Promoting the Next Gig: The Indulgers and Johnny Fean at the Barge Rooms, Lifford, Ennis

TOMORROW NIGHT Colorado's own Celtic Roots-Rock band THE INDULGERS & THE ONE AND ONLY JOHNNY FEAN

Here at the The Barge Rooms

FLASHBACK to ST PATRICK'S DAY 2007:
DOWNTOWN DENVER

Damien McCarron of the Indulgers presents framed photo of Johnny Fean to Fado Irish Pub, where it now hangs on the Irish Rock Wall of Fame. (See full photo here.)

This outstanding portrait of Johnny Fean was provided by Sean Hennessy, whose work spans several decades of music and daily life in Northern Ireland.

And I picked out the frame.

A downtown Novato art shop obliged.

In 2008, I plan to catch an Indulgers gig (when they are home again, back in the USA, as Chuck Berry would say) and hope to see this portrait weathered-in now in its Rocky Mountain High sawdust saloon setting.

But if you are somewhere near Lifford, Ennis, County Clare, then please go to tomorrow night's gig. It will be legendary.

Things Go Better With Cork (5) - And yet...

Doors Close on the Lobby Bar

...The Conway family have always had their hand in the performing arts. Pat’s brother Denis is a well-regarded actor, while his mother is the staple of many a community choir in Cork. Pat himself is that rare species - someone who doesn’t have a note in his head – and fully accepts it!

The enthusiasm has always been there though. “I was always interested in different or original music growing up, but there wasn’t that much choice in Ireland in the 60’s. I would go to see The Horslips or Rory Gallagher or The Bothy Band, whereas other people would go to see show bands.

I think The Horslip’s shows stuck with me. You could see them playing in dancehalls where there might have been Big Tom one night and then The Horslips the next, which was a bit weird”.

When it came to acquiring the Lobby premises, Pat applied his individualism and uncompromising attitude to the bar’s music policy, insisting also on treating musicians with respect and equity.

“We set out day one to make it different to walking into a session in a bar. We made it quite clear that it was a listening venue, and so if people were talking during a gig we would have asked them to leave and we stuck to that policy from day one. I think it paid off because at the end of the day people who were coming into the shows were coming in to listen....”

Even I have been to the Lobby. More at the link. And why does this post keep vanishing!

Comebackhorslips Back in Business Tonight

Our main page, which is still accessible through the Home button on the splash page will be back in business later tonight. The New Orleans page will now be a part of the site, with ongoing links to relief efforts in the global musical community. I should say that it was Barry McCabe who first inspired this with his announcement of the CD Baby efforts.

But just take a moment and imagine a world that never knew New Orleans or the Mississippi Delta. This is a world that would not have rock and roll as we know it, the blues as we know it, rhythm and blues as we know it, cajun or zydeco as we know it, swing music as we know it (No Sing, Sing, Sing from Mr. Prima, for instance), and the myriad inspired forms of reggae and ska as we know it (Jamaican musicians listened to offshore New Orleans radio and remade the beat they heard through the static their own)...and above all, Jazz. The ingredients would be there, and surely something else would have emerged from another set of circumstances, but the sound of New Orleans and the Delta in life, death, joy and grief is unique and irreplaceable. And it will be heard again.

In the spirit of being back in business:

New Orleans bar keeps doors open through catastrophe

...Bourbon Street largely escaped the floods that hit after New Orleans levees were breached. And in the first days, a few stranded tourists also wandered in to sample the warm beer that became the drink of the day after the power went off and the refrigerators stopped working.

"Whatcha need, darling, you're all right?" the gruff bartender called out to a sweaty customer as he squeezed into her line of sight.

"Something cool, like bourbon," he answered.

Johnny White's has been an island of normalcy in a city shattered by hurricane anarchy and the stench of death.

The tiny joint sits squarely on the corner of Bourbon and Orleans where alcoholics and derelicts mix with a steady stream of yuppies and tourists who play at slumming it.

The doors are wide open.

Nearly a week after the disaster there are not many people walking by to notice. Those that do have stories to tell.

Lisa Smith, 41, is slumped on a bar stool, nursing a rum and coke -- and a huge gash on her side.

"I was floating on a couch drinking Budweiser," she told a friend who walked in as she began to tell the tale of how she escaped the floodwaters and made it back to her home away from home in the French Quarter.

Smith's story was interrupted by cheers which broke out when a man walked in with a cooler of ice.

"Don't get too excited, I'm hoarding this for myself," Sprinkel joked as she lit another cigarette and leaned on a stool behind the bar...

More at link.