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Irish Independent
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Irish Independent
West Clare's Vandeleur Festival reveals line-up for weekend celebration of music, culture and community spirit
Set in the beautiful surrounds of the Vandeleur Walled Garden and Visitor Centre, the festival promises a four-day celebration of music, culture and community spirit. The line-up, which festival organisers announced over the weekend, includes local and international acts. The festival opens on Thursday, June 26, with beloved Kerry comedian Bernard Casey taking to the stage. 'Known for his sharp wit and relatable humour, Casey has sold out major venues such as the INEC, Vicar Street, and The Everyman Theatre, as well as performing internationally in London, New York, and Boston,' festival organisers said. Clare's own award-winning trio, Socks in the Frying Pan, will headline the Friday night, with their 'energetic blend of traditional Irish melodies and modern rhythms' promising a great show. Cherish the Ladies are returning by 'popular demand', according to festival organisers - and they are hitting the stage on Saturday, June 28. Once again, this Irish American supergroup will 'dazzle audiences with their exhilarating mix of traditional Irish music, stunning vocals, and spellbinding step dancing'. Also on Saturday, there will be an opportunity to meet local makers, secure in-store promotions, and see special guests as the brand-new Gifts at Vandeleur Gift Shop by Kilkenny Design is launched. Closing the festival on Sunday, June 29 is country music sensation Gerry Guthrie. The Ballina-based singer and his five-piece band have been entertaining audiences across Ireland and the UK for more than ten years, with their show 'promising a high-energy finale' to this year's festivities. Beyond the headline acts, there will be music throughout Saturday and Sunday at the garden. All evening concerts begin at 7.30pm and are ticketed events. Festival organisers recommend early booking as capacity is limited, with demand expected to be high. A park and ride service will be established for the festival and will operate every fifteen minutes between Kilrush town centre and the festival venue each evening. The 2025 Vandeleur Festival is supported by Clare County Council, the Kilrush Town Team, Kilrush Amenity Trust CLG, and Kilrush Credit Union.
Irish Times
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
Bonnie Raitt in Vicar Street: a healing night of welcome warmth and real soul
Bonnie Raitt Vicar Street ★★★★☆ 'Ireland in any weather is beautiful to me.' Bonnie Raitt is telling Vicar Street about the nine-day break she took here, surrounded by sheep, before playing Belfast on Sunday night. The rest surely did her good because she's in rare form tonight. She hits an early highlight with the rattling, barrelhouse groove of Thing Called Love, a song originally on John Hiatt's Bring The Family. That album featured the slide guitar of Ry Cooder but even he'd have to bow to Raitt's playing as she tosses off an effortless swamp porch solo, knife blade sharp and smooth as molasses, from the battered Stratocaster she apparently bought for $120 back in 1969. And she's got that voice to go with it. Take Mabel John's 1966 classic Your Good Thing (Is About To End). Raitt, brimming over with pleading soul, stretches out vowels, holds notes until her vibrato is on the verge of cracking, and when that voice has finally had enough of the uncaring man in the lyric, her slide guitar takes over to show him the door. An almost supernaturally intuitive interpreter of songs, Raitt delivers an achingly beautiful take on Richard Thompson's Dimming Of The Day, a called-for Angel Of Montgomery by John Prine ('Nobody cut through like John'), and twists Dylan's Million Miles inside out with a glint in her eye as she implores her baby to 'rock me for a couple of months'. Then she bests them all by bringing the house to its feet with the encore's I Can't Make You Love Me, a tale of broken love familiar to every knocked-about heart. READ MORE Raitt makes several bows to old friend Paul Brady , in the audience having the same good time as the rest of us. First she claims she's nervous with him watching, then declares it an honour. When asked to sit in he allegedly replied, 'You can't afford me,' but with the greatest respect to the man from Strabane, she doesn't need him as she commandeers his Not The Only One and Steal Your Heart Away, making them her own. Raitt calls her show 'a healing experience in this suffering, hard-assed world' and that's what it is But Raitt also knows how to write a song. Nick Of Time, the title track from the 1989 album that finally made her an overnight success 18 years after her debut, is one thing with its great lyric about getting on a bit ('Those lines are pretty hard to take when they're staring back at you'). Just Like That is something else entirely. To the surprise of many, including the other nominees and Raitt herself, she won the Grammy for Song Of The Year with it a few years back but the judges were right, for once. A woman who lost her son is visited by the man who lives on thanks to her child's transplanted heart. It's moving on record but it's devastating live. In that inexplicable way a song you've heard before can sneak back up on you, Raitt gets to the line where she lays her head on his chest and she's with her boy again and you're gutted by the lyric's power. 'They say Jesus brings you peace and grace, well he ain't found me yet,' has a similar effect. Raitt calls her show 'a healing experience in this suffering, hard-assed world' and that's what it is, whether she and her superlative four-piece band are transforming the room into a rambunctious roadhouse or a hushed confessional. A night of welcome warmth and real soul. There aren't many like her.
