 That's some giveaway I'll tell you so get on to HighlandVideo.com and get your tickets and get them early. We say hello and we welcome our third and final act this Monday night and Danny was in with us there and Danny is based in Berlin and it's a totally international show tonight because our next guests are based in Bologna in Italy and it's a tree. You're very welcome. This is Thomas on the fiddle and Liam on the guitar and Fioranzo. Fioranzo, am I saying that right? Fioranzo. Fioranzo. You're very welcome. Thank you. Thank you. It's great to have you here. You're doing sort of a money tour, Liam. Yeah, so we were in the bridge bar on Friday, on Friday evening we're in the bridge bar and that was great, great crowd and we're in coffee time then on just Saturday evening and that was great as well. I've seen videos of that. It's great and we popped into the Glen bar down on Sunday just to know a couple of lads were playing the Futurians, we just came in and played the Futurians with them and that was great as well. Great crack. Yeah, great. So how long have you formed as a bazaar? It's four years now. It's four years now. Probably a bit more than that. Okay. And so I'm living over in Italy obviously and I met these lads through a good friend of ours called Valentina and she put us in contact with each other. Because we were all kind of playing with different groups and she said, listen to that, you should meet up and play together. And so Valentina, Valentina Bouqui is her name and she put us in contact together and she was the one that kind of put the group together. Very good. And that was very nice of her and since then we've been playing. We play a lot now over in Italy and I want to bring the lads over here to play a few gigs and it was great. And yourself, Thomas, where are you from? I'm original from Closer Bologna. And now I live in Crescent. It's just 80 kilometres away. And yeah, basically I'm born and raised in Italy. Very good. The reason why I'm asking is because maybe it's not, but it seems unusual for say Italians to be playing Irish music. Maybe it's not, maybe it just seems to me. Even initially there's not many of us over there. We're kind of scattered all over the country initially. The musicians who played this kind of music and we're just lucky that we actually live quite close to each other that we can meet up and play. We'll talk more. This is a song I wrote called Fiddle Without a Bow. It's about Castle Bar, where I'm from. Yes. It's about Castle Bar and there was a funny story. A friend of mine went to a session one evening and he opened the case, the fiddle case and there was no fiddle in the case. There was no bow. And there was no bow, excuse me. He remembers a friend like that. There was no bow in the case and he couldn't play at all that evening and that stuck in my mind then, that kind of image. And then it deals with L'Occalana as well, the lake around Castle Bar, close to Castle Bar and the silence there. It's about Castle Bar. Castle Bar, there's a silence around L'Occalana like a fiddle without a bow. Absolutely beautiful. Lovely old traditional style in that. I love that. I love that well done indeed. The Queen says, brilliant, well done. Singing Liam Quinn. So there you go. The best Italian Irish musician in the world. And then this is up my owe. You're on your money, you're called a money tour. So how long have you been here? The lads got in Wednesday and then they got down here around Thursday and they're flying out actually on Wednesday. They're flying out on Wednesday. Very mini mini tours. Mini mini tours. And do you come here often? This is the first time we've come now as a group. We've been playing together for four years so it's the first time. We wanted to come over two years ago but then I don't know what happened then. Nobody's going anywhere. And the album, tell us a bit about the album. So the album was called The Cuckoo Sings in May and there's a song on it with that title and people always ask why did you choose The Cuckoo? And it was kind of a bit of a long story but I'll keep it short. We wanted something that would connect the two countries and The Cuckoo is a bird that actually travels comes to Ireland as we know actually travels down through Italy on its way back to Africa. And then we had that song, that rhyme that we all know about The Cuckoo and I was making a putting together song around us and The Cuckoo just fits. You know, a link between Italy and Ireland. And that's the title track and the song on the album as well. Are they all original tracks? During us there's Fiddler by the Bowes on it. The song we just sang there. And there's a couple more original songs and there's tunes on it as well. So Thomas plays some great tunes on it as well. So it's a mix of songs and tunes. Okay. And where'd you record that over in Italy? That was a kind of, yeah, over there. We recorded it over there. It's a bit of a long process now. It took us a while to get it finished. We're kind of the perfectionist maybe. Well, there's nothing wrong with that, you know what I mean? It took us a while now, but we got it finished anyways. As Danny was saying beforehand, he took his time on his album and that's what you do with your craft, isn't it? Where can people get the album? You can find us on Spotify, you can find us on iTunes, all the major streaming platforms and if you come to the gigs you can get the CD. But that's a come over to Italy now to see us. I think so. I think you're based on... Yeah, we're based initially. I know you've come here already, but do you go far from here? Yeah, we get kind of calls sometimes from Germany and other places. I suppose more this year, we've kind of been travelling more abroad. Things seem to be getting back to normal again. So we're actually managing to get it abroad a bit. How did you manage during the pandemic? Music-wise it just stopped? We did the video calls and stuff just to keep chatting. We were very good friends as well. We were good friends. So just to keep the friendship alive we kept calling each other and then we did some videos online and stuff like that to keep it going on YouTube. And we got through that and that was great. I think it's a band that we kept it going. Well, it's great to see. I'm just delighted that you're able to get out and even come over here. It's good for yourselves too, isn't it? Get away and just spread the wings. What's the plans? We're going back to Italy this week. We've got a gig in Italy on Sunday. So we're right back into Italy and then we've got a good few gigs now in August over there. Hopefully, please, I'll be back over here again next