Archive News
Raucous, rootsy Tupelo ready to get Galway and Clifden rocking
Date Published: {J}
Hang up your boots and prepare to go back to your roots! Dublin five-piece Tupelo are coming west for a trio of gigs and will play in the College Bar, NUI Galway at 2pm this Friday, March 26 before going to the Róisín Dubh later that evening to play as part of the JD Set. Then on Saturday, they lay claim to Vaughan’s, Clifden.
Tupelo bring their own style to old music – their front man James Cramer has been soaking up influences from a very young age. Van Morrison is one artist he admires, amongst others.
“I was big into [Morrison’s] Veedon Fleece,” he recalls. “And I really like Astral Weeks, obviously. I listen to a lot of old blues stuff as well, like Muddy Waters and John Lee Hooker. Josh White, the Clancy Brother – I was brought up on a lot of folk music, through to some of the rock and roll stuff; Jerry Lee Lewis and Roy Orbison.”
Tupelo have some cracking tunes to their name (like the toe-tapping Dirty Money) but they’re always keen to road-test new songs.
“We have this new one called I’m An Irishman,” says James. “It’s a song about the 1916 Rising, about Kilmainham Jail and the fellas who were shot in the courtyard there. We’ve been gigging that, it’s one of those songs that’s taken on a life of its own.
“It’s not about being a Republican or anything like that,” he adds. “It’s a song about Irish history; it’s coming from the rebel stance really. I suppose it could be taken as rebel song, but I don’t want it to be like that.”
Tupelo are a band who keep themselves busy and James regularly bring new ideas to the table.
“I write about a lot of stuff,” he says. “Whatever comes my way; then I just run with it. I don’t really put a lot of thought into it; I just do it. Next song, really – that’s the way I work. I bring it to the band, we put it down and then we gig them. That’s the best way – after three or four shows you start knowing what works and what songs are going down well.”
He’s not one for over-thinking things, then?
“Not at all. What’s the point? I suppose everyone writes differently – Brendan Behan wrote in a different way to James Joyce. It depends.
“I don’t really believe in sitting down and trying to re-write a song. I never buy the thing when I hear someone say ‘it took me three years to write this song’. I can’t really relate to that.”
James has been playing with guitarist Paul Murray and double bass player Damien McMahon for over 10 years, and that long musical relationship is vital to their tight, down-home sound.
“With the two lads, knowing them for 10 years, we’ve played everywhere from the biggest shithole to some of the nicest venues. They understand when I bring in a new song where I want to with it. Damo, the bass player, often says to me I nod and a nod can mean 10 different things. They know what the nod means!”
The line up is completed by Tim Condon on saxophone and Kevin Duffy on violin/mandolin. The sense of ambition that these five musicians have makes Tupelo the kind of band who’ll make a winning first impression.
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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