Irish Examiner
02-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Examiner
'Ireland gave me and Philip something to belong to': Caught in the spotlight of the Phil Lynott story
The boy is back in town. After a sell-out run at Vicar Street in April, the ghost of Phil Lynott returns to stages in Dublin and Limerick this week in Moonlight — a rock theatre extravaganza that explores Lynott's artistic genius and the early years of his time with Thin Lizzy in the late 1960s and early '70s. The actor Peter M Smith stars in the lead role. 'Philip jealously guarded his private life,' says Smith, 'which created a dichotomy for someone so public, someone who made a living from being in the public eye, having to sell his wares publicly. I remember feeling a tremendous sense of pride when I realised that because we shouldn't be judged on anything but our output.' Smith, who has been heralded for his performance incarnating Lynott, shares striking similarities with the Thin Lizzy frontman, both physically and in his background. Both grew up streets away from each other on Dublin's southside — Lynott in Crumlin, Smith in Drimnagh. Both were raised by single mothers and maternal grandparents, not knowing their fathers. 'When you're raised in our situation, your yearning is always to belong,' says Smith. 'Philip grabbed hold of his Irishness, as I do. No matter where I am in the world, I'm at pains to let people know how Irish I am, even above the fact that I'm black. I don't go around talking about [being black]. I've read books on black consciousness, like Steve Biko's books. I'm very much into black history, like the story of Frederick Douglass, but that's more for my private reading. My real passion is the fact I'm Irish. 'Ireland gave me and Philip something to belong to. He was fiercely patriotic and protective of all things Irish. That bore fruit in a lot of confrontations with journalists who weren't Irish and didn't understand the state of play, shall we say, in Ireland. I'm like that too. I'm quite spiky and defensive about my Irishness. I'm fiercely patriotic. I love being Irish because Ireland has given me something I'll always belong to.' Moonlight: The Philip Lynott Enigma Live at Vicar starring Eric Bell and Peter M Smith Lynott, who died in 1986 in hospital of septicaemia and pneumonia aged 36, was born to be a rock star. He walked down the street with a natural swagger. It could be said Smith was born to play Lynott. He has the acting chops. He has a background in music. In 2002, he was a finalist on Popstars: The Rivals (the series which gave the world Girls Aloud). Smith captures Lynott's spirit uncannily. He got the seal of approval from Lynott's late mother, Philomena, to reprise him on screen, as Smith was earmarked to play Lynott in biopic projects that Neil Jordan and Noel Pearson/Jim Sheridan tried to get off the ground. 'I had extensive discussions with Jim. When we met at auditions, he told everybody else to go home, and sent me into the next room, because there weren't many guys, certainly in their 30s, like me, having the same upbringing and attitude as Philip. I'm a rocker at heart. Jim operates on instinct. He knows his eggs from his eggs. 'So, we were close, but for one reason or another, those biopics didn't happen. Philip's kids were a little bit younger, and their mother didn't want a certain story told in a certain way. These things can happen but now seems to be the right time. Staying away from Philip's private life and looking more at what he's achieved as an artist seems to be doing the trick. 'Philomena was always on board because she wrote the book My Boy, and later an updated, more candid edition. The problem was never Philomena. She was quite the storyteller. Philip's wife wasn't ready to tell the story. 'I understand that. I have daughters. You would want your children to remember your songwriting and not any mistakes you may have made in your life.' Moonlight features an impressive supporting cast, including Brian Kennedy as Oscar Wilde's ghost and Thin Lizzy co-founder Eric Bell playing himself. Smith and his co-stars are accompanied by a live, four-piece band that rocks out Thin Lizzy hits as well as new, original music. 'Larry Hogan, the musical director, has done a great job in adapting the original music to make it sound seamlessly like Thin Lizzy,' says Smith. 'A lot of hardcore Thin Lizzy fans swore blind we were playing Thin Lizzy B-sides such was the faithfulness of the original music to Lizzy's sound. And those are the hardest people to please.' Moonlight: The Philip Lynott Enigma returns for four extra dates to Dublin's Vicar Street (June 20-22) and UCH Limerick (June 24) Read More Culture That Made Me: Music legend Brush Shiels picks his touchstones
Irish Times
25-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
Biird at Vicar Street review: Consummate musicians deliver radical trad for the TikTok generation
Biird Vicar Street, Dublin ★★★★☆ 'We represent the best of Ireland,' says Lisa Canny, harpist, banjo player and frontwoman of the 11-strong trad girl group Biird. At a sold-out Vicar Street on Saturday night, their easy confidence is intoxicating as this huge group of musicians dressed to the nines play some hair-raising trad. The girl group formed in September 2023, when they were invited to perform at one of Annie Macmanus's literary nights at London Irish Centre. A little over a year and a half later, having already played around the corner earlier in the day, at Guinness's Lovely Days Live festival, they're performing to more than 1,000 people with not so much as a single released. It's a sight to behold. 