Loes & The Celtic Link from Prague to Westport (and Back) #4: Milestones and Misfits

Castle on the Hill

I've been to Belfast twice before and I love it. Maybe it's the fact that it reminds me of Rotterdam, being a port city and a bit rough around the edges. But although I thought I had already explored the city thoroughly, admiring the many murals and enjoying the live music in the pubs, I had no idea there was a mansion on a hilltop with a view of the city. We got this recommendation from a Belfast native who visited our concert at the Torpedo Theater in Amsterdam two weeks ago and I am very glad for it: the walk up from Belfast Castle to McArt's Fort on Cavehill is nothing short of spectacular.

Welcome to the Hotel California...

What goes up, must come down... Of all the accommodations I have booked on this tour, there have been two dodgy ones and one of them was in Belfast. After a long and difficult check-in process, we got to a place where several things were broken and we didn't feel entirely safe. Ultimately, nothing happened to us or our instruments, but it made me realize that a touring musician can't afford to travel as a backpacker. A) you don't want your instruments a.k.a. retirement fund to get stolen; B) to give a good performance, you need to be relaxed; C) spending hours on the phone with customer service to settle disputes when you should be out working or enjoying your precious time off is a real waste of time and money. So I learned my lesson: the best (because safest and cheapest) option is to stay with people you trust, and otherwise you should find a reliable ho(s)tel, even if it costs a bit more. 

Trad session at Madden’s Bar

Slightly tipsy from all the Guinness we had to drink (poor us!) while waiting for the access code to our B&B, we made our way over to Madden's Bar for a trad session. We had been there once before, in 2022, to a session led by Kevin McCullagh (fiddle), Aaron O'Hagan (uilleann pipes), and Fióna Ní Mhearáin (flute). We had a really pleasant chat with Kevin and Fióna this January at Celtic Connections in Glasgow, where Kevin's avant-garde/trad-project Córas Trio was the opening act for Hawktail. This time, Kevin led the session with another fiddler named John and it was just the four of us for most of the night.

For those who have no idea what I'm talking about: a "session" happens when individuals get together to play music from a publicly available repertoire that can be called standards, instrumentals, or tunes. Bluegrass sessions or "jams" take their form from jazz, where the musicians take turns improvizing a solo while the others accompany them rhythmically and harmonically. For me, the fun of these sessions is in the switching of roles. Variations can be made in the melody while the harmony is set. In trad (Irish or Scottish traditional music) or old-time (Appalachian mountain music) sessions, it is the other way around. Most of the musicians in the circle will play the melodies of dozens of tunes collectively and they might be accompanied by one chord player (usually guitar, bouzouki, or piano) who is free to improvize chords as long as they fit to the melody. Playing tunes for hours on end can put the melody players in a trance-like state and if you happen to be that one lucky harmony player, it is the best ear training you can get!

Where have all the folk clubs gone?

When you say "Ireland" to a continental European, their enthusiastic reactions will usually refer to Guinness, friendly people, and "live music everywhere". They will mostly mean the sessions that I mentioned earlier. Also, many bars will pay musicians to play well-known pub songs (loudly) that people can sing along to or just enjoy in the background as they chat with friends over a pint. And there is a strong tradition in Ireland of competitions for musicians and dancers. But where do the singer-songwriters go? Is there an audience in Ireland for new, original material and storytelling? In England, you can still find some folk clubs that were founded during the 1960s-70s folk revival. In Ireland, these seem to be a lot harder to find. One of Northern Ireland’s folk clubs gathers every Thursday night at the Sunflower Public House in Belfast. Their formula: the first hour, anyone can sign up for a "floor spot" and play one song, the second hour, the special guest plays an entire set. The audience pays a small entrance fee and is requested to be attentive to the music, which makes it a lot less popular to the local youth than the downstairs bar and the bustling beer garden, but a delight for the musician on stage. No one shouts "Play Galway Girl!" at you—you get to tell your story, sing those beautiful ballads that you can't play in rowdy bars, listen to other people's stories, discover new music, and sell CDs, because people who go to folk clubs make a point of supporting the artist. I truly hope that the younger generations will realize the importance of these institutions and not let them die out, because this is actually where the magic happens.

Speaking of Galway Girl... 

