Archive News
Portland outfit bring raucous Americana to Monroe’s Backstage
Date Published: {J}
Hailing from Portland, Oregon, the Water Tower Bucket Boys come to town on Thursday next, March 10, to play The Backstage Bar in Monroe’s. The band’s raucous take on bluegrass is crafted by Kenny Feinstein (guitar/mandolin/harmonica and vocals), Josh Rabie (fiddle/ guitar/harmonica and vocals) and Corey Goldman (banjo/guitar and vocals). Corey takes the phone call from The Connacht Tribune just after the band have arrived in the UK.
“What time is it now, about 10 o’clock?” he asks. “I’d reckon [we got here] about three hours ago. It’s been pretty wild – we stayed up all night back home and we’ve been travelling since then. We’ve got to drive up to Bristol tonight and play a gig there tonight, so no rest for the weary!”
Corey then goes on to explain how Water Tower Bucket Boys formed and honed their technique as buskers.
“Josh and Kenny are more or less the main founding folks,” he says.
“They started playing music together at the end of high school. We all ended up at the same uni and it just went from there.”
“We started playing on street corners and stuff, went through some line-up changes for quite a while before it settled down to what it is now,” he adds. “There are three of us, and we’ve kind of got a rotating cast of bass players – we’ve Kyle McGonagle now, he’s been touring with us for the past six months or so. Doing a great job.”
Corey Goldman believes that playing on the street has made them stronger as live performers.
“When you play on the street, you really have to figure out how to engage with the crowd,” he says. “No one’s there to see you, you have to convince them that what you’re creating is a real musical experience.
“It still really influences our live performance. We make it a real show; try and play good music and keep people entertained. Because that’s what it’s all about really.”
On a previous trip to the UK, Corey and the band hit pay-dirt as street players.
“One of the best days we ever had was in Brighton,” he recalls. “The first time we came over we set up on this corner, stopped traffic, crowds gathering out in the middle of the street. When you’re busking in America no one really cares, but over here it seems like people are ‘oh wow!’ if you’re a good player.”
“People were buying us drinks; we got invited into the pub across the street for a meal and made 300 quid in 45 minutes. It’s tricky to find the right spot but when you do it’s really good fun.”
The enthusiasm for American roots music in Ireland and the UK means Corey loves the Bucket Boys’ trip across the Atlantic.
“I feel the reception that we get is a lot more excited than it is back home,” he says. “There are a lot of people playing with this sort of sound, and I think people are a little jaded by it in America. Not that there’s not plenty of people who are super excited, lots of great bands and lots of great crowds but it’s harder to rise above the mish-mash of people who are playing bluegrass-inspired music.
“What you call Americana, we would break down into lots of sub-categories,” he explains. “When you come over here, people are really stoked about the sound. Whether it’s bluegrass, country-blues, ragtime, or any of the stuff we would think as totally different genres, people are open to group it all together. I really appreciate that.”
Sole Kitchen, Water Tower Bucket Boys’ latest album, sees the band at their toe-tapping best.
“That was recorded with my buddy, Mike Herrera,” says Corey. “Back in the nineties, he was in a kind of country-punk band called Tumbledown. He was interested in the crossover between country music and punk rock. We thought it would be fun to work with him.
For more, read this week’s Galway City 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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