summer. Please, God. Is there a big music scene in Italy? It's like I was saying before. It's very spread out. To play the gigs that we're wanting to play, we have to drive around a lot. People like Irish music over there and they do love it. There's a big demand for it in some places. They're always looking out for people to sing and play it. We would love another couple of tracks. We'd love to hear the next piece of music you're going to do first. So Thomas is going to play a set of tunes. The first one is the Manchester set of reels. The Manchester, the old bush and the banks of the island. I got that. Set of reels. From the 70s. Not very old, but still. No, no, no, no. It's been built from close to Venice. It's a totally Italian fiddle, but it's not in the tradition. Although, I have a grand-grandfather whose name was Tomaso Thomas as well who did play the fiddle at the time. That was long ago. We never got to use the fiddle. Thank you. Have you been playing the boron long? 15 years. I'm a teacher in Italy. Very good. Some people have different skins. What type of skin is on that? I don't know. I had a there's a fellow up here one time and I forget for life, but we were talking and I love the boron and it was an awful old skin. It was made in Boston or somewhere. He said to me, I'll get you one. I'll get you one, but I never got around to it. I was always curious about the skin. I know it's goat skin and stuff like that. Listen, we've got a lot of people on here saying hello to you. Paul gets the glasses on here. Ann Simmons is listening here from Tipperary. Who else? Hello from Sheffield from Olivia. Brilliant music. Very, very good. The album is available on all the platforms. Where did you launch it? We had a couple of gigs to launch it now. We're waiting for the official launch but we're going to have the official launch now when we go back to Italy. How have you been finding it since the album has spread your music? A lot of people stream it from countries all over the world especially because they're kind of tunes as well. People might be looking up a set of tunes and they'll find us. And growing up, who inspired you? I suppose the local musicians are on Castle Bar. I used to play a lot of sessions and a lot of pubs. A lot of great local musicians I won't start naming names but all the local musicians who just gave their time, I used to be a young fella going in the corner trying to play along with them and they're just so I owe it to them really. And at what age did you sort of start? 14, 14. And just people in the sessions around Castle Bar who just talks to me. It's a good way of picking things up. Tell us about Coffee Time. Ah, Graspost. The greatest gig there in Saudi now is just they opened up the reopened the restaurant part so the pizza there and wine and everything and just a great crowd and people, we finished playing and then other people started singing and it was just lovely. I loved that as well as when other people joined in it's great. It's a great feeling, a great feedback. It's a really warm and people are so glad to see it back open again because they're open the whole time now but they just reopened this part of it once they've been closed. What brought you up there? Well, I'm a bit biased. My sister, Miro, she's run the place where her husband Brandon Curran and they've been there a couple of years now and can they crown him. And great coffee, great crack. Ah, there you go. Great pizza as well. Pizza. And Barbara says hello. Barbara's from Italy. There you go. The music scene in Italy, as you say you have to travel far to get good gigs. Yeah, for this type of music because select is a thing. So you have to be prepared to travel and stuff and the musicians that play this type of music are like I said we're scattered up and down the country and initially as we all know it's a big place like so. But we're up for it, we're up for gigging and we love doing it. You can tell. Because we're just very good friends at the same time so it's enjoyment. Half the battle. So many tracks from the album in total? There's just ten, just ten tracks. There's ten tracks on the album and it's a mix of songs and tunes. And it's available, it will be available in all the platforms. Yeah, cuckoo sings in May. What's it called? Cuckoo sings in May. Right, we would love to get another piece of music and this time you're going to do for us. Yeah, I'm going to, this is a traditional song written by Ewan McCall called Come My Little Sun and I played this over the weekend and it got a great response from people. It's an emotional song, I mean I get emotional sometimes singing this and people really seem to like it over the weekend. Well, if you want to crown them, you just crown them. Yeah, I will. Thomas will take over the singing. Oh, brilliant. And your own tenement, everybody. Come My Little Sun and I will tell you what to do and dress yourself. The lyrics are just something else, aren't they? There are so many songs I would learn. I know, just absolutely brilliant and your delivery of that and the harmonies was just tight and lovely. Really, really enjoyed that. So, listen, tree, we thank you very much for coming in to see us and I think we could squeeze another tune in if you don't mind. You might be contracted for three but we'll squeeze four of them. We'll get our money's worth. And it's just a pity you're not around a bit longer because you absolutely... I was thinking, Jim, next time we'll come over this day for two weeks. Definitely, you know, there's no bother getting bookings in around here. My God. But it's lovely, it's just the breath of fresh air and it's additional, it's just lovely. I hope we love it, it's the music we love. You can tell that, you know, you can't hide that, you know. Thanks very much for having us on. Oh, the delight for us. Thank you very much indeed for coming in and if people want to get in touch you're on social media. We're on Facebook, so if you just look us up on Facebook, we're on YouTube as well and if you look up the name of the album, you'll find us, just Google that and you'll find us then, one word or the other. I'm really looking forward to that. And the final, final question is... As I said, a tune is called The Rolling Waves so two gigs both called The Rolling Waves. Absolutely, thank you very much. Listen, Lorenzo, is that right? Yeah. I'm glad he got that. I don't like not getting people's names because it's not very nice. Liam's pretty straightforward and Thomas, listen, the band Tree, the pleasure's been ours, thank you so much for joining us. Thanks so much for having us. Have a safe journey back and continue success.