*Teresa Carrig.ย 

KILRUSH SINGER, Teresa Carrig will launch her debut album โ€˜Roots of Loveโ€™ this Friday at the inaugural Vandeleur Festival.

A series of events will be held to mark the three day festival running from Friday 21st to Sunday 23rd July in Kilrush including a performance by the Kilfenora Cรฉilรญ Band and a Fashion Show by the Celia Holman Lee Agency.

Festivities will kick off at the Vandeleur Walled Garden and Visitor Centre on Friday and this is the location for the launch of Teresaโ€™s debut album with a musical performance also to be delivered at 2pm.

Having sung in choirs, folk groups and pubs all her life, Teresa takes the plunge with the release of her first album. โ€œThe message of the album would be to chase your dreams, get up and do what you need to do and donโ€™t let opportunity pass you by, that is the feel of the whole album,โ€ she told The Clare Echo.

From a farming background three miles outside of Kilrush, Teresa credits her mother Bernie for instilling a love of music. โ€œShe would have played piano when she was younger, she always loved music, she passed the love of music onto all of her seven children. They are all singers, Michael the eldest wouldnโ€™t have a note in his head but the others all have a voice but never use it, they can all sing but they donโ€™t, I was the only one to venture down that routeโ€.

As the fourth of the seven children, Teresa is younger than Michael, Hughie and Josie but above Maurice, Bernie and Sally when it comes to seniority in the Gilligan family.

Family support is at the root of allowing Teresa to fulfil her passion. She quipped that her own husband MJ โ€œneeds to be canonised, Iโ€™m gone more than Iโ€™m home at the momentโ€ while the support of her children Cathal, a carpenter who is her soundboard, Aoife for emphasising the need to keep a positive outlook and Sinead for setting up an Instragram page has helped her to realise a lifelong ambition.

At school when attending the Convent of Mercy, Teresaโ€™s abilities began to shine with solo performances. โ€œIn shows at primary school it would have been where I first went and sang, people would have stopped talking and listened so I thought I had something, that is the way it startedโ€.

Soon after, she began singing at weddings alongside Morgan Roughan, Sinead Clarke, Mairead Bermingham and Linda Clohessy. Teresa credits Morgan and Patrick Roche as being key influences in her musical career.

In September, Teresa will hit a milestone in that it will be her twentieth year working as a special needs assistant at St Senanโ€™s Primary School in Kilrush. Two years ago, she took a job share in order to devote more time to releasing the album.

Work on the album started as far back as 2008 when she released the single โ€˜Roots of Loveโ€™ which was arranged by Morgan and includes a duet with Patrick. โ€œI said I neeed to write something decent to prove I could do it,โ€ she recounted.

All ten songs on the album are original tracks, written by Teresa. โ€œI suppose my favourite was the one played on the radio โ€˜Iโ€™m the Oneโ€™, itโ€™s the last one I wrote, I felt I have penned it all with that one, it flowed better and I enjoyed playing it the mostโ€. The album was produced and mixed by Patrick Oโ€™Donnell of Studio 68 in Limerick.

Releasing the album in her hometown of Kilrush is special, even more so that it is at the first ever Vandeleur Festival. In April, she sang on RTร‰ as the Today Show broadcast from Kilrush and Scattery Island.

Her love for her native place is encapsulated in a track dedicated to Kilrush. โ€œWhile my heart is in โ€˜Iโ€™m The Oneโ€™, my soul is in โ€˜Kilrushโ€™. The message behind it is because Iโ€™m here all my life and living all my life in Kilrush, I just felt it was poignant that I have a song about Kilrush because of my love for Kilrush and my motherโ€™s love for Kilrush, she was born and bred in Kilrush and always spoke so highly of it and its people, itโ€™s our favourite place to live, to be and work in and it is the place where we decided to rear our children, we have a big love for Kilrushโ€.

Friends and family have made arrangements to take off work on Friday to support Teresa for what she expects will be a big gathering. โ€œI would like to thank everybody for their support and encouragement and the well wishes Iโ€™ve got over the last few weeks, theyโ€™ve been phenomenal, it has been an unbelievable rollercoasterโ€.

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