Archive News
Free show from Newfoundland’s Amelia Curran
Date Published: 13-Feb-2013
Fans of heartfelt folk should enjoy Amelia Curran’s free show in Monroe’s Live this Saturday, February 16. At the time of this interview, Amelia is in Glasgow for the Celtic Connections Festival. It’s a city she enjoys returning to.
“It’s one of my favourites” she enthuses. “I love a town with a bit of a rough edge, and Glasgow has that!”
Amelia released her sixth studio album, Spectators last year. The recording of the album was spread between St John’s, Newfoundland, and Toronto. What was the reason behind the two locations?
“I’m from St John’s and I had just moved back when we started working on the album,” Amelia explains. “I think I was so delighted to be home I couldn’t really work! And I needed some fresh ears, and [producer] John Critchley was in Toronto. We had never worked together before, and I just dove in.”
Had Amelia been living far from home?
“Not in Canadian terms!” she says. “I lived in Halifax, Nova Scotia for 12 years [650 km from St John’s]. That was grand, but it was time to get home. Newfoundlanders are notorious for always wanting to go home.”
Amelia spends a lot of time on the road. Does she prefer the live arena to being in the studio?
“There are ups and downs to both,” she says. “I’m really nervous in the studio, which is where John Critchley was very good. But it’s such an exciting process.”
Her songs are usually fully formed before the record button is hit, but Amelia is open to tinkering with them.
“I usually have a vision for a piece,” she says. “But, especially when you’re getting in new people you’ve never worked with before, you’ve got to be willing to try everything. So things do change – and hopefully that’s for the better.”
Folk music was once seen as vital cog in driving social change, but Amelia wonders if those days are gone.
“When you’re travelling all the time and playing songs for a living – which is strange and wonderful – you want to leave the world in a better shape; to do something for the world around you,” she says. “And I sort of wonder if folk music is really enough; if I’m doing my part for the world. I don’t really know.”
Nevertheless, Amelia is bringing well-crafted and melodic songs to the world, so the folk scene, ultimately, still has something to offer.
“I think folk music is a really broad umbrella now,” she says. “I’ve just been here at Celtic Connections, and everyone’s joking at a few shows ‘where’s the Celtic Connection in that?’ There are rock bands and things around.
“But, to a point, if you begin on an instrument and start writing down some lyrics, anything could be called folk music. So it’s really broad and all over the word. I couldn’t define folk music.”
As well as releasing six albums, Amelia Curran is also a playwright. Although music takes up most of her time, she may return to the theatrical discipline in the future.
“For writing a play, I need kind of a boring life!” she laughs. “To be able to sit down and be chained to the desk, as they say. I write a lot of poetry and stories that are slowly developing into other things. I’ve no particular goal for that work, but it’s something I can’t help doing. Songs are one medium of writing, and I love to write.”
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
People’s living conditions less than 100 years ago were frightening. We have come a long way. We talk about water charges today, but back then the local District Councils were erecting pumps for local communities and the lovely town of Mountbellew, according to Council minutes, had open sewers,” says Galway County Council archivist Patria McWalter.
Patria believes we “need to take pride in our history, and we should take the same pride in our historical records as we do in our built heritage”. When you see the wealth of material in her care, this belief makes sense.
She is in charge of caring for the rich collection of administrative records owned by Galway County Council and says “these records are as much part of our history as the Rock of Cashel is. They document our lives and our ancestors’ lives. And nobody can plan for the future unless you learn from the past, what worked and what didn’t”.
Archivists and librarians are often unfairly regarded as being dry, academic types, but that’s certainly not true of Patria. Her enthusiasm is infectious as she turns the pages of several minute books from Galway’s Rural District Councils, all of them at least 100 years old.
Part of her role involved cataloguing all the records of the Councils – Ballinasloe, Clifden, Galway, Gort, Loughrea, Mountbellew, Portumna and Tuam. These records mostly consisted of minutes of various meetings.
When she was cataloguing them she realised their worth to local historians and researchers, so she decided to compile a guide to their content. The result is For the Record: The Archives of Galway’s Rural District Councils, which will be a valuable asset to anybody with an interest in history.
Many representatives on these Councils were local personalities and several were arrested during the political upheaval of the era, she explains.
And, ushering in a new era in history, women were allowed to sit on these Rural District Councils – at the time they were not allowed to sit on County Councils.
All of this information is included in Patria’s introductory essay to the attractively produced A4 size guide, which gives a glimpse into how these Rural Councils operated and the way political thinking changed in Ireland during a short 26-year period. In the early 1900s, these Councils supported Home Rule, but by 1920, they were calling for full independence and refusing to recognise the British administration.
“I love the tone,” says Patria of the minutes from meetings. “The language was very emotive.”
That was certainly true of the Gort Rural District Council. At a meeting in 1907, following riots in Dublin at the premiere of JM Synge’s play, The Playboy of the Western World the councillors’ response was vehement. They recorded their decision to “protest most emphatically against the libellous comedy, The Playboy of the Western World, that was belched forth during the past week in the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, under the fostering care of Lady Gregory and Mr Yeats. We congratulate the good people of Dublin in howling down the gross buffoonery and immoral suggestions that are scattered throughout this scandalous performance.
For more from the archives see this week’s Tribunes here
Date Published: 23-Jan-2013
SLIGO 0-9
GALWAY 1-4
FRANK FARRAGHER IN ENNISCRONE
GALWAY’S first serious examination of the 2013 season rather disturbingly ended with a rating well below the 40% pass mark at the idyllic, if rather Siberian, seaside setting of Enniscrone on Sunday last.
The defeat cost Galway a place in the FBD League Final against Leitrim and also put a fair dent on their confidence shield for the bigger tests that lie ahead in February.
There was no fluke element in this success by an understrength Sligo side and by the time Leitrim referee, Frank Flynn, sounded the final whistle, there wasn’t a perished soul in the crowd of about 500 who could question the justice of the outcome.
It is only pre-season and last Sunday’s blast of dry polar winds did remind everyone that this is far from summer football, but make no mistake about it, the match did lay down some very worrying markers for Galway following a couple of victories over below par third level college teams.
Galway did start the game quite positively, leading by four points at the end of a first quarter when they missed as much more, but when Sligo stepped up the tempo of the game in the 10 minutes before half-time, the maroon resistance crumbled with frightening rapidity.
Some of the statistics of the match make for grim perusal. Over the course of the hour, Galway only scored two points from play and they went through a 52 minute period of the match, without raising a white flag – admittedly a late rally did bring them close to a draw but that would have been very rough justice on Sligo.
Sligo were backable at 9/4 coming into this match, the odds being stretched with the ‘missing list’ on Kevin Walsh’s team sheet – Adrian Marren, Stephen Coen, Tony Taylor, Ross Donovan, David Kelly, David Maye, Johnny Davey and Eamon O’Hara, were all marked absent for a variety of reasons.
Walsh has his Sligo side well schooled in the high intensity, close quarters type of football, and the harder Galway tried to go through the short game channels, the more the home side bottled them up.
Galway badly needed to find some variety in their attacking strategy and maybe there is a lot to be said for the traditional Meath style of giving long, quick ball to a full forward line with a big target man on the edge of the square – given Paul Conroy’s prowess close to goal last season, maybe it is time to ‘settle’ on a few basics.
Defensively, Galway were reasonably solid with Gary Sice at centre back probably their best player – he was one of the few men in maroon to deliver decent long ball deep into the attacking zone – while Finian Hanley, Conor Costello and Gary O’Donnell also kept things tight.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
Date Published: 23-Jan-2013
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