We had a bit of an idea for St. Patrick’s Day, and suggested to Peter Curtin at the Roadside Tavern to stream a live session on Facebook. If because of the pandemic, people can’t travel to Ireland, and no pub is open, we wanted to bring a bit of joy in the shape of live music to the world.
“If you can’t come to the pub / Ireland / Burren, let us come to you”, we thought, and turned this idea to reality in a very short space of time. We just love being spontaneous.
Fortunately, we were working with two professional film makers, Lou Merkert and Kevin Hegarty from Loukevinfilming.com who managed in this remaining short period of time to set up the space and sound in the Burren Smokehouse visitor centre and film the intro video with Peter Curtin in the Roadside Tavern.
This is the first video of that St. Patrick’s Day session showing Peter in the Roadside Tavern. He talks about the history of the pub, the famous people who have played here, and how sad it is that due to the Covid-19 pandemic, he is alone in the pub. It is an emotional scene, one that hopefully will be a one-off and just a bemusing reminder of a scary time once this global crisis is over.
Once you have played the first video, the next one will start playing. You will also see a list of all the videos in that playlist on the right.
We had a great and sometimes emotional reaction to these live sessions. People from all over the world tuned in and sent messages of joy saying that they were comforted by listening to the music. Many of them are ex-pats who haven’t been able to return to Ireland for a while.
The musicians were also very happy to be able to play for the first time in months. Don’t forget, music and sharing it with others is their passion. They dearly missed playing in a pub.
The audience had the opportunity to donate to support the musicians. Each performer received an appearance fee from The Roadside Tavern, and the generous voluntary donations from the viewers made online were shared amongst the players. Thank you to all those who donated!