The Road from Cork to Kerry and back

Colin Henry's saga of the current tour by Ferguson, Holmes, & Henry continues:

From Durrus we moved on to Listowel in Co. Kerry for a concert in the lovely St John's Theatre. The theatre is right in the square in the centre of town and is a great space to play. You can see the family team outside [left] on the evening. Joe Murphy has been running the theatre for many years and has the organisation well practised. We had a good crowd and a good gig. We had the quite coincidental experience of a couple in the audience from Pennsylvania, Gary's home state, but the husband was originally from my home town of Ballymena, Co. Antrim.

Many thanks must go to Niall Toner, who plugged the gig on his radio show which resulted in some extra audience, and in particular a man who gave up his football coaching for the night to attend the gig - I think that pretty impressively shows the power of the radio plug! Incidentally, we stayed the night in a large country house [below]. We had the very large place to ourselves completely. It is supposed to be haunted. It may be, but we sat by the large open fire after the gig and had a glass of wine and no one else joined us, though maybe I did hear the sound of a distant banjo!


After Listowel we drove on to Clonakilty, Co. Cork, to play in the famous De Barra's Folk Club. We were playing the 'Sitting Room Sessions' which is a weekly event with predominantly acoustic music in an informal setting, run by Gavin Moore, nephew of Christy. Gary and I have played it twice before but this was Janet's first time. Gavin is a good guy and we had a great night. Plenty of 'ghosts' in this place - if you look around the walls they are covered with pictures of artists who have performed there, from Christy himself to Noel Redding (Jimi Hendrix's bassist) to Ralph McTell.

From De Barra's it is on to Kenmare and the Carnegie Arts Centre - will keep you posted!