The First Full Day of Festival Activities

I am writing this at some time past midnight Irish time.  This little town is still quite awake.  We arrived back at our hotel a few minutes ago and I thought I had better recap today's events before they become a indecipherable blur.  This morning started with a relaxed pace.  We slept in until around 10am, just enough time to get up and catch a breakfast here at the hotel.  The Emmet serves a full breakfast as part of our fee.  John has been taking full advantage by ordering a cooked meal and I have been opting for the the granola, yogurt and tea instead.

Richard had a gig teaching young people at the local Community College.  Therefore we did not connect with he and Beverly until later in the evening.  John and I did another stroll around town.  Since it is so different from home we have been really enjoying just soaking in the atmosphere.  There was a farmer's market in full gear today and it featured fresh locally caught fish.  I recognized the flounder and that was all.  Also there was a table full of cheeses of an incredible variety.  Had we been hungry it would have been tempting.  One of the featured performers of the festival, Gareth Forsyth, was playing music at the farmer's market.  He is an excellent guitarist and vocalist and we enjoyed him enough to make a point of catching his pub performance this evening as well.  John and I were very impressed with his playing and surprised to see how under-appreciated he seemed to be. He worked hard to entertain and it seemed everyone aside from ourselves ignored him while he played at the pub.  The farmer's market folks listened more intently.

Last night Lee Ranaldo, from the Sonic Youth, opened the festival with a ticketed concert at DeBarra's Folk Club.  We passed on his show, primarily because we need to control our spending.  During our afternoon stroll we stopped into DeBarra's. This was our first look inside the epitome of Irish pubs.  The walls inside are a veritable museum of music memorabilia, photos, instruments, and various decorative motifs.  This is the pub that all other pubs wish they could be.   We spoke briefly with a gentleman, whom I later learned was Ray Blackwell, one of the festival organizers.  His parents are the proprietors of DBarra's Folk Club.  We asked Ray whether the Ranaldo show went well.  He said it was brilliant, more like a sonic artwork and a perfect way to open the festival.  This left us feeling a bit empty for having missed it.  According to the schedule for today, Ranaldo was due to lead a seminar at the parish hall across the road from our hotel so we headed over there for the 7pm start time.  Again we were greeted with news that this seminar was a paid event and again it was not within our budget.  Ray was collecting admission and since we had walked over there I figured at least a bit of friendly conversation was in order.   I mentioned that I learned about the festival from Richard Gilewitz.  Ray knew Richard and said "Oh yeah, you two can go on in, Richard told us that he had a couple of friends here and he's put you of the guest list and he is expected to show up after doing his sound check.  What a pleasant surprise and completely unexpected!  From everything I have discerned, Ray is the main  "Go-To" guy for the festival. 

Now for the seminar.  Lee uses an electric guitar, a blue Fender Jazzmaster,  to create a myriad of sounds.  This guitar's cosmetic condition definitely reflects the artist's unconventional playing techniques.  If this guitar were a child, Ranaldo would be arrested for child abuse.   During the seminar which  was a concert for the most part, he rarely played his electric guitar traditionally.  The guitar was strung up by a cord and it dangled freely from the ceiling.  With the guitar in this position, he used a violin bow to coax a variety of tones and sounds form the strings.  At points he punctuated the sonic earscape by gently and not so gently banging the back of the guitar with the frog of the bow,  producing a  variety of sounds depending upon the intensity and location of the attack.  He had several effects pedals and while the guitar groaned and droned he would coax even more sound from the instrument by manually adjusting, activating and deactivating the effects pedals and the amplifier.  At times he propelled the dangling guitar into a circular spin around his stage area.  I was impressed that he did not get smacked by the rotating instrument as he prowled the stage area. 

Once released from its bondage he held the guitar by the body and trailed the headstock across the top of the amp, then across the floor resulting in a fresh barrage of sounds.  He jammed a screw driver under the strings at the ninth fret, putting a new kind of tension on the strings and took advantage of this secondary bridge saddle to create a new texture of tones by playing above and below the screw driver bridge.  This display of experimental music continued uninterrupted for about 40 minutes.  He eventually pulled it to an end to field questions from attendees. He shared that he had a hard time quitting because the acoustics in the building were phenomenal. 

We exited prior to the conclusion because we needed to head across town to The Venue in the  O'Donovan Hotel.  Our next stop was the Acoustic Forum which featured five guitarists including Richard.  Each musician took turns playing a tune through two rounds and then sadly the time was up.  More on this event in the next edition.
Part 2
The artists who participated in the Acoustic Forum were Kevin McNally who played classical and tradtional Irish tunes, Jim Murray, who also played tradtional Irish music, Sarah Cockery, who played fingerstyle and sang American folk style music, Paul Buckley who played American Blues standards and Richard Gilewitz who chose to play Walbert's "Dance" and Fahey's "Spanish Two Step".  They did a round robin format where took turns playing a tune and talked about their influences.  Each performer played two tunes and the time was much too quickly used up.

After the forum we took another stroll around town to check out the music scene.  We attempted to see Eric Bell and Guests but this venue was completely jammed with people.  Then we walked down to the The Wrastler where Gareth Forsyth was playing.   He was recommended by Richard and Beverly.  In contrast this venue was only sparsely populated.  Gareth played his heart even though most of the people there ignored him.  John and I discussed amongst ourselves about how frustrating this has to be to a musician.  Being a novice, I am not certain how I would handle the situation.  With my own angst about performing in public, I might actually be better off if everyone ignored me.