prepare for stardom

14 March 2013 - by BY UNA BRADLEY

If you haven’t yet heard of them, listen up. Wildflowers could just be the next big thing in contemporary country music and the fact that the three young women all hail from Co. Down makes their success all the sweeter.

Emma Tokic, Shauneen Doran and Maria-Therese Brennan sound like The Corrs crossed with the Dixie Chicks. With their first auditorium concert in Downpatrick this Friday night, on the back of a Nashville-produced EP, they are poised on the cusp of a major breakthrough.

The two sisters and their cousin Emma, all still in their twenties, started out as church wedding singers but a canny local music producer, Crossgar GP Finbar McGrady, spotted their potential and challenged them to write their own material.

Within two months, the trio had an album-full of songs inspired by their musical heroes Shania Twain, Faith Hill and, of course, The Corrs.

That led to their EP, While The Sun Shines, which was produced by Nashville’s Aaron Chmielewski and featured session musicians who have played with major country stars including Taylor Swift. It has received lots of local airplay, not least on Radio Ulster’s Gerry Anderson show, where Wildflowers also played live, managing to bowl over the man himself.

“It was so amazing,” remembers Emma from her home in Teconnaught, between Crossgar and Ballynahinch. “Gerry has been so supportive of us. He said we were ‘born for America’ ... I hope he’s right.”

Another recent coup was supporting rising Irish CnW superstar Nathan Carter, in front of their largest audience to date — 4,000 screaming fans Nathan’s ‘people’ have asked Wildflowers to support him again, later this year, at one of Dublin’s premier music venues, the Olympia theatre.

Wildflowers will also share a bill with Van Morrison at the end of May when they play as part of the three-day festival at Castle Ward, Strangford. In July, they are booked into the Dalriada Festival at Glenarm Castle, which in the past has played host to Ronan Keating, The Priests, Duke Special and Sharon Corr.

The three ‘flowers’, who all attended Assumption Grammar in Ballynahinch and whose mums come from the highly musical, 12-strong Flanagan family from Dundrum, have performed together since childhood, although they did not come the traditional route of feis and fleadh.

They have always preferred American country rock to Irish trad, although there’s an undeniable Celtic ‘lilt’ to their sound.

Friday’s concert in the St Patrick Centre — a fundraiser for Downpatrick charity Mainstay DRP, which is building a new, state-of-the-art centre for people with learning disabilities from the Down District area — will be a combination of their own music and standards from the ‘Great American Songbook’.

It’s a gig the girls are particularly excited about, because of the home audience and because it will be their most intimate yet.

“Often our gigs are in pub settings where people are chatting and going to the bar,” says Emma. “This will be the first time that an audience can listen with no distractions.

“I think that intense atmosphere will really suit our music. We’re going to give it 110%. We want people to go home and remember who we are.”

• Tickets, priced at £15, for Friday’s concert can be bought from the St. Patrick Centre, telephone 4461 9000 or Mainstay DRP, telephone 4461 7184. All proceeds go to Mainstay DRP.