Booze, Blaas & Banter of a Saturday morning

There we were, 20 or so of us,  huddled in a queue outside Jordan’s pub on the Quay in Waterford City on a Saturday morning at 8.30 am. As motorists passed us by there was one or two scornful looks suggesting they felt we were waiting for an early house.

The Imagine Arts Festival  committee conceived an early morning pub session with music, talk, social history, readings a bit of banter and the ubiquitous blaa with red lead. 

What a brilliant idea! It worked. The place was jammers for an eclectic mix of musicians, poetry, song and reminisces all loosely based on the adjacent river and the sea.

The event was adroitly chaired by Ciarán Murphy who has recently published his book 'What Happens On Tour'.

The music was anchored by local stalwarts Tom Mullane and Liam Merriman. Mullane sang some  self-penned songs including a sea shanty about Dunmore and one about a former Sailors' Rest in Henrietta St. which was based on a a photograph.  Merriman sang a great  Jimmy Nail number about the sea and  Newcastle. There was contributions in a similar vein from Michael Hayes and Paul Dillon .

Sailors' Rest Henrietta St - recalled in song by Mullane

But it was the spoken word that  anchored the morning. Mark Roper  a poet read a  vivid piece from his recent book about the  River Suir. You can listen to him here.

listen to ‘Mark Roper reads from his work Woodland Hill’ on Audioboo

I was honoured to make a contribution myself and played a Déise air and you can hear it here.

listen to ‘Cathy Desmond plays Sliabh Geal nCua - a Déise air’ on Audioboo

 

Donal Foley

An extract from Three Villages the memoir  by the  legendary journalist Donal Foley from Ferrybank was read by his daughter Deirdre Morrissey. There was talk afterwards of developing an event to commemorate Foley who many will recall from his Man Bites Dog column in The Irish Times. I look forward to that.

Local historian Dermot Power spoke of his work on the street names of Waterford.

Pink Floyd - Made in Waterford

Ferrybank man Dick McGrath delivered a lovely talk on the former EMI radio factory over the river and his efforts to track down a photograph of the employees from the 1930’s for his mother. You can hear his talk here. An LP of Pink Floyd was passed around for examination. It was pressed in Ferrybank. Not a lot of people know that.

listen to ‘Dick McGrath f talks about the EMI radio factory in Ferrybank’ on Audioboo

The famed Waterford blaa was not forgotten and Raymond Roche attired in a wonderful branded shirt spoke of the legendary Roche’s blaas from the Glen which had its origins since 1886. A recording of his talk is here.

listen to ‘Roche's Blaas by Raymond Roche’ on Audioboo

 

 Blogger of the Year ( jealous -moi? Bien Suir I am!) and conker champion Mark Graham  was in the pub and he told us about his life choice that resulted in the purchase of a camper van and a never-ending round of Irish festivals.  I loved his iconic story about the fisherman losing the run of himself based on a dolphin. 

John Molloy 

The star of the morning was John Molloy former publican and sailor. His memoir called ‘Steady As She Goes’ was unknown to but I’ll be chasing it down. He read two pieces one concerned the hunt for a radio broadcast of the 1959 All Ireland hurling final between Kilkenny and Waterford whilst based near Malta. The second, based on a colourful bunch of sailors going to confession was hilarious. You can hear his readings here and be warned it contains strong language and sexual references (that should boost the listeners! :-)

listen to ‘John Molloy - Confession on a ship part 1 of 2’ on Audioboo

listen to ‘John Molloy - Confession on a ship Part 2 of 2’ on Audioboo

There an excellent dramatization of a piece about a streetwalker performed Shauna Farrell and written by Ciarán Murphy

Actress and Waterford native Jenni Ledwell read from  a soon to be published novel by Io Curtin with the author in attendance himself. Performer Konor Halpin gave us a comedy interlude with some good gags about the recession.

The concept of the gathering was simple but made for a thought provoking convivial morning full of local flavour and let’s hope it is seized on by others so that mighty range of spoken word talent is cherished and encouraged.

Congratulations to the Imagine Festival committee and John Cloono for putting together the morning. More please!


Related posts Come the Sails Launch of Tall Ships Festival  http://cathydesmond.blogspot.ie/2011/06/tall-ships.html

The Dubliners Dilemma at Imagine Waterford

By John Hartery

The 2012  Imagine Festival in Waterford got into full swing on Friday night. Excusing the pun, there is an  imaginative  range of acts and venues in week's the offering assembled by the committee that has something for everybody.

     The Greyfriars building adjacent to the splendid  Viking Triangle was the venue for The Dubliners Dilemma, a one-man show adapted and performed by Declan Gorman from Bachelors Walk Productions. The play  is based on  the Dubliners book of short stories  by James Joyce. Gorman uses the letters between Joyce and his publisher Grant Richards  as a device to perform vignettes from several of the stories from the masterpiece. The book was published in 1914 and the excellent programme notes tell us that it was rejected by fourteen publishers.

Gorman

      The sell-out performance was wonderful as Gorman delivered 25 to 30 characters from the book ranging from school kids to a Belfast solicitor. The range of nuanced Dublin accents was impressive  and he captured the distinct areas of the city  wonderfully.  He brought great physicality and passion to the work and hugely enlivened the stories. Some of the correspondence between writer and publisher concerned Two Gallants and we learn how the social mores of the day halted printing of the book. My favourite story from the collection  is the heart-breaking, Counterparts and using this story,  Gorman was terrific as he vividly brought us on a pub crawl as the alcoholic clerk.

The set was by Eoghan Darcy  and Edward Stevenson. The excellent sound was by Michael Gerrard.

At just over 50 minutes the show is great entertainment. Given only four or five stories were used there is surely much still to extract from the book by Gorman? The play is on tour throughout Ireland in 2012-2013. Highly recommended.

Imagine (ative) Venue

Venue note: The Greyfriars building was an excellent choice for this intimate event. It was great  to see a building multi-tasking over the weekend as; an exhibition space, a museum, a theatre and a cinema. That is definitely sweating an asset and other publicly funded venues should take note.