'What I loved about the girl-band thing growing up is that it was a group of girls who looked like they were having the time of their lives, doing the best things of girlhood well into their adulthood, dressing up and playing tunes,' Canny says. READ MORE The concept behind Biird is a combination of consummate musicians and clever marketing for the TikTok generation: it's cool, it's slick and it's young – as demonstrated by a highlight of the gig, the group's reimagining of Gypsy Woman, the house track by Crystal Waters. The la-da-dees of its chorus are not dissimilar to the nas of lilting. The band also deliver several sultry lilts in a set list punctuated with Irish-dancing accompaniments from performers as gorgeous and styled as the band. At one point Canny turns to the crowd and says that Biird visualise a new type of Irish music, with 'none of this paddywhackery and green rivers'. Certainly, between the international success of Lankum and the emergence of bands that are rethinking what it means to play the fiddle, such as The Scratch, they're part of the radical rebrand of trad. The only things lacking tonight are original songs. Biird play the three tunes that they've written themselves, but none of these has been released yet. If this is the kind of crowd the group can pull, and the energy they can create, based on nothing more than posters and word of mouth, what could they achieve with an album? This is a huge production from start to finish, and not only because of the 11 players on stage. Biird have proved the concept: make trad accessible to a new audience and it will come. The crowd at Vicar Street is young and stylish, a distinctly more urban and hipster listener. There's something admirably ballsy about Biird's unabashed ambition, a trait that is distinctly un-Irish, even if their music is as Irish as bread and butter.
Irish Independent
21-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Independent
Smear tests, magic knickers and having a laugh – Being an older, bolder, wiser version of Vogue Williams is comedy gold
Anyway, I was 'working' in the home, minding the kids, and running the house and very conscious of the increasing pressure on my self-employed husband who was trying to earn enough to keep our little boat afloat. Our kids were 23, 12 and 10 and the oldest was about to emigrate. It was time for me to go back to paid work. We were broke. Before being a 'housewife' I had worked for a national charity as their PRO and fundraising manager. I had skills. I had experience. I knew that the recession might mean it would take a bit longer to gain employment, but I never doubted that I would get a job. Boy, was I wrong. I hadn't bargained for the fact that my approaching 50th birthday, coupled with the 10-year gap on my CV where my career used to live, rendered me not one bit attractive to an employer. Oh yes, sexism with ageism is a lethal cocktail. It took me until early 2012, as I turned 50, to finally realise that my chances of getting a job were remote. We desperately needed the money and so I needed to do something. In the end I decided to focus on what I loved most – writing and talking and see if I could paid that way. So began a long apprenticeship, learning to write opinion pieces for the papers and contributing to radio – both local and national. It was not lucrative but it was enjoyable, and I felt that it might lead to other opportunities. But had you told me, at any time, during the last 13 years, that in 2025 I would be touring my own one woman show, I would have laughed in your face in disbelief. Now let's be clear. I am not playing the 3 Arena or even Vicar Street (yet), but I am delivering my show, called Older, Bolder, Wiser in what promoters would call 'intimate venues' around the country and I am delighted that that includes playing the Wexford Arts Centre this Friday, May 23. Older Bolder Wiser is sort of a follow-up to a book that I wrote during Covid, which was published in 2022 called Wise Up. I had always wanted to write a book and as I cruised towards my late 50s I realised that life post menopause was not at all what I was expecting it to be. It was far better. I wondered why no one told women about the freedoms and the fun of these later decades. After the book came out, I was invited to various places to give talks on what could loosely be called 'positive ageing' and I realised that I was a woman on a mission. And that mission is to tell women (of all ages) not to buy into the consumerist messaging around anti ageing and other nonsense. Because yes, your looks do change as you age but if you become obsessed with that fact, you miss out on what getting older is actually about. Once you are through menopause, life is full of delicious freedoms. We are living longer and healthier and so our 60s and 70s provide the opportunity for all kinds of mischief, boldness, reinvention, experimentation or just the chance to have some fun. It is then that I believe women step into their true matriarchal power. Through Wise Up I met two women who were organising the first Funny Women comedy show since the pandemic and they rather 'assertively' encouraged me to take part. I was very unconvinced that I could do comedy, but in an effort to practice what I preach (the gospel of 'sure why not try') I thought I would give it a shot. And I got bitten by the stand-up comedy bug. I discovered that making people laugh is the most wonderful privilege. I have also realised that as older people, we have so many stories, so much experience, and much of it is comedy gold. So, I am mining my own life for the pure hilarity; tales about smear tests and so-called magic knickers, about navigating the world as a 6-foot-tall woman and the absurdities of getting older. There is so much to guffaw about. But the best thing about doing this show is that it is giving me the opportunity to meet so many women all over the country, giddy women with their own stories. Oh yes, we can all be Vogue Williams and Joanne McNally….. only we are older, bolder, wiser!!
