Clare fiddle player, Denis Liddy is launching his new CD, Tradaree, recorded with Elvie Miller on accordion, this weekend at the Ennis Trad Festival. Also launching at Ennis are Dan Brouder, Tara Connaghan and Derek McGinley, and Brian Friel.

Fidil are just about to launch their second CD, called The Old Wheel of Fortune, which sticks to the fiddles-only principle of the first album, though according to Aidan O’Donnell ‘listeners might not notice it, considering the variety of ways we play them on the CD, like the percussive effects, playing bass lines and using octave fiddles’.

Phil Callery of the Voice Squad is putting the finishing touches to a solo album, and tells us that the Voice Squad are getting together again shortly for a recording with Barry Gleeson.

Having performed to great acclaim recently on stage with Liam Ó Maonlaí and Fabulous Beast Dance Theatre in Rian, Eithne Ní Chatháin will be releasing her second CD in the Spring. Ní Chatháin says it is ‘a whole new direction, and all original songs’, one of which, ‘Gentle Star’, has already attracted nearly 60,000 plays on YouTube (see below).

We are going to be hearing from a new trio in 2012 called the Teetotallers, featuring Martin Hayes, Kevin Crawford and John Doyle; they will shortly be announcing details of a Music Network tour. Crawford will also be releasing a solo album in January, and it seems that Hayes will be recording with the Gloaming in early 2012.

We have mentioned previously Cathy Jordon’s forthcoming CD All the Way Home, and the new one from Máirtín O’Connor, Cathal Hayden and Séamie O’Dowd. We have also heard that Altan will have a new CD out in 2012, and of course the Chieftain’s CD to mark fifty years of making music will be out in time for their extensive US tour.

If you have traditional music news, email it to paul [at] journalofmusic.com.