Our next stop on June 6th was the Galway Folk Festival in the city of Galway, where we met up with Caolán O'Neill Forde and miraculously transformed from the duo "Loes & Honza" to the trio "Loes & The Celtic Link." After transporting my double bass for three weeks, it was finally time to put it to work! Unfortunately, our schedule didn't allow us to see any of the other artists (including Fionn Regan, Daori Farrell, and The Scratch) but we did get to play for the largest audience on our tour so far: Monroe's Tavern was so full that people could barely move. The audience was very international: we met a group of amateur musicians from the USA who were on an organized tour with banjo player Pete Wernick and people from as far away as New Zealand and Australia. Maybe that's why especially our bluegrass songs were met with approval, though we also got a big round of applause for our original song "The Wind and the Water" and a request to record our cover version of "Beeswing."

Milestone reached: hello Westport!

The main title of this series of tour reports hints at the importance of the Westport Folk & Bluegrass Festival in Westport, county Mayo, Ireland. The festival's main man, Uri Kohen, has a huge positive influence on European bluegrass and an impressive collection of trucker hats: when we met him, he wore one that said “I thought Ariane Grande was a font.” What started with Uri giving us a spot at his festival grew into a 7-week tour! Uri also helped us book a few more shows in Ireland as well as a place on the panel of the Universities Project symposium, hosted by Lee Bidgood on Saturday morning, June 7th.

Stories and Songs

I first met Lee almost twenty years ago, when he was doing his doctoral research on bluegrass in the Czech Republic, which led to the book Czech Bluegrass: Notes From the Heart of Europe and the documentary film Banjo Romantika. Fun fact: Honza and I formed our duo in 2019, when we both attended Lee's Global String Band course at Charles University in Prague and he taught us such awesome tunes as Liz Carroll's "Lost in the Loop" and the old-timey "Jeff Sturgeon." He is one of the kindest people I know and a refreshingly open-minded academic who can also play a mean fiddle. When introducing himself, he said that he is used to "taking something really fun and making it boring," which I want to get printed on a T-shirt for him. He failed this time, though, because the panel was not boring at all.

Some of the panelists were academics, all of them were musicians. Liam Purcell, Róisín Ní Ghallóglaigh, Kathleen Coker, Pete Ward, Lee and yours truly each contributed to the topic of “the songs we play and the stories we tell about them.” I was surprised to notice that my five cents about authenticity and imposter syndrome when playing a roots music that does not directly correspond with your personal background was shared by almost everybody in the room: it seems like there are more of us “misfits” than each of us realize... And a large group of us spent hours talking after the panel was officially over.

The craic at Peacock Lane

A few hours later, we were off to Ballisodare in county Sligo for a 2-hour show in a very nice bar called Peacock Lane which puts on bluegrass shows in partnership with the Westport festival. The manager Andrew and volunteer sound engineer John made us feel welcome and at ease. The room quickly filled up with people who came to sit and listen and we also gradually drew in some curious regulars from the bar. Andrew and John both told me that live music venues are struggling in Ireland at the moment, which is something tourists might not always realize. Providing a stage for original music takes a financial investment from management and the support of volunteers. I deeply respect those who won’t give up on it when times are tough. Who knows, the next revival might be around the corner!

The craic at McCarthy’s

The next evening, we played in McCarthy's bar in the center of all the action, the main milestone of our tour: Westport! We were welcomed by manager David and a full house consisting of people curious for more of our original songs after having seen us play at the Universities Symposium, people hungry for bluegrass, and people thirsty for a beer and a good time. I think everyone left the bar satisfied. We played "Grace" as an encore, a beautiful Irish ballad that I learned after someone in Westport had requested it when I played there with Red Herring in 2019. I usually catch a few initiated individuals singing along when I play it in Prague, but all of McCarthy’s joining us on the chorus was a new and powerful experience for us.

After our show, we finally had the opportunity to join the nightly jamming that always takes place in the Clew Bay Hotel during the festival. We got our endorphin levels up in a high-energy bluegass mash jam with members of Blue Weed (Italy), Old Baby Mackerel (England), and Liam Purcell and Cane Mill Road (USA). Holy moly, that was a blast! Caolán also sat in on a more genre-fluid, groovy jam around the corner and in the hotel bar, there were a large and a small old-time session going on simultaneously. This is the strength of the Westport Folk & Bluegrass Festival: instead of rivalry between niche genres, there is a space for all of them, all musicians can float from one jam to the other and go home with new inspiration and new friendships.

We have two more concerts in Ireland coming up this week: Thursday 12 June at Paddy Quinn's in Ennis and Friday 13 June at Doolin Folk Fest. Hope to see you there and if that's too far away for ye, then stay tuned to Insounder for the next episode of our tour report!