I’ve been falling a bit behind on blogs. We’re in Dublin right now and our days have been very full. We’re staying a 40 minute bus ride out of the city centre so we’re trying to not come back to the hotel during the day; therefore, I have had no time to blog! Sorry avid readers – of which there are a few!! (Thank you – I see you!)
I’m rolling together our Letterkenny and Castlefinn shows in County Donegal together. Simply because they were very similar experiences and don’t want to repeat myself too much! We’re picking up after our 5 hour drive back from Galway on the west coast to the Irish borders and a gig in Letterkenny.
We’ve been staying at AirBnb’s all tour. Most were a single room in a house that had been kitted out by landlords to maximise money. As we arrived in Letterkenny however we couldn’t believe our luck. We had landed ourselves the absolute steal of an entire top floor of a massive house in the suburbs with two bedrooms, two bathrooms a large lounge area and kitchen all to ourselves on the tightest budget ever. We unpacked and filmed a quick (a bit rough round the edges) cover of a John Mayer song; I was meant to be going to his concert back home in Manchester that night but since tour had been confirmed up it had become apparent that I wouldn’t be able to go. As saddening as this was for me, music always comes first; no matter the gig, no matter the attendance. I resorted to watching the concert on every Manchester musician I knew’s Instagram stories.
Our gig was in a pub called Mcafferties bar located on top of a hill just outside of Letterkenny. The venue was the grand total of a 2 minute drive from where we were staying that night meaning that drinking opportunities were a plenty. We were greeted on arrival by a very friendly and excited barmaid. We were playing a place that didn’t have many music acts play never mind touring acts, so we were given the full treatment.
Mark the guy who had booked us showed up and ordered us some pizzas from a local pizza place called Pat’s Pizza which had recently been voted the second best pizza place in Ireland (a pretty solid achievement considering we were out in the middle of nowhere!) The pizzas were divine and Brendan raved about his BBQ Chicken Pizza. I enjoyed a Hawaiian / Pepperoni hybrid and will avidly defend Pineapples place on Pizza until the bitter end.
Nothing to report pre show! Tour fatigue and 7 days of drinking heavily was certainly catching up with us. We’ve been pretty low energy during the days saving ourselves for our time on stage in the evening. One guy at the bar bought one of my T Shirts before I even played a note of music and we enjoyed what we both agreed was the best Guinness of the tour so far.
This was the first time on the tour when we resorted to old Europe tactics and alternated sets, taking it in turns to do 30 mins each just so we could both capitalise on audiences. In Ireland we’ve been mostly playing to passing through audiences with the exception of a few who come down explicitly to see the show. Therefore this works much better for us.
Chris played a solid first set but there weren’t quite enough people in the room to fully appreciate his stuff. I went on second and played a decent set. It was fairly rusty at the start as we’d had a couple of days off and hadn’t quite found my full form but pulled it back to good level by the third song in the set. (I rarely make mistakes, and wasn’t making mistakes. But sometimes you just feel more on it and it feels a bit easier.)
A couple more people were creeping in and by the time we swapped round again we were back on top form and the room was nicely full enough for our show. Chris put in a strong set with his comedic charm landing nicely and I finished up with a solid set. The audience were lively but attentive and respectful and it was a lovely return to gigging. We sold a couple of CDs and drank Guinness and Whiskey with the locals way into the early hours.
Brendan met a member of the audience Dave; one of only four people who lived in Letterkenny from Yorkshire and they bonded over growing up in Barnsley. We’d gone far past the point where we could drive ourselves home so arranged with the venue owner to leave the stuff in the venue overnight. Dave and his wife kindly gave us a lift round the corner to our AirBnb and we crashed out like a lightbulb for the night. Me and Chris were sharing a double again and Brendan had the luxury of a double room to himself.
The next day was Rugby World Cup Quarter finals day. I like rugby. I grew up going to Sale Sharks matches with my friend Mark who lived at the end of my road. He lives in Whistler now in Canada and we’d briefly caught up while he was home before the tour kicked off last week. (Canadian gigs is in the pipeline!) England were playing Australia at 8.15am and I reluctantly clawed my way out of bed at half time to catch the rest of the game. England won fairly comfortably and the guys rolled out of bed in time to catch the second half of Ireland New Zealand, where sadly, the All Blacks absolutely battered our adopted home nation.
We left our Airbnb paradise around 2pm and drove for an hour through traditional Irish country roads, to our next stop, Castlefinn; a small village located right on the border. We were a little bit nervous about playing right on the border as two English guys due to recent political events. We honestly couldn’t have been made to feel more welcome however and upon arrival were fed by a home cooked Pasta Bolognese and some pastries bought in from the local bakery.
We were then driven round the corner to where we were staying where we met our lovely host Josephine who could not have been more accommodating. She brought us teas, coffees, biscuits, cakes everything under the sun. We were still probably too tour fatigued to fully express our gratitude for this but it soothed our souls being in that place and revitalised us for the gigs to come! Gig time rolled around and Josephines husband drove us round the corner to our gig at The Banjo Tavern. We set up in the corner of the pub with our small busking amp, right in front of a large Liverpool FC flag (to my annoyance, Manchester United fan.) and got going with the gig around 10pm.
A couple of people had come down specially for the gig and this worked massively to our advantage as there were already some people in the crowd knowing the songs. Chris went up first and played a strong first set getting everyone on board. I went up next and got the crowd going with some louder songs. We were bought drinks left right and centre and at one point had five pints waiting for us side stage. By the time we swapped again we had the crowd (and ourselves) in a really nice place and everyone was sticking about for the duration, singing along and clapping their hands to our original tunes.
We each played strong second sets and worked the crowd into a double encore by the end of my set. After the second encore the crowd still wanted more so Chris took over the singing reigns and I noodled a long to two quick covers of Help by The Beatles and a shameless blast of Wonderwall (first time I’ve ever played it live luckily) to round off the night. We grabbed some pics with some crowd members who’d been lovely, got some scribbles on our poster and drank till closing time. We went back to our hotel and polished off the remaining pastries and pasta from earlier in the day and crashed out hard. Me and Brendan were sharing and as we hit the hay he said in a gravelly Barnsley accent “urgh my insides feel like pure Guinness. I hope you like the bed WARM.”
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