Festival Review: Spirit of Folk 2011 – Day 2
Day 2 – The Adventure Begins
Spirit of Folk Day 1 was an absolute belter I think it’s fair to say. And so the Three Stooges awoke to a full fry [who needs master chef when you have a gardener !] And somewhere around lunch time we made our way into the main arena to see what was in store. We were all well aware that having not arrived until after 4pm on Day 1, we may have missed a bit. First stop – first band on the main stage – Traz (a four piece Acoustic/Alternative/Folk band from Dublin):
Post Traz, we took a wander through the woodland route and heard the familiar sound of uilleann pipes and a guitar bouncing through the trees. Two gentlemen, known as Lynched, were playing a set at the old well and here’s how we came across them:
They’ve got such a great Dublin trad sound and they play The Globe on Georges St, Thursdays from 9-11pm. We’ll definitely be stopping in to enjoy a future set and a pint.
At this point we needed to charge all the tech so we headed to the main house and took in some rays on the balcony too. A good few families had arrived down Saturday morning so the place was full of smiling faces.
Fast forward to 8pm and the Magnakata Stage for Lisa O’Neill. I hadn’t heard her music before but she’s got one of the most distinct folk voices I’ve heard. A singer/songwriter who is brutally honest about relationships and life in general, Peter grabbed an audioboo of one of her songs below:
Drawn back to the Hall of Heroes tent by the prospect of karaoke (watching, not singing), we were in the tent no longer than 20 minutes before we were summoned by Chris (artist liaison and all round good guy).
The Hot Sprockets, who were headlining Saturday night, were on site and available for interview. We’d heard earlier in the day that their lead guitarist Tim had been taken off site in an ambulance following an allergic reaction to buprofen. That’s pretty damn serious so we weren’t even sure if they’d be playing. Chris gave us the word that they would be and we had a word with the lads (sans Tim) pre-show:
How rock and roll is that? The guy could have died but was committed to joining his band mates for the headline slot. If I’m honest, [disclaimer: Anto only ? ] I’d never heard of the Sprockets before but damn do they put on a great rock’n’roll show. Top notch:
You can probably guess where we ended up after the Sprockets? That’s right, Hall of Heroes for a mammoth DJ set and dancing/chatting until the early hours. Day Three was still ahead of us.
Looks like my sort of set up.