Kelly’s set to be a Gigantic venue

Date Published: 07-Aug-2009

KELLY’S on Bridge St. is Galway’s newest venue, a pub formerly known as The Living Room that was completely transformed in a matter of weeks.

Kelly’s will offer punters a selection of club nights as well as live bands. The venue’s manager, MacDaragh Stapleton, talks about getting it on its feet.

“The idea was just to get the place up and running,” he says. “It was set up for both live and clubs. This was built in four weeks and that was a huge turnaround. The idea was to get in four late night clubs that run from 10 until 2 and get all the lights and sound working because there’s going to be teething problems in the first couple of weeks. The sound worked out perfect. We were expecting huge echoes but all the sound panels stop it totally.”

MacDaragh, Olive Byrne and Tom Fitz were all part of Gigantic, one of Galway’s most popular nights, which had been running in DeBurgo’s, Augustine St. for 6 years. The large crowd’s attending the event meant that, as of last June, Gigantic had to find a new home.

“The fire officer limited the place to 50 people,” MacDaragh explains. “It happened on the Friday before the Volvo Boat Race came in. We had two weeks of entertainment down in De Burgos, we had to cancel everything. We couldn’t run on the basis that we could only let 50 people into the place, you can’t create an atmosphere on a regular Saturday night.”

Fortunately…