CITY TRIBUNE
Galway Street Club – how the city’s buskers created a band by accident
Walking down Shop Street is a wonderful experience – assuming you’re not in a rush that is, because buskers take over. But one band in particular grabs your eye and your ears and that is the Galway Street Club – 15 people playing as many instruments aren’t something you can walk easily past.
Galway Street Club started by accident in March 2016 when a group of individual buskers decided to start jamming together and it grew from there. Scally, a cajun musician; Laura, a ukulele player; Spud, a guitarist, Adnaan, a fiddler; Kai, a drummer; and James, a guitar player, talk about their journey to Galway Street Club and what being a part of the group is like.
“I came up to Galway to go to college,” laughs Scally, “but that didn’t go too well.” He explains that after a night out he decided to go out and play guitar, even though he only knew a few chords. When he saw the money in his pocket the next morning he couldn’t believe people gave cash for that. And so, he dropped out of college to pursue busking.
The long weekend has arrived 🥂We are playing in the Roisin Dubh tomorrow night from 12, Get there early!#GalwayStreetClub
Posted by Galway Street Club on Friday, June 2, 2017
Adnaan started busking at the age of five in front of a local supermarket in small-town Connecticut. He laughs as he tries to remember whether or not his mother was behind this.
“It was my idea to play the violin and then she wouldn’t let me stop,” he says. “I was pretty bad at the violin at that point, as you might imagine, but the cuteness factor helped,” laughs Adnaan. Now, at the age of 24, he is still busking.
“As the cuteness factor dropped as I got older, the skill level kind of went up, so I make about the same money at 24 as I did at five.”
Guitarist James also took up playing as a youngster. “I started playing guitar when I was ten or eleven years-old and was pretty much an annoying little guitar kid singing Mumford and Sons for my teenage years,” he laughs.
He studied astrophysics here in Galway for two years but he admits that he took too much on with that course and dropped out of college. He began busking when he first moved here but he was on the verge of moving back in with his parents when Galway Street Club started. “Everything’s been fantastic since then,” he says.
Kai began his music career at the age of five or six, making his money later in life gigging, and he only got into busking properly this year. He went travelling for a while and music soon took a backseat, but when he returned to Galway he wanted to return to music and do something different.
He saw Spud and another member, Craig, jamming on the Galway streets and asked if they needed a drummer. They asked him to join them there and then, “so I just dropped everything and just started playing and that was it”, he explains.
Spud started busking about five years ago in the United States. “I was playing farmers markets and going anywhere that would let me set up a tip bucket,” he says. When he came back to Ireland around two years ago, he tarted busking alone. He did this for a few months until he met two guys and they set up a band called The Alcoholics.
They played late at night and soon started another band to play by day and that kept growing. “It wasn’t supposed to be a band,” he declares. Called the Galway Street Club, they got their first gig after winning an Open Mic Night at the Róisín Dubh and “it has just snowballed since then”, says Spud.
Laura started busking at the end of her second year of college, about two summers ago. “I did a little bit by myself but it was tough,” she explains. “I met the guys one by one and we just kind of started busking together so, you get to know the other buskers – one knows one and then one knows another so it takes off like that,” she says.
Spud’s band, The Alcoholics, and other buskers, including the six mentioned, merged into one big 15-person band and they started doing more than busking.
Galway Street Club returned from an impromptu European tour recently and it was an intense and exciting time for the members. Last year, Laura was on Erasmus in Rennes and Scally, along with Johnny, another member of the band, decided to go to France.
“They were going to France and everybody else was like ‘well if we’re going to do it, we might as well try,” explains Spud. “We just kind of fell into a tour,” he laughs. They met up with Laura before heading east but since Laura was in college she could only meet the band for gigs and some busking for two weeks in Lyon. Not all members were on the tour at the same time but most made their way at some point.
Adnaan got the ferry to France and made it across the country in a day to meet the band. He got a lift from a theatre director and made the 12-hour journey. “When I got there they were in an Irish pub in Lyon called Johnny’s Kitchen and everyone was drunk. That describes the Lyon experience pretty well,” recalls Adnaan.
Laura talks about the one-bedroom apartment that everyone shared. “There were eight people in a one-bedroom apartment,” she says. ‘The first thing they got for the apartment was a coffee pot, “one of those ones that drip” explains Scally. “So we were cooking stews in the coffee pot because we had nothing else to cook with.”
Most members would try each night to find somewhere else to sleep to avoid sleeping on the floor of the ‘stinky-feet room’ of the shared flat, “It’s fine when you’re just hanging out and playing for a night but when you’re all sleeping in the same room for weeks on end it gets pretty gnarly,” explains Adnaan.
For most members, the band is their full-time work and Kai, for one, wouldn’t have it any other way. “I may not make as much money, definitely not, I’m broke as sh*t, but it’s definitely more fulfilling. I get to get up in the morning and I get to play music.”
Adnaan does seasonal work, he sometimes teaches English and he has just got his nautical captains licence, so hopes to do more with that. He loves music but he needs to do more physical labour to feel totally fulfilled. “It’s great and I’ll be doing it for a long time, but I won’t be doing it all the time,” he says.
When asked just how a band of this scale works, the room fills with laughter. Apparently, it doesn’t, it’s just ‘organised chaos.’ Picture a house party jam, but on a bigger scale.
Laura explains that the band have now started practicing Monday and Tuesday each week which has really stood to them. “I’m really happy that we started practicing and I think it’s made a big improvement,” she says.
Galway Street Club are playing more and more gigs on top of busking, including gigs in Dublin and Kilkenny, as well as here in Galway, and for a band that started by accident, they are certainly gaining a big online following with over 11,000 likes on Facebook.
