It’s 10.30am on a wet Wednesday in May and Sharon Shannon is singing The Streets Of New York down the phone from her home in

Salthill, Co. Galway. We’ve been discussing the song about an Irish emigrant in the States, but when Sharon can’t recall the lyrics, I self-consciously join in with the odd line and hum.

As collaborations go, the Irish trad instrumentalist has had it better.

It breaks the ice though. Talking about herself is something that doesn’t come naturally but talking about music is an entirely different matter.

For almost 40 years now, the Co. Clare-born musician, best known for playing the button accordion and fiddle, has been at the forefront of traditional Irish music.

Her eponymous 1991 album remains the best-selling record of trad Irish music ever released in this country.

Her work demonstrates various musical influences, primarily Irish folk but also reggae, rock, blues and Cajun, and this genre-defying ability has redefined how trad Irish music is viewed.

For this reason, the 57-year-old is the subject of a new RTÉ One documentary, Tradfluencer — The Sharon Shannon Story. 

The documentary, made by Tamber Media, is an access-all-areas look at the music and life of the renowned accordion virtuoso. 

One imagines that given her self-professed shyness, being the subject of her own documentary must have been quite the challenge.

‘Absolutely,’ she says. ‘Trying to get words out of me is hard but they [the programme makers] were amazing at making me look good. For me, it was made as easy as possible because they followed me around when I was doing a lot of gigs over the last couple of years, so it was like fly-on-the-wall filming, with music and stuff. 

'Put it this way, if they’d been relying on me to talk all the time and nothing else, it would have been much more difficult.’

Sharon grew up on a farm in a small townland called Bealacana, near Ruan in Co. Clare. One of four children — she has three siblings, Garry, Majella and Mary — she enjoyed an idyllic childhood, spending much of her time outdoors, running free or looking after the animals. 

Her household was a musical one. Her parents Mary and Ignatius James were ‘stone mad’ about music and took the four children to set dances in the local pub.

When Sharon was eight, her parents sent Garry to Corofin for tin whistle lessons. A few years later, he took up the concert flute and while his sisters were keen to follow suit and learn how to play the tin whistle, Garry had other ideas.

With a view to setting up a family band, he suggested the girls learn different instruments. Sharon chose the accordion.

‘It always seemed out of reach to me before,’ she says. ‘I thought there was something magical about these beautiful little instruments. My uncle Eamonn had one and used to take it down from a high shelf and play music on it.

‘We were lucky that our parents were able to get us all the instruments.’

The moment her fingers touched the accordion, Sharon knew she’d made the right decision.

She loved the immediacy of the sound and learning to play came easy to her. Along with her siblings, she joined a local trad music group, Dísirt Tóla, and travelled to New York and Boston with them at the age of 14.

For youngsters who’d never left rural Ireland before, it was mind-blowing.

‘For me, it’s such a strong memory,’ she says. ‘We stepped out of the door and bang, the heat! I’d never felt such heat in my life.

‘It stayed with me forever, the shock of it, but also how nice it was for all of us, growing up in Ireland, where it was freezing most of time. 

'I remember the lovely sights too. I was after learning The Streets Of New York and suddenly, I was stepping into the reality of that song.’

Back in Clare, Sharon struggled at school and couldn’t wait to leave. She didn’t fit in and found the subjects she was being taught pointless for use in later life.

‘It just didn’t suit me,’ she says. ‘A lot of people are like that. It just wasn’t good for me or my confidence. Everything I learned at national school gave me the basics for the life I have now. That’s all I needed.

‘Everything else was an absolute waste of time and money, but not just that, it wasn’t good for me psychologically. 

'I know the school system is different now and that they make allowances for people who just aren’t into it, but at the time I remember feeling that they should be teaching us life skills, like how to drive, things that could help us get by in the world as an adult.

‘I hated school so much. My confidence was really low there.’

Sharon’s mum was keen for her to have a third-level education qualification, so she considered doing a music degree at university in Cork. 

