The Watery Hill Boys in the Red Room, 18 Feb. 2012

Sharon Loughrin reports on the latest house concert at the Red Room, Cookstown, Co. Tyrone:

OK Richard, where have you southern lot been hiding the Watery Hill Boys? How come we haven't heard about them before now? This isn't on, you know; they're too good for you lot to keep to yourselves!

Seriously though, we had a fantastic night on Saturday night. Jim, Neil, and Donal were a real pleasure to have as house guests, and the night of bluegrass music they played was second to none. Jim has a great line in bluegrass-related stories and facts which was much appreciated by the audience, and after three encores we still had about two-thirds of our crowd remaining glued to their seats. The night then developed into a session with Colin Henry and Janet Holmes who had travelled up to hear the band (Colin played dobro at times through the concert too).

We let our camcorder run throughout the whole night as usual (we like to have something decent to watch of an evening and TV is rubbish), and I think we have about six hours of music recorded that night. I'm sending a link to a small part of it; there are a few more tunes on YouTube and on our Facebook page.

Many thanks therefore to the BIB for drawing our attention to this great band a few months ago. Promoters/festival organisers really should be checking them out!