Embarking on a 32-track album project would typically, Cathy Jordan admits, be considered “a form of madness.”

But the Roscommon-reared singer and multi-instrumentalist – who rose to prominence in the early ’90s with the world-renowned traditional group Dervish – has never been short of energy, or inspiration.

Decades of repeated “digging and banking” for her various projects has left her an arsenal of thousands of songs – with Cathy finding that, “the more you collect, it gives you an impetus to keep going and collect more.”

“It might not be today or tomorrow that you use a song,” she resumes. “But you have it written down, as something important to go back to, because there was something about it that really struck a chord.”

Her latest release, The Crankie Island Song Project, was a chance to put some of those songs she’s gathered to use, while also celebrating and platforming the various types of traditional songs that exist throughout the country – covering everything from the otherworld to emigration – with one song for each of the 32 counties.

Created over three years, the brilliantly ambitious project, which was nominated for Best Folk Album at the recent RTÉ Radio 1 Folk Awards, saw Cathy team up with Peter Crann, to commission artists from across the country to create accompanying illustrations for each of the 32 recordings.

Adding further intrigue to the mission, it was decided that all of the illustrations were to be displayed on scrolls inside hand-cranked storytelling devices, known as Crankie Boxes.

Cathy Jordan with a range of Crankie Boxes

Of course, this is just one of several projects Cathy has immersed herself in in recent years – releasing Storybook: The Songs of Brendan Graham with Feargal Murray in 2024; Female Rambling Sailor as part of the group Plúirín na mBan in 2023; and Freight Train with UK jazz musicians Paul Clarvis and Liam Noble, also in 2023. The follow-up to Dervish’s star-studded 2018 album The Great Irish Songbook is also expected later this year, with the lead single, a cover of John Spillane’s ‘Passage West’, with Indigo Girls, released in January.

Lockdown was clearly a deeply creative time for Cathy.

“I hit the ground running,” she nods. “I was like, ‘Right. You can’t let this stop you, or you’ll never get back on the horse.’

“I started with a lockdown singsong,” she continues. “Everyday at five o’clock, I’d sing a song. There were tens of thousands of people watching, from all over the world. I did 60 days of that. Then, after that, I started writing and arranging. So I never dropped the ball, really – I was constantly at it. Between then and now, I made five albums.”

The Crankie Island Song Project grew out of an initial deep-dive into the songs of Cathy’s native Roscommon. She soon decided to expand her scope to include the whole island – shading in her progress on a map as she went.

For Cavan, she called in Lisa O’Neill – with the pair collaborating on a powerful rendition of ‘The Rocks Of Bawn’.

“Myself and Lisa go back a while,” Cathy notes. “We both liked the song, but neither of us knew where it came from. It was only in the research for this project that it was uncovered that it was from Cavan. So I rang Lisa up, and said, ‘You have to join me on this.’ So she came to Sligo, and it was just the two of us on it, with various droney boxes – she had a shruti box, and I had an accordion. It was good fun!”

The Mary Wallopers’ Andrew Hendy also contributed to the project, joining Cathy on the Armagh track, ‘The Rollicking Boys Around Tanderagee’.

“That was great,” she recalls. “We hadn’t met that much – but you know when you just meet someone, and you know you’re going to be friends? The wink of the eye, or the same sense of humour. So when I asked him to do this, he said, ‘Absolutely.’ He was mad for it.”

Andrew even travelled all the way to Sligo to record the track – before discovering that Cathy was actually awaiting his arrival in Sean Óg Graham’s Bannview Studios, up in Portglenone, Co. Antrim.

“So another three hours later he arrived – but ever the professional!” she laughs. “It was just great craic. And what a song. Great imagery. It pokes fun at all sorts of sacred cows. It doesn’t take itself too seriously, or allow anyone else to. That suited our demeanour!”

The collaboration with the younger artist also emphasises another crucial aspect of the Crankie Island mission – collecting and recording these songs for a new generation.

“The songs stitch us back into the past – to our forefathers and our ancestors, and the people who inhabited and walked the roads that we now walk,” Cathy reflects. “It keeps us grounded and connected.

“When I was growing up, the way we marked celebratory events was to sing,” she continues. “If there was no craic, we’d make it, by bursting into song. So I connect with the songs on a deep level, because of family. And a lot of them are gone. But that’s who I have in my head and heart when I sing.”

But she’s also passionate about the tradition being carried on by contemporary singer-songwriters – with The Crankie Island Song Project featuring a rendition of John Spillane’s 2021 track ‘100 Snow White Horses’, as well as a song penned by Cathy herself, ‘The Curragh Wrens’.

“There’s fantastic music being written all the time,” she says. “John Spillane is a great example of that. It’s important to keep the next generation reminded that it’s a living tradition – and you can push the boundaries a bit, without bursting the tradition. It’s malleable. It can twist and turn.

“So I’m all for whatever keeps the boats floating, and the branches moving!’

Cathy’s work has also been informed by an international perspective – having travelled extensively with her music, and worked with genre-spanning musicians from around the world, including the likes of Rhiannon Giddens, Steve Earle, David Gray, Vince Gill and Eddi Reader.

“I love most types of music – there’s very few that I don’t like,” she tells me. “Some people don’t like that cross-pollinating. They feel that it will dilute the tradition. But that’s been going on for generations and generations, with the migration of people. We can’t put it in a glass case.

“That’s what a living tradition is. It murmurates – like the starlings – with the people, with its fans, and with its writers.”

Ultimately, Cathy wants to see what she’s started with The Crankie Island Song Project continue to expand.

“There’s 32 songs there, but I could’ve done it ten times over,” she remarks. “My hope is that people will add to it down the years, and keep adding to it. Then, in a hundred years time, we’ll have hundreds of songs from each county – and they’re all illustrated.”

She may have received a Lifetime Achievement Award as part of Dervish in 2019, at the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards, but Cathy clearly isn’t ready to rest on a lifetime of laurels, or get too retrospective, just yet.

“I was like, ‘What? I’m not finished yet!'” she laughs, as she recalls receiving the honour. “It certainly didn’t make us think, ‘Well, you have it achieved now, you can sit down.’

“I always have an itch in me to have more output than maybe the band could do,” she continues. “With the band, it’s an album maybe every four years, whereas I felt I had an awful lot more stored up than that.

“So I had to have a bit more of an output – for a while anyway, until I settle the cacks…”

The Crankie Island Song Project is out now.