The plaintive cry ‘Ochón!’ translates roughly as ‘Alas!’ and it is an essential and chilling ingredient of the old Irish custom of keening at wakes and funerals. It is also part of the vocabulary of the banshee, a feminine spirit, and harbinger of death in Irish folklore.
As an eleven-year-old boy I was convinced I heard the cry of the banshee outside our house on a dark, stormy night, and the images her howling conjured up in my head have stayed with me ever since.
I wrote the song ‘Ochón’ many years later on a dark and stormy night in a lodge deep in the woods where I had retreated in search of my creative muse. Little did I know she had been standing patiently outside my door waiting for me to invite her in. What followed resulted in a song that explores the darker reaches of the soul and those places we are usually very reluctant to visit.