This collection came about rather by chance, when about two and a half years ago, while scouring the CBC Radio archives in St. John's, I came upon a tape that was catalogued as having three Ryan's Fancy tracks on it. Being curious, I requested the tape and upon listening to it discovered that there were, in fact, quite a number of tracks of good quality material on the tape that I felt were worthy of reproduction. These recordings were from 'field tapes', which were used in the production of their acclaimed CBC Television shows that were broadcast nationally during the 1970s. The music for the shows was recorded at CBC Studios in St. John's and at the Audio Atlantic Studio in Halifax.

A copy of the tape was secured and then I contacted Fergus O'Byrne via e-mail asking him to meet with me, as I believed I had a CD project that we could work on together. When he came to my office for the meeting I handed him a CD copy of the tape. I recall that for a few seconds, and it seemed like minutes, he did not or could not speak. When he finally spoke he asked me where I got the material and then we listened to the music.

From that point on Dermot O'Reilly and Fergus O'Byrne set out to augment this initial "find" with material from other archival resources. The many hours of research and review have now culminated into an exciting package titled Ryan's Fancy: Songs From The Shows. Of the fifteen re-mastered tracks, thirteen songs have never previously been available on a Ryan's Fancy album.