Shasha Zhang is from the city of Cheng Du, in Szechwan, China. She's a dear friend and one of the most technically accomplished musicians I have ever met.
I had seen local band Fire
in the Kitchen, featuring an incendiary Chinese violinist, at an Irish
festival in a Fort Lauderdale football stadium in 2002, so when I walked
into a bar called The Field one night in May 2003 where Shasha and Mark
Kane were playing as a duo I was pleased to have finally caught up with
a remarkable musical personality. As it turned out, the night proved
very significant for me, as I became a regular attendee, and was
inspired by the quality of the music subsequently to quit the rock band
I was playing with and return to my acoustic roots. Mark introduced me
to Kynch O'Kaine who plays whistle on this track, and the four of us
played a single very memorable gig together at Luna Star Cafe in April
2004 which people still remember fondly.
By May 2004 Shasha was working on the arrangement of Seven Seas Behind
with me on home demos, and in October of that year we went into Ridenour Studios
to begin recording
the album-proper. I always had a very clear idea of how this song should
sound, with violin and uilleann pipes. Seven Seas Behind is the album's
most important song for me, and so it was the first
song that we worked on. Eamonn's pipes made it also the last song that
we finished. Seven Seas Behind represents the real beginning as well as
the real end of Green Man Said.