When Sharon discovered that it was classical music-leaning with no trad music input, she decided against it and instead, began a BA in Irish and German.

It wasn’t for her though and she abandoned her studies to return home. She then signed up to do a secretarial course in Limerick but after a few months, gave it up too.

Doolin beckoned and 19-year-old Sharon moved out to the coastal spot to try and make a living as a musician.

‘Doolin is this magical place,’ she says. ‘It pulls you in. Well, it pulls in a certain type of person. It certainly pulled me in.’

Sharon had left Doolin and was living in Galway when she met Dublin musician Steve Wickham, of The Waterboys.

She was invited by singer/songwriter Mike Scott to join the band and she accepted, staying with them for 18 months.

During that time, she toured extensively with The Waterboys and contributed accordion and fiddle to their Room To Roam album. 

However, when Mike decided he wanted the band to return to its rock ’n’ roll roots, Sharon left to pursue her own musical projects. She still looks back on that time as a highlight of her career.

‘Such great times were had and I loved those lads,’ she says. 

‘They were so good to me, they were so kind and looked after me. I was a bit younger, so they took me under their wing. We played music non-stop. When we were travelling and facing long delays, we’d have a session in the airport. 

'We’d play music on planes. These days, if someone has an airport session, it ends up going viral because everyone has phones. That would’ve been us. It was constant, non-stop playing and great craic.’

Sharon returned to her debut album which she’d started working on pre-The Waterboys, reinvigorated and with fresh ideas. Sharon Shannon was released in 1991 and was a huge success, becoming the best-selling trad Irish music album ever.

The success of her debut led to her appearance on the smash-hit compilation album A Woman’s Heart the following year and prompted Gay Byrne to dedicate a tribute show to her. 

The 12-track compilation album featured five other female artists — Eleanor McEvoy, Mary Black, Maura O’Connell, Frances Black and Dolores Keane, who passed away in March this year. Sharon contributed two tracks, Blackbird and Coridinio. 

A Woman’s Heart sold over 750,000 copies and nearly one million copies worldwide. But its success took the artists by surprise.

Appearing on The Late Late Show was another pivotal moment and while Sharon felt ‘honoured’, she felt ‘overwhelmed’ too. Initially she wasn’t sure whether to accept, because imposter syndrome had kicked in.

‘I worried that the cat might be out of the bag, that people would see how bad I was speaking, that I’d look terrible, be terrible.’

Was she always hard on herself? ‘Musically, no, but in other ways, like talking on television and radio, yes,’ she says. 

‘It used to terrify me. I’m a lot better than was, but I’m still not 100 per cent comfortable with it all. It still freaks me out. I’d rather talk about the weather or anything really.’

Where she does feel comfortable is talking about music and her beloved animals. At present, she has six cats and five dogs living with her, including Begley, named after her close friend and fellow musician Séamus Begley, who passed away in 2023.

Grief, sadly, is something Sharon is all too well acquainted with. As well as losing both her parents — her father died in 2021, her mother in 2014 — Sharon was left heartbroken when her partner of over seven years, Leo Healy, died on May 7, 2008, from a heart attack. He was 46 years old.

At the time, Sharon says the grief hit her ‘like a tonne of bricks’, once the reality of her enormous loss set in. She feels blessed to have had Leo in her life and eventually found love again, but it didn’t work out.

These days, she’s single and resolutely staying so. She has a male friend and musician who lodges with her and looks after her cats and dogs when she’s gigging. Sharon, who is working on a new album for a November 2026 release, says she’s not looking for romance. 

‘I love my life the way it is. I don’t have space in my head for romantic love any more, it’s too much trouble.’

I ask her if she prefers animals to people. ‘Well, I love animals, that’s true, but I love people too,’ she replies. 

‘I’m so lucky to be surrounded by such wonderful people and I remind myself every night going to bed and waking up every morning, that I’m grateful for my family and friends. It’s something I don’t take for granted.’

• Tradfluencer — the Sharon Shannon Story is available on the RTÉ Player.