Archive News
Record label holds party to celebrate home-grown talent
Date Published: {J}
Galway based label Rusted Rail will host a Christmas party in Róisín Dubh on Monday, December 19. Label founder Keith Wallace gives the pitch for this night of left-of-centre, arresting music.
“Five bands for a tenner,” he says. “Four of them are on Rusted Rail – that’s Driftwood Manor, Bridget Power Ryce, Yawning Chasm and Phantom Dog Beneath the Moon. And then special guests are Rites, they’re not on Rusted Rail, but they’re the most consistently mind-blowing band I’ve seen in the past year and a half in Galway.”
In a time when we’re lambasted with negative news, Rusted Rail’s impresario strikes an optimistic note.
“It’s been the busiest year so far,” says Keith, who affectionately refers to the label as ‘the Rail’.
“It started in March 2006, and every year’s been getting busier – more releases and more opportunities and things like that. We’re just about to release the 26th release on the label.”
Keith is joined for the interview by Eddie Keenan, the songwriter behind The Driftwood Manor. Keith and Eddie met through mutual friends, and music soon found its way into their conversation.
“Keith would have been at a few of my gigs,” Eddie recalls. “In conversation a few times, it popped up – maybe someday we’ll bring out something on the Rail. Then about two years ago I had an EP called Holy Ghost. Keith had a listen and said ‘I must bring this out on the Rail’. We had an album this year, The Same Figure (Leaving).”
Ireland’s independent music scene is close-knit and The Same Figure (Leaving) is a co-release between Rusted Rail and Dublin based label Slow Loris.
“We both rolled in behind it, collaborated, I guess,” Keith explains. “That was followed by the Rusted Rail Roadtrip in the summer, which was a seven-date nationwide Irish tour. Driftwood Manor were headlining in support of the album. It was the best craic you could have while keeping your clothes on!”
The Driftwood Manor’s music incorporates elements of the American and Irish folk tradition. Eddie explains how he found his own style in this old music.
“There’s a kind of confessional edge to the lyrics,” he says. “Some people kind of see it as darker as well. The musical side of things – I listen to so many different kinds of music, I try to keep an open mind about everything. Big influences would be the trad side of things, bluegrass. I would have spent many years listening to the likes of Planxty, and Will Oldham, Smog – the more American folk side of things.”
Although Eddie is the only constant in The Driftwood Manor, he likes to assemble a cast of players that he can draw from regularly.
“Niamh Fitzgibbon plays fiddle with me on pretty much all the releases,” he says. “There’ll be other members who come and go – Anne Marie Hynes, who’ll be singing with me at the Christmas Party, and there’s Nick Byrne who plays fiddle and mandolin. It depends on the night.
“Sometimes I might record an album and pretty much do it all myself,” Eddie adds. “And then other times I’d have a lot of other collaborators. On The Same Figure (Leaving) I had, god, maybe eight or nine other people.”
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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