HOME to John Beag Ó Flatharta is Lettermullen among the islands in south west Connemara. First thing you notice as he speaks is the soft lilting tone. It’s an accent tuned to the music of the sea. It’s probably that same timbre and his easy listening style that has endeared him to audiences since he first took to the stage. 
With his band, ‘Na hAncairí’, he developed a unique style of singing. He blends English ballads with the Connemara sean-nós and tints songs composed in the Irish language with a rich dollop of the rhythm found in American country music straight from the sidewalks of Nashville.

The influence for his lyrics is local also. The jist of the story is based mainly on events in his own place; be it emigration songs like “Deoraí Thír an Fhia” or “The Town of Carraroe” or celebrating the beauty of the region in “Lettermullen is a Famous Island.”
But it was an account of a fishing expedition that has now linked John Beag to a particular song forever more. Composed by Eddie Ó Connaighle, “The Nazarene”, tells the story of a night in 1980 when he and Bartley Casey battled with a raging ocean on a stretch of water off the Carna Coast known locally as “The Gates of Hell.”

The song is now to John Beag O’Flatharta what “San Quentin” is to Johnny Cash or “Muirsheen Durkin” to Johnny McEvoy.  It’s worn to a thread with all the airplays on various stations and it became Mid West Radio’s most popular song. Chances are even the girl reading the death and funeral notices received a few requests to play it such is its appeal.

When John Beag is not playing music on the local circuit he’s ‘pleasantly busy’ as he describes it, rearing his young son. When they lived in America, John Beag’s wife Anne died at a young age. Anne was of Mayo lineage as her father William Hargraves came from Fallaugh in Barnatra.