Archive News
Two-day party to celebrate 10th year of renowned trad music pub
Date Published: {J}
It might seem like an impossibility, but one Galway publican has set himself the task of getting people to put the recession on the back burner next month – if only for a couple of nights.
Galway city’s popular Irish traditional music pub, Tí Choilí was 10 years in business recently and, to mark the occasion, a two-day party is being held on March 2 and 3 with lots of fine music from top trad artists, as well as free drink and plenty of sociability.
“We celebrated the first, second and third birthdays and then it kind of stopped,” says Colie O’Flaherty, who established the pub in October 2000. “I wasn’t going to have one for the 10th but then I looked at all the crap around and said ‘let’s have a hooley’, and for a couple of nights, let’s forget!”
And so, on Wednesday, March 3, the legendary Arty McGlynn will be joined by fiddle player Cathal Hayden (Four Men and a Dog), accordion player Donal Murphy (Four Men and a Dog and Sliabh Notes) and special guest, singer Don Stiffe, who is currently enjoying huge success in the All-Ireland Talent Show.
On Thursday, singer Matt Keane from Caherlistrane will be joined by his daughter Orflaith, also a singer and by banjo and mandolin player, Colm Naughton. Special guest for that session will be the Inishbofin singer Desmond O’Halloran, described by Colie as “the special one”.
While some of the participants – such as Cathal Hayden and Donal Murphy – live in other parts of the country, all have a strong connection with the pub, says Colie.
“I wanted to keep it local,” he explains, adding that he had also invited Sharon Shannon, who played for previous birthday parties, to participate. Unfortunately for revellers, she is playing in the Irish embassy in Saudi Arabia and can’t take part this year.
A 10th birthday is no small event, and especially in the current climate. Things have become more difficult, especially in the last few months, says Colie, but adds, he isn’t unique.
“It’s tougher for everybody. “Everyone is basically trying to keep their wage at the minute.”
When he started off 10 years ago, there was no water and refuse charges. Now there’s a private waste collection and water is metered.
“In the 10 years there have been an awful lot of add ons and we are still paying rates [to the City Council].
“It is tough times,” he feels, but adds that he’s lucky to be based in the city’s so-called Latin Quarter. “Anyone that comes to Galway for the weekend will give us a twist.”
Location might be one advantage, but his genuine love and respect for Irish music is a huge reason for the success of Tí Choilí. From the beginning, there were two sessions every day in the pub, something that has continued in bad times as well as good.
And while the pub regularly attracts top names from Sharon Shannon to Paul Brady to John Carty to Frankie Gavin, Colie insists that it’s the regular session musicians who attract the tourists and who have given the pub its renowned status.
It certainly is on the tourist trail – on a recent Thursday evening visit with two friends, there were busloads of French and English tourists there, all gathered around the musicians at the top of the pub.
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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