Loes & The Celtic Link from Prague to Westport (and Back) #5: Sláinte and Slán to Ireland

White horses couldn't drag us away

After a weekend packed with great gigs in Galway, Sligo, and Westport (check out our previous tour report!), we had a few days to ourselves. Caolán went to visit family in Ennis while Honza and I went to the beach in Lahinch. We picked that spot specifically because we wanted to check out Kenny's Bar, which hosts the legendary White Horse Sessions spotlighting original music on Tuesday nights. The name White Horse Sessions refers to the rolling waves that look like white horses riding onto the beach and make Lahinch a popular spot for surfers. We had the pleasure of meeting mister Kenny himself as soon as we walked into the bar and had a chat with him about music – a rare experience in our modern world where oftentimes the bar staff will tell you to send a message via Instagram which the booker can then blissfully ignore. Tip of the hat to Kenny for demonstrating how it should be done!

Unfortunately, I caught a cold on the first night, when I was trying to be tough and went for a stroll on the beach in the pouring rain (turns out I am made of sugar) so I stayed in bed while Honza went to see a performance by Australian indie duo Saije. We also noticed the Dutch folk duo Boxin' the Vox on the program, though we would just miss them, similarly as in many other places we played on this tour. Would the stars ever align for us to see this mysterious duo in action or at least meet them…??

Got my first real six-string (in Ennis)

After Lahinch, Honza and I spent a few days in The Burren, a rock-filled landscape that has become Honza's favourite spot in Ireland. On Thursday, June 12, Caolán gave us a tour of the town where he spent his youth, featuring what musicians find most interesting: that shop that used to sell single cigarettes but has closed down, the nightclub he sneaked into even though he didn't really want to be there, the music shop where he bought his first guitar and spent hours practising guitar in between classes as a teenager, the youth hub where he taught guitar lessons and learned to work with a PA, and the statue of a man with a cow that replaced the iconic Daedalus statue because it was supposedly "more local". And, of course, his favourite bar: Paddy Quinn's. 

Paddy Quinn's doesn't often have live bands on (except from trad sessions now and then; see my previous article for an explanation of what that is) so the cosy bar quickly filled up with people who had been made curious by the posters or who had seen us play in Galway or Westport. The crowd was loud and adrenalin levels were high! Our original songs got people whispering and approvingly nodding their heads, one girl took out her spoons to play along with our jigs, an elderly lady sang along to every single cover we played, the whole bar joined in with Thin Lizzy's "Dancing in the Moonlight", and we got a special request for "A Man You Don't Meet Every Day". It appears that there are several interesting weekly sessions in Ennis, including a session exclusively for pipers called Piping Heaven, Piping Hell, which sounds morbidly fascinating. Next time we go to Ennis, we need to stay for several days at least: one night was too short!

Doolin Folk Fest: For folk's sake!

On Friday, June 13, we had the honour of opening the White Horse stage in the attic of the Doolin Hotel at Doolin Folk Fest. Does the name of that stage sound familiar? That's not a coincidence! Uri Kohen of the Westport Folk & Bluegrass Festival helped us get booked for this stage which is run by Kenny, who we had met in Lahinch, and singer-songwriter David Hope, who looks like Hagrid from Harry Potter and sounds like someone merged Darrell Scott and Bruce Springsteen into one person and gave him an Irish sense of humour. We felt like rockstars on this good-looking stage with incredible sound and lighting playing to a listening audience tuned in to original music.

In general, we found Doolin Folk Fest to be really "cool" in a good way, which is perfectly captured on the festival T-shirt with the slogan "For Folk's Sake" and a bearded man playing fiddle through his legs. The festival was big enough to be buzzing and small enough to see some familiar faces and make new friends. People of all ages were having a grand time and the acts varied from trad-trad (Frankie Gavin & De Dannan) to trad-fusion (Megatrad) and from poetic Americana (David Hope) to girls with cowboy hats and ukuleles and music that goes boom-boom oom-cha oom-cha, and everything in between. Extracurricular activities feature sessions in the hotel bar, singing sessions in the garden, and a dip in the ocean on Saturday morning: or so we were told by Anne-Lotte and David from Boxin' the Vox, who we finally met in person and who have been going to this festival since the first edition in 2013. All of us were reluctant to leave and agreed it was the perfect ending to a perfect tour.

What ending?

Let’s call it the end of the chapter: "The Celtic Link in Ireland." Honza and I said goodbye to Caolán and his girlfriend Jenn – who had been the most amazing roadie, merch seller and photographer a band could ask for – and transformed back to "duo Loes & Honza” for two more weeks of gigging our way through Belgium, The Netherlands and Germany.

Still to come:

June 17, 8pm: Loes & Honza at Casino van Gompel, Mol, Belgium

June 22, 2:30pm: Loes & Honza at Mini-Theater De Melkbus, Dordrecht, The Netherlands

June 23, 7pm: Loes & Honza at Camping ‘t Rouweelse Veld, Kronenberg, The Netherlands

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