From the Galway City Tribune – An impassioned plea for a ‘masterplan’ that would guide Galway City into the future has been made in the Dáil. Galway West TD Catherine Connolly stated this week that there needed to be an all-inclusive approach with “vision and leadership” in order to build a sustainable city.
Deputy Connolly spoke at length at the crisis surrounding traffic and housing in Galway city and said that not all of the blame could be laid at the door of the local authority.
She said that her preference would be the provision of light rail as the main form of public transport, but that this would have to be driven by the government.
“I sat on the local council for 17 years and despaired at all of the solutions going down one road, metaphorically and literally. In 2005 we put Park & Ride into the development plan, but that has not been rolled out. A 2016 transport strategy was outdated at the time and still has not been updated.
“Due to the housing crisis in the city, a task force was set up in 2019. Not a single report or analysis has been published on the cause of the crisis,” added Deputy Connolly.
She then referred to a report from the Land Development Agency (LDA) that identified lands suitable for the provision of housing. But she said that two-thirds of these had significant problems and a large portion was in Merlin Park University Hospital which, she said, would never have housing built on it.
In response, Minister Simon Harris spoke of the continuing job investment in the city and also in higher education, which is his portfolio.
But turning his attention to traffic congestion, he accepted that there were “real issues” when it came to transport, mobility and accessibility around Galway.
“We share the view that we need a Park & Ride facility and I understand there are also Bus Connects plans.
“I also suggest that the City Council reflect on her comments. I am proud to be in a Government that is providing unparalleled levels of investment to local authorities and unparalleled opportunities for local authorities to draw down,” he said.
Then Minister Harris referred to the controversial Galway City Outer Ring Road which he said was “struck down by An Bord Pleanála”, despite a lot of energy having been put into that project.
However, Deputy Connolly picked up on this and pointed out that An Bord Pleanála did not say ‘No’ to the ring road.
“The High Court said ‘No’ to the ring road because An Bord Pleanála acknowledged it failed utterly to consider climate change and our climate change obligations.
“That tells us something about An Bord Pleanála and the management that submitted such a plan.”
In the end, Minister Harris agreed that there needed to be a masterplan for Galway City.
“I suggest it is for the local authority to come up with a vision and then work with the Government to try to fund and implement that.”
The new Salmon Weir pedestrian and cycle bridge will be officially opened to the public next Friday, May 26.
Work on the €10 million bridge got underway in April 2022, before the main structure was hoisted into place in early December.
A lunchtime tape-cutting ceremony will take place on Friday, as the first pedestrians and cyclists traverse the as-yet-unnamed bridge.
The Chief Executive of Galway City Council, Brendan McGrath, previously said the bridge, once opened, would remove existing conflicts between pedestrians, cyclists and traffic “as well as facilitating the Cross-City Link public transport corridor over the existing 200-year-old bridge”.
The naming of the new bridge has been under discussion by the Council’s Civic Commemorations Committee since late last year.
One name that has been in the mix for some time is that of the first woman in Europe to graduate with an engineering degree – Alice Perry.
Ms Perry, who was from Wellpark, graduated from Queen’s College Galway (now University of Galway) in 1906. The university’s engineering building is named in her honour.
The bridge was built by Jons Civil Engineering firm in County Meath and was assembled off-site before being transported to Galway. Funding for the project was provided in full by the National Transport Authority and the European Regional Development Fund.
(Photo: Sheila Gallagher captured the city’s new pedestrian footbridge being raised on the south side of the Salmon Weir Bridge in December. It will officially open next Friday, May 26).
From the Galway City Tribune – Minister of State for Local Government and Planning, Kieran O’Donnell was labelled a “disgrace” for overturning councillors’ decisions to rezone land in the new City Development Plan.
Minister O’Donnell (pictured) confirmed in a letter to Council Chief Executive Brendan McGrath last week that he was reversing 25 material alternations made by councillors to the CDP 2023-29. He made the decision on the advice of Office of Planning Regulator (OPR).
Minister O’Donnell directed that 14 land parcels that were subject to land-use zoning changes by councillors as part of the Material Alterations to the Draft CDP should be reversed.
He directed that a further 11 land parcels in the city should become “unzoned”.
The Minister found that the CDP had not been made in a manner consistent with recommendations of the OPR, which required specific changes to the plan to ensure consistency with the national planning laws and guidelines.
At last week’s Council meeting Cllr Eddie Hoare (FG) asked for clarity on the process by which councillors could rezone the lands that had been changed by the Minister’s direction.
Cllr Declan McDonnell said, “What he [Minister O’Donnell] has done is an absolute disgrace”.
And he asked: “Do we have to have another development plan meeting to deal with it?”
Both Cllrs Hoare and McDonnell wondered what would become of the lands that were rezoned or unzoned by the ministerial direction.
Mr McGrath said the Council had put forward an argument in favour of retaining the material alterations in the plan, but ultimately the Minister sided with OPR.
He said if councillors want to make alterations to the new plan, they could go through the process of making a material alteration but this was lengthy.
The Save Roscam Peninsula campaign welcomed the Minister’s decision.
In a statement to the Galway City Tribune, it said the direction would mean the Roscam village area on the Roscam Peninsula will be unzoned and a number of land parcels would revert back to agriculture/high amenity.
A spokesperson for the campaign said: “the material alterations made by city councillors following lobbying by developers continued the long-standing practice of councillors facilitating a developer-led plan rather than an evidence- and policy-based plan that meets the needs of the city.
“The Minister’s direction is an important step in restoring confidence in the planning system. It is clear from the City Council’s own evidence on future housing projections that there was no requirement to zone these lands for residential purposes in order to meet the needs of the targeted population increase up to 2029,” the spokesperson added.
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