After several successful meet and greets in Dingle in the past, we are now organizing a special meet and greet in Dublin on Sunday 20 June 2010. This year’s meeting is held in conjunction with three concerts on the preceding nights at the Olympia in Dublin. The meeting with Mary takes place on the MV Cill Airne, Dublin’s floating restaurant and bar on the Liffey.

Registration for this event will be limited to those who attend a concert at the Olympia on one of the preceding nights. This year, there will be a small registration fee for the meet and great as we had several people who registered in the past, but who never showed up. The registration fee is 5 euro per person. There is a limit to the number of people we can accommodate for this special event, so make sure you register soon. Tickets for the meet and greet can be bought in the shop on Mary’s website. After buying tickets for the meet and greet, you will receive a confirmation that you have to use to pick up your tickets at the merchandising desk at one of the Olympia concerts. Tickets for the Olympia concerts can be bought at ticketmaster.ie

Hope to see you at the meet and greet in June.

• The six signed Mary Black DVD's go to: Patrick Bonner (Scotland), Martin Sapsed (UK), Kevin McCorkle (USA), Thomas Pressel (USA), Corry Vogels (The Netherlands) and David den Engelsman (The Netherlands).
• The Black Family - Our Time Together album signed by all members of the Black Family goes to: Paul Dolan (Ireland)
• The Twenty-five Years - Twenty-five Songs Songbook goes to: Channa van Kuijen (The Netherlands)
• The Katie (2008 Remix) Promo CD Single goes to: Stephen Francis (USA)
• The three full tide posters go to: Simone Bassi (Italy), Linda Stock (France) and Jane Boon (The Netherlands)

Mary has recorded a song for Steve Martin's album "The Crow". Steve is a longtime fan of Mary's and he asked her to sing on a track he wrote "Calico Train". The album was produced by John McEuen. He wrote about the process on his MySpace blog: http://blogs.myspace.com/johnmceuen

Joe (Mary's manager) also wrote the following about this experience:

John sent the backing track to me along with Steve's lyrics and asked if Mary would be interested in recording a vocal - Mary liked the track and said she'd try it and see if it worked for her - it took a bit of work because it sounded more like a banjo instrumental than a song.

John brought the master to Dublin and we booked a session at The Cauldron Studios in Dublin just before Christmas. A few days before the recording Steve Martin called me and said he wanted to fly in for the recording and hook up with Mary - a bit of a shock to the system to get a call like that on my phone!

What a lovely guy Steve turned out to be and a genuine fan of Mary's from old - they hit it off really well. They had good fun in the studio and we all went for dinner after.

Finally Steve and John McEuen and a few friends said they'd like to go and hear some Irish music so we took them to The Cobblestone where there was a good session in progress and they joined in and played a few tunes on their banjos much to the surprise of the locals.

After about an hour and a half they had to leave to get their awaiting plane home - a memorable day!

A new song book called Mary Black - Twenty-five Years - Twenty-five Songs - The Songbook has been released. This song book replaces the previous song book which is no longer available. The song book can also be bought via the web shop on this site.

Mary's new DVD with videos and performances from all over her twenty-five year career, entitled Twenty-five years - Twenty-five songs has been released on 31 October 2008. The title of the album is in line with the recently released compilation album. The full track list and cover of the album can be found here.