Roesy at Cyprus Avenue

July 15th, 2006 Posted in Ireland, Kerry, Live Music, Music, Photography

Roesy played in Cyprus Avenue in Cork on Thursday night after the launch of the Mitchelstown Music Festival. As always, it was a great show but more of that anon. Kerryman, Brendan O’Shea, who just returned from the States, after a few years there seemingly, opened up proceedings. He played quite a few songs and had a strong contingent of Kerrymen and women in the audience. He has one album out from a few years back and is planning to launch his second album later this year. He’s well worth checking out and I think he’s planning a tour to launch his album.

Roesy got on stage with Josh on piano as usual and Jack Meagher (I think that’s his name) on guitar. It’s a slimmed down version of the band from the last couple of times I saw Roesy but there was great banter between the band with the three of them joking on stage. At one point, Roesy was tuning his guitar, and Josh and Jack broke into a recital of the Glenroe theme tune. That was some blast from the past I can tell you. It felt like bedtime on Sunday night all over again.

They played ome new songs that I didn’t recognise as I still have to get my hands on Roesy’s new album, “Colour Me Colourful”. I like when a singer gives some background to songs, where they came from, what was happening to inspire the song and Roesy does this in spades.

The one sour point of the night was the photographer at the start of the show. I’m pretty bad for taking photos at gigs but I don’t stand right in front of the lead-singer for two whole songs while taking multiple shots and inspecting them. This guy was there and didn’t look like stopping when the band were kicking off their third song only to be asked to leave by someone, presumably from the venue. He was directly in my line of sight so I couldn’t take photos for the first few songs. I had planned on going close to the stage and taking a few shots, then scampering off again, but I didn’t chance it as there probably wouldn’t have been much goodwill towards photographers after this guys antics!

Like I said, there was good spirit in the band which was all the more evident when they played about 5 songs in the encore! It’s one of the longer encores I’ve seen but that’s no complaint.

All in all, a great gig, I look forward to seeing him again when he plays down in Mitchelstown in August.

Full set of photos on Flickr here.

Update: Betty also has a review of the gig.

Donal