Archive News
Kopek to bring their winning formula West
Date Published: {J}
Kopek are an award-winning three-piece rock band from Dublin who play Monroe’s Live on Friday next, January 27. Following a successful US tour in 2011, the band are now turning their attention to Europe.
“We did one single in America and then we were back here, working on new stuff and trying to arrange a deal for Europe, which we just finalised yesterday,” says lead singer and guitarist Daniel Jordan. “The first single’s going to be released in England and Germany in March/April, so we’re looking forward to that.”
Kopek formed when Daniel met bassist Brad Kinsella and drummer Shane Cooney.
“We’ve been together 12 or 13 years now,” he says. “We met each other when we were kids, teenagers. The two lads played bass and drums. They were looking for a singer, and they put an ad out. I answered it and we’ve been together ever since.”
Responding to an ad is almost a rock ‘n’ roll cliché, but the truth is that it’s rare for a bunch of strangers to click musically – and personally.
“It usually never works but thank God, for us, it did,” says Daniel. “We all had a bond over the music we listened to, especially when we played together. Most of the time you put ads up and it doesn’t work out, people don’t get on or there’s something that scuppers you.”
Kopek began to gig on the Dublin scene and soon made their name wowing crowds at competitions.
“At the start, we won little competitions here and there to give us the money to continue. It’s quite an expensive came to get into, to fund yourself as a band. Then, a few years later, we won a hundred grand in a battle of the bands.”
That €100,000 came from a contest called the Global Battle of The Bands in 2005. Winning that prize allowed the band to capture a more professional sound in the studio and it also opened the way for their American adventure.
“There were one or two local heats,” says Daniel. “Then there was a national heat in Derry. We won that, and we were representing Ireland. There were 26 bands then in the final in London. Luckily enough, we won it.
“We went to LA with the money,” he continues. “We went and worked with Danny Sabre, he worked with Bowie and The Rolling Stones. That was an amazing experience.”
Sabre may have an impressive CV, but Daniel, Brad and Shane were still determined to have their own say in the studio.
“I suppose he brought a new vibe to it,” Daniel says. “You notice a few tricks, just layering stuff and different ideas like that. But as far as arrangement and song writing, he didn’t have input at all. But he’s very talented guy – we were lucky we got to work with him.”
Kopek’s debut album is called White Collar Lies, a title that reflects the disillusionment and anger that many people feel about the current economic woes. That’s a theme that’s revisited in other songs.
“That was always going to be on the album, but the more we looked at the songs, there was a few of them that do relate to that idea. The rest of the songs are about different issues – love, friendship, sex. We wanted the album to be something that you could keep going back to.”
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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