May – July 2022
My trusted assistant Haydn & I left the shores of the UK in May for a five-week stint of shows in Ireland whilst the crewing arm of our organisation dealt with Slam Dunk, Download & Green Day (Huddersfield) back in the UK. All went swimmingly in the UK based on the feedback I have received from numerous sources.
Over in Ireland (where I’m writing this) we have delivered 10 shows and two festivals. We’ve done The Killers (x2), Kodaline, Picture This, Gerry Cinnamon, Dermot Kennedy & Lewis Capaldi at Malahide Castle (each show 25K), Green Day Hella Mega tour, Guns ‘n’ Roses & Red Hot Chili Peppers, Longitude Festival & Kaleidoscope Festival. Not sure it’s good to be back. Lack of resources and personnel at every turn, but despite the challenges we met we delivered the shows thanks to the hard work and diligence of our team and suppliers. You know who you are.
Once these shows were over, we were supposed to come home for a couple of weeks, but Melvin had asked me to ensure the “Folly Festival” in Cullohill, County Laois was set up properly and they had everything they needed. So, H and I jumped in the car and set off for Cullohill. We arrived around 10:00Hrs. All was good. And then we met Nancy. Before I go any further let me just say that I have met and toured with far too many artists to list and met all manner of what we term Music Industry “Heads” but the lady I meet that morning, Nancy Phelan outshines them all. Nancy owns the land the event is on and lives in a lovely little cottage behind the dressing rooms and is in her 90’s. Now if that was impressive enough, how about this:
The day we arrived was hot, no breeze, lots of blue sky. Every two hours or so Nancy would appear in the main arena asking for two volunteers. Nancy and the volunteers would disappear in the direction of her cottage and return with two massive teapots and a basket of cakes and biscuits, which Nancy insisted we all had to partake in to keep up our strength in the heat.
We could see that all was running swimmingly so once the doors opened we slipped away. The Folly was by far the smallest show we did in the Summer, but the memory of it will stick with me for a long time. We’d be back in Ireland to cover Indiependence & Electric Picnic, but I’ll report back on that in my next post.
Sx