Born in Madrid, Spain and raised in Chicago, singer/guitarist and songwriter Sarah McQuaid discovered Irish music while studying in France. Holding dual Irish and American citizenship, she has made her home in Ireland since 1994.
In the autumn of [+]Born in Madrid, Spain and raised in Chicago, singer/guitarist and songwriter Sarah McQuaid discovered Irish music while studying in France. Holding dual Irish and American citizenship, she has made her home in Ireland since 1994.
In the autumn of 1997, she recorded her debut solo album, When Two Lovers Meet, featuring traditional tunes and songs along with one original number. The album received a sizeable amount of airplay on Ireland’s two national radio stations, RTÉ 1 and 2, as well as on local radio in Dublin and elsewhere. It also drew highly favourable reviews: “Boy, hasn’t Sarah got a good voice – rich, deep, mature,” Irish Music Magazine enthused, while The Irish Times called her “an accomplished guitarist” and the album “a debut to note”; Hot Press cited “a warm, velvet-tinged voice and a distinctive acoustic guitar style which mark her out as a significant talent” and the Rough Guide To Irish Music wrote: “Sarah’s voice is both as warm as a turf fire and as rich as matured cognac.... An astonishing debut by a unique talent.”
As might be expected of one who has led such a peripatetic existence, Sarah developed a taste for the road early on: From the age of twelve she was embarking on ten-day tours of the US and Canada with the Chicago Children’s Choir. A year or two later she was already a prolific songwriter, entertaining her classmates at school assemblies. At eighteen she went to France for a year to study philosophy at the University of Strasbourg, where her performance at a local folk club drew a rave review in the Dernières Nouvelles d’Alsace, saluting the “superbe chanteuse d’outre-Atlantique qui fit passer comme une vibration émotionnelle dans une salle conquise” (superb singer from across the Atlantic who caused an emotional vibration to pass through a conquered hall)!
Having discovered Irish music and the DADGAD open tuning during her stint in France, Sarah went on to found the traditional band Carnloch upon her return to the USA. The band toured folk clubs, colleges and universities for several years, garnering more critical acclaim: “Sarah McQuaid’s voice is hypnotic,” gushed a concert reviewer in Dayton’s Guide To Musical Diversity, “and I found myself hanging on every word”; the newsletter of New Jersey’s Minstrel Show Coffeeho
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