Archive News
‘Loud and folky’ US singer Dave Alvin at Kelly’s
Date Published: 18-Jul-2012
Another morning, another motel bed’ is the opening lyric from Eleven Eleven, Dave Alvin’s latest album.
The American singer, who’s clocked up over 30 years on the road, plays Kelly’s Bar in the city this Friday as part of this year’s Galway Arts Festival.
That opening salvo of the song might initially seem world weary, but the amped-up sound of Alvin’s latest is far from that.
“I have a home in California and I’m there, sometimes!” he laughs. The past year especially has been predominantly touring. It’s not a bad life; there are things about it I don’t like, and there are things I love. I get to play music, to do something that I love to do – I count myself among the lucky ones.”
Alvin’s career began when he formed The Blasters with his brother Phil in 1979. He left that group in 1986 to join a band called X, and launched his solo career the following year. Performing has been a constant, and something that he continues to learn from.
“You try to bring something to each gig,” he says. “You make a new mistake every night! ‘Hey, remember that night you played Chicago back in 1999? Oh yes, the night I broke the E string!’. The truck stops, motels and airports all blend into one blur, but the gigs themselves – I can remember most of the ones I’ve played.”
Eleven Eleven was recorded ‘in the round,’ with Dave and his band sharing a room when they put down their tracks. This live feel is important to the singer.
“I tend to record that way; I like the sound of musicians actually playing together,” he explains. “In the eighties this thing developed where people would layer the tracks. It still goes on to this day, in pop music, where they’ll start with the kick drum. They’ll get that recorded and then it’s ‘now, let’s do the cymbal’. I’m the old school of ‘get everybody looking at each other’.”
He may have a certain way of recording, but when it came to writing for Eleven Eleven Alvin decided to shake it up a bit.
“I did something I rarely do, which was writing the songs on the road,” he says. “When I had a week off here and there, I’d go in and record a song or two. Back on the road, write some more, go back in and record another couple of songs.
“Normally, when I make a record I’ll take four or five months off and it’s a big ordeal. This one was more like ‘hey, this is not a bad song, let’s record it’. So that worked out kind of nice.”
Johnny Ace is a standout song on an impressive record. Ace was a blues singer who died playing Russian roulette in 1954. The song helped Dave to face a tragedy in his own life.
“The album I did previous to this was called Dave Alvin and the Guilty Women and one of the Guilty Women was a girl named Amy Ferris,” he says. “There’s a song on Eleven Eleven about Amy called Black Rose of Texas. Amy had committed suicide, and before I wrote Black Rose of Texas I wrote Johnny Ace.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
Galway in Days Gone By
The way we were – Protecting archives of our past
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
Archive News
Galway have lot to ponder in poor show
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.
Archive News
Real Galway flavour to intermediate club hurling battle in Birr
Date Published: 23-Jan-2013
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