was in the Irish charts, Dolan departed for Israel and the Six-Day War "but it took him a year to get down there", and was replaced by Terry Woods – later of Steeleye Span and The Pogues. In early 1968, the new line-up recorded the eponymous album, Sweeney's Men, produced by Bill Leader at Livingston Studios, Barnet. In addition to playing either guitar, mandolin or harmonica on most tracks, Irvine contributed four songs: "Sally Brown", "Willy O' Winsbury", "Dance to Your Daddy", and "Reynard The Fox". He also played Moynihan's bouzouki—for the first time on a recording—on the track "Johnston". Irvine wrote his first song, "West Coast of Clare", in the late summer of 1968, around the time Sweeney's Men were playing one of their last shows in Quilty, County Clare. "It was actually written with a Danish girl called Birte in mind, but [...] it very quickly became a memory of great times in Clare. I started the song in County Clare and finished it in Ljubljana, Yugoslavia, in August or September 1968." Irvine left Sweeney's Men after a final performance at Liberty Hall in Dublin, where he played the first half of the set with Moynihan and Woods before making way for his replacement, Henry McCullough, who played the second half. Discovering Eastern Europe and Bulgarian folk music In the late summer of 1968, Irvine and his first wife Muriel headed off to Eastern Europe and the Balkans. He later wrote several songs about his experiences there: "Time Will Cure Me", which he recorded in 1973 with Planxty on the album The Well Below the Valley; "Băneasă's Green Glade", which he recorded in 1974 with Planxty on the album Cold Blow and the Rainy Night; "Autumn Gold", which he recorded in 1976 with Paul Brady on their duo album, Andy Irvine/Paul Brady and "Rainy Sundays", which he recorded in 1980 on his debut solo album, Rainy Sundays... Windy Dreams. During a series of hitch-hiking journeys across Slovenia, Serbia, Bulgaria and Romania, Irvine discovered the region's folk music styles and was particularly attracted to the Bulgarian tradition. In a 1992 interview, he related the moment he first heard Bulgarian folk music: This lasting fascination with Bulgarian folk music would inform several of his later projects—first with Planxty, then in the recording of his first solo album (1980) and of the album East Wind (1992), and also with the creation