It Takes A Village: Trabolgan set for all-Irish festival of music and comedy
Ed O'Leary and Joe Kelly, organisers of It Takes A Village in Trabolgan; left, Blindboy and Sinead Quinlan.
For three nights in September, a holiday centre in East Cork will enter a parallel universe. A tented stage will look out over the Atlantic. An all-seated courtyard will bring a sense of intimacy under the open skies. And a mobile sauna will stand on the shoreline, amidst the painted rocks and the waves crashing in from the vast expanse of Cork Harbour.
This is not the first time the It Takes A Village festival pitches camp at Trabolgan Holiday Village, just beyond Whitegate and a 20 minute drive from Midleton. But it promises to be an event like no other, arriving as it does at the tail end of the pandemic and the great hush that has fallen over live music in Ireland.
Amid challenging circumstances, the promoters have put together an impressive lineup. Performers include songwriters Aoife Nessa Frances and John Francis Flynn, and vintage Sligo indie group Those Nervous Animals. And there will be a set from soul-inflected electronica composer Kevin Blake, performing material from his debut LP, Rough With The Smooth, with specially-commissioned visual accompaniment by broadcaster and film-maker Donal Dineen.
“It’s 100% Irish,” says Joe Kelly, who runs the festival with his business partner Ed O’Leary (the duo are also the partnership behind music promotions company the Good Room, at St Luke's in Cork and other events). “You’d always bring in some foreign stuff. But this time we could have done two or three versions of the festival with different all Irish acts. That’s the great thing.”
With the live sector more or less shuttered since March 2020, it’s been a long and circuitous route back for small promoters across Ireland. As has been widely documented, there have been claims that the Government has given short shrift to the industry. And that it has prioritised other areas such as sport, with, for instance, 25,000 allowed into Ireland v Serbia at the Aviva Stadium recently.
It Takes A Village is different in that it’s Ireland’s only residential festival, with attendees staying in holiday chalets in groups of two to six. The difficulty in putting it on in 2021 was not one of logistics, says Kelly, so much as navigating the Government’s road map on the return of life music.
“The challenges are not knowing what the state of play was,” he says. “It is difficult when you were looking back a few weeks ago at the All-Ireland semi-final. Mayo versus the Dubs and they were 24,000 in Croke Park and no one wearing masks. You realise live music probably isn’t taken as seriously.”
Kelly is of course pleased the government has announced the lifting of all restrictions on October 22. However, he wishes there had been greater clarity across recent months. Instead, the industry is now scrambling to catch up.
“They needed to be clear in their messaging. And they weren’t clear. Had they given us lead times everyone would have had a chance to book acts again.”
He wasn’t surprised Electric Picnic, the festival run by Festival Republic on behalf of Live Nation, didn’t go ahead in 2021 after it was refused a licence by Laois County Council. “I personally thought 70,000 was too much to ask for,” he says, referring to the capacity that Festival Republic boss Melvin Benn was seeking. “Had he gone for 20,000 or 30,000 he might have had a chance.”
More than 18 months after the outbreak of the pandemic there’s clearly no going back to the old normal. Yet when the dust finally settles for live music in Ireland some of the adaptations forced upon the industry may be for the better, Kelly believes. One change is that the independent venue sector has learned to speak with one voice.
“The independent sector has come together in a way which never happened previously. Levis in Ballydehob, DeBarras in Clonakilty, Coughlan's in Cork City, the Róisín Dubh in Galway…,” he says, naming some of the country’s leading independent venues. “Now the Government is starting to take the independent sector seriously.”
With his Good Room partner O’Leary he’s planning on expanding his presence in cork City. The Good Room had taken over the old Kino Cinema on Washington Street but was forced to shutter as the pandemic took hold. Yet now they are gazing towards the future with optimism.
“We’re looking at a project next year in the city centre,” he says. “We’re hoping to team up with another venue at the start of 2022."
As we step blinking into the light, Kelly fears one sector of the arts and entertainment industry may not recover. “When I was growing up in Galway you had five or six nightclubs in Salthill alone. And then there were three left in Galway City. And now you have none. When I came to Cork there were 17. There are three or four now.”
The only way nightclubs can be saved, he believes, is through government intervention. Licensing laws need to be reformed, along with insurance regulations.
“Nightclubs are in a perilous state,” he says. “Irish people are very good at hospitality and entertainment. People want to come here and to enjoy that. But you have a system that mitigates against it.”
* It Takes A Village runs Friday September 17 to Sunday September 19 at Trabolgan Holiday Village, East Cork. Some chalets are still available
- Pop: House Plants: Bel1’s Paul Noonan and producer Daithí have joined forces on a project that blends confessional songwriting and twitchy, glitchy grooves.
- Trad: Fire Draw Near with Ian Lynch: One quarter of acclaimed “nu-trad” act Lankum, Lynch will be hosting a live recording of his regular podcast investigating “Irish traditional music and song in all of its myriad forms”.
- Visual Arts: Vicky Langan: The sound artist and filmmaker will stage a specially commissioned one-off performance.
- Podcast: Make Me An Island Broadcaster Donal Dineen hosts a special episode of his podcast in honour of reggae producer Lee “Scratch” Perry who passed away in August. Blindboy will also be doing a live version of his podcast.
- Comedy: Sinéad Quinlan: It’s less than two years since the Cork social worker performed her first stand-up set, at the Wonky Donkey comedy club in Cork. She has since gone from strength to strength, starring in her own RTÉ Player show, Seriously, Sinéad?
- DJ: The Stevie G Soundsystem: The veteran DJ and presenter is joined by Yves and Minnie Marley for a set of vintage bangers.
