Mary Coughlan review: Ride On among the highlights of triumphant homecoming show in Galway
Mary Coughlan's return to her native Galway for the 40th anniversary of her debut album, Tired and Emotional, reminds us of why she is such an enduring national treasure. Her voice is rich, authentic, and very much her own, her charisma undeniable.
She kicks off with Steve Bogard and Barbara Wyrick's Damn Your Eyes, a jazzy number she inhabits with ease, crooning 'I can do what I want/I'm in complete control.'
What follows in a show co-presented by the festival and the
Róisín Dubh venue is a wonderful set and a series of salty anecdotes about the times she has been barely in control, or out of control completely.
She recalls her arrest for drunk driving in Galway, on the eve of her departure for Dublin in the first flush of her national fame. At the station, she sneaked out, reclaimed her impounded car and drove home to her going away party. Judge Garavan, who subsequently let her off with a six week suspension, is long departed, but receives a rousing cheer in the festival tent.
Mary Coughlan on stage in the Heineken Big Top at Galway International Arts Festival.
Coughlan pays tribute to Erik Visser, the Dutch musician who supported her early career, and is now laid low by Parkinson's disease. She also has warm words for the songwriters whose work she has covered so powerfully over. She recalls how she and Johnny Mulhern were doing a newspaper crossword one morning after a gig when they spotted an article about an ice-cream vendor who sold heroin on the side. That gave rise to one of his hardest hitting songs, The Ice Cream Man, and one of her finest performances of the night.
She introduces Jimmy McCarthy's Ride On by recalling a conversation she once had with the writer, who admitted that the song is not really about horses, but Ireland, and a character 'with eyes wild and green' who joins the IRA. Another McCarthy composition she has made her own is Ancient Rain, on which Richie Buckley plays a majestic saxophone solo.
Coughlan brings out two guests in the course of the evening; Jack L, with whom she duets on his own Rooftop Lullaby and Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah, and Ultan Conlan, with whom she performs his track, The Lumberjack.
Jack L joins Mary Coughlan on stage in Galway. Photo: Andrew Downes, Xposure
As befits a homecoming concert, the mood in the tent is warm and convivial. At one point, Coughlan asks the Galway West Independent TD Catherine Connolly to stand up and proclaims her 'the next President of Ireland.' The cheers Connolly is met with suggest her bid for the Áras will have massive support.
There are songs one is delighted that Coughlan chose to include in her set, such as her 'first ex-husband' Fintan Coughlan's Double Cross, and those one wishes she had chosen to perform, such as Mulhern's Magdalen Laundry, or her take on Billie Holiday's Strange Fruit.
But it is enough to see her in such fine fettle, aged 69 and seemingly able for anything.
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