Entertainment
Carnival rolls into town as Jerry Fish plays Festival gig
The Groove Tube with Jimi McDonnell – tribunegroove@live.ie
Roll up, roll up! The carnival is coming to town when Jerry Fish and his band play the Róisín Dubh, as part of this year’s Galway Arts Festival. The former front man of An Emotional Fish and The Mudbug Club is in typically gregarious form as he prepares to come West.
“I guess I’m at my usual skulduggery of experimenting,” he says. “I think what’s really happened to me is years and years ago – in An Emotional Fish – when I went on stage, I became somebody else. But I guess that person that used to take over me onstage has now become me. I’ve kind of become more performer than human being at this stage of the game!”
Jerry’s new drummer is the one-man powerhouse Rarely Seen Above Ground – aka Jeremy Hickey, whose 2008 debut as RSAG received a Choice Prize nomination.
“It’s a bit like a rodeo!” Jerry laughs. “I’m a massive fan, so I feel very honoured and privileged that he’s drumming with me now.”
Also joining Jerry will be his long time collaborator Grum, a guitarist with swagger to spare.
“Grum is pretty much an underground legend waiting to happen,” says Jerry. “I feel very privileged to be working with him. He’s an old friend; I met him initially with Cathy Davey, her first recordings, maybe three or four years before she did her first album with EMI. She came to me with Grum and a bunch of songs. I guess I’m lucky that I’m the guy that people come to.”
Jerry and Grum are working on new material that may eventually become an album, but will start out as a series of stand-alone tracks.
“I guess I’m doing what I did with the Mudbug Club, which is mix up different genres and people,” Jerry says. “I started an album but halfway through it I decided, I’m just going to release them as they come along, with movies.
“I’m playing around with a director called Paul Mahon and we’re about to do a carnival/motorcycle kind of movie. I’ve always loved circus and carnivals, so I’m bringing all that on board.”
Jerry Fish’s career goes back 25 years, to his days with An Emotional Fish. The band were signed to Atlantic Records, a company with a catalogue that includes Led Zeppelin, Aretha Franklin and Otis Redding. With The Mudbug Club, he made the transition to being an independent artist, so it’s fair to say he’s familiar with the highs and lows of the music industry.
“It’s a precarious life,” he says. “If you decide to be in a band and try and live, and feed your family through that, you’re only asking for it – you are a bit of a mad man! We don’t have security, and in a way it’s scary, but the thing that’s happened with the recession – we’re a little bit more used to it, I guess, and a little more tenacious.”
This tenacity comes through in a Jerry Fish live show. Aware of the doom and gloom caused by the economic downturn, Jerry tries to offer up an antidote.
“Even if we give up, there are genes inside us that won’t,” he says. “And I have a lot of fun with that with the live show. In a way, I think I’m the man between the band and the audience. My job is done if I unite the room as one utopian thing!”
That is what he always endeavours to do – there’s no such thing as a sedate Jerry Fish gig. Would he agree that he invites the audience to be part of the show?
“Definitely, Otherwise, what are we doing? I don’t really get the shoe-gazing thing. It’s about being in the now, if we can all be in the same moment.”
The subject sets him off on another tangent.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune
Folk duo Niall Teague and Pádraic Joyce are launching their new album What Will We Be, a blend of folk, Americana and acoustic music, this Friday, May 19, at 8pm in An Taibhdhearc.
The success of their well-received 2020 release Taobh le Taobh, as well as recent successes at the Pan Celtic and Oireachtas Song Contests, spurred the duo on to record this new album which represents many years of collaboration and musical development.
It features Niall and Pádraic on vocals, harmonies, and acoustic guitars, Maidhc Ó hÉanaigh on double bass and Neil Fitzgibbon on fiddle. The catchy title track, What Will We Be, features contributions from percussionist Jim Higgins (The Stunning, Christy Moore, Paul Brady) and haunting, driving melodies on vocals, guitar, and fiddle.
Themes of love and hope are woven through Come Away with Me which features interplay between piano and fiddle as well as rich vocal harmonies.
People, places, and broken dreams are celebrated and lamented on Martin and Tom, Guitar Gold, Memories of You and Achill Island. The influence of David Henry Thoreau’s novel Walden features on the tracks Simple and Wise and Walden, with the beauty of nature, escape and simple pleasures at their core.
The album moves from minimalistic folk ballads such as Galway Ghost to swirling, string-laden arrangements on the song Neptune, both of which are influenced by maritime tales from Galway. Much of the work on this album was supported by the Arts Council, including work with musical arranger Eoin Corcoran and the string ensemble Treo.
The album will be launched this Friday, May 19, at 8pm in an Taibhdhearc. Tickets €22, plus booking fee at Eventbrite.ie.
Dunmore is the place to be this weekend for lovers of traditional music, as the Galway County Fleadh will take place there from this Friday, May 19, to Sunday, May 23.
It is 10 years since Dunmore last hosted a fleadh and the local Comhaltas branch, which has re-formed since Covid, is looking forward to facilitating this gathering of music, song, dance and craic.
The official Opening Concert will take place in Dunmore Town Hall this Friday at 8pm with the acclaimed Mulcahy family from Limerick. Mick, Louise and Michelle are well known throughout the country, thanks to their live performances, television appearances and numerous CDs. They were the winners of the TG4 Gradam Ceoil Grúpa Ceoil Award for 2023. Tickets for their concert can be purchased on the door and a great night of music is promised.
Two days of competitions will kick off this Saturday at the town’s Community School, with more than 1,500 competitors taking part. Participants will be hoping to qualify for the Connacht Fleadh 2023, which will be held in Ballina, County Mayo, from June 23 to July 2.
Competitions for those aged Under 10, Under 12 and Under 15 will be held in a large variety of instruments on Saturday, as well as in singing and Comhrá Gaeilge. Sunday’s competitions will be for the Under 18 and Over 18 ages groups, as well as in dancing.
On both days a large entry is expected for Grúpaí Cheoil and Céilí Band competitions across all age groups.
Seventeen Comhaltas branches from across Galway will have participants in this weekend’s competitions, which will result in a large number of visitors to the Dunmore area.
Members of the public are welcome to attend the competitions, which offer a great opportunity to hear and see the talent on display. There will be sessions in local pubs over the weekend as well and everybody is welcome to attend these.
For more information on the County Fleadh, go to www.galwaycomhaltas.ie.
Music for Galway’s concert with renowned Swiss pianist Cédric Pescia which had been due to take place on April 27 but which had to be deferred, will now take place next Tuesday, May 23, at 8pm, in the Emily Anderson Concert Hall at the University of Galway.
This concert of German classics with Bach at its core, will brings the Bach element of Music for Galway’s 41st season to an end.
This world-class pianist who won the famous Gina Bachauer International Artists Piano Competition, has a repertoire that spans many eras from baroque to contemporary and he is widely known for his elaborate programmes. Cédric Pescia describes music as ‘language and movement at the same time’.
Audiences will have a chance to experience his soft, clear touch as he performs a programme for solo piano that will include classics such as Schumann’s popular Waldszenen (Forest Scenes), a suite of nine short pieces, and the penultimate of Beethoven’s piano sonatas, No. 31. These pieces will be interspersed with French Suites by Bach.
■ Ticket for Cédric Pescia’s concert are available at www.musicforgalway.ie, or by phone 091 705962 and on the door on the night. They cost €20/€18. The price for fulltime students of all ages is €6 while MfG Friends can avail of the friends’ rate of €16.
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