Mundy: 'The Lobby in Cork was the first place you'd plant your seed'

Mundy's musical pedigree and connections range from the Romeo + Juliet soundtrack to supporting REM and Neil Young and working with Sharon Shannon

Mundy: “The Lobby was the first place that you’d plant your seed. It might have held 90 or a 100 people but your career grew from there by selling out the Lobby a few times and then you’d go to a bigger venue.”

MUNDY’S ties with Cork go back a long way. Over three decades, he’s played more than a dozen venues, at all angles of the compass, in the county. One of his first performances was at a festival in Noel C Duggan’s arena at Millstreet, but his strongest memory is from a gig at the Lobby Bar — an iconic live music venue in Cork City.

“In the early 2000s, there was a great Irish music revival with all these acts... The Frames, Damien Rice, Mic Christopher, Gemma Hayes; Josh Ritter and David Gray were a part of it, too,” he says.

“The Lobby was the first place that you’d plant your seed. It might have held 90 or a 100 people but your career grew from there by selling out the Lobby a few times and then you’d go to a bigger venue.”

“One night, I did my own gig. The Frames were playing at the Marquee, with other great artists supporting them. They all ended up down in the Lobby after my gig. We took to the streets busking then after it, around the corner from the Lobby, all out playing guitars, singing and drinking, having the craic. It was a special night. I went on to Ballycotton the night after, and half of them followed me out there as well.”

Mundy, 50, shot to prominence in 1996 when a track, To You I Bestow, from his debut album featured on the soundtrack for the hit movie Romeo + Juliet, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes. 

His second album, 24 Star Hotel, released in 2002, features probably his signature tune, July, an incomparable ode to summer. #

Mundy. Picture: Anthony Mulcahy

Over the years, he’s supported giants of the trade, including REM, Bob Dylan, and a personal hero, Neil Young, with whom he shared a stage at Dublin’s old Point Depot in 1996.

“I got the biggest guest list ever for that gig, something like a hundred people,” he says.

“I couldn’t get rid of the tickets, as in I didn’t know 100 people in Dublin that would go! I was a huge Neil Young fan. I grew up in Birr, CountyOffaly. We played songs from Harvest and After the Gold Rush nearly every time we’d do a session in my parents’ pub. I invited all my mates from Birr that were around. The guts of them came — even a friend of mine whose wife was due to give birth that night.

“I had the same booking agent as Neil Young. I met him after the gig. I said, ‘Listen, thanks so much for making a dream come true, but I’d love to meet Neil Young.’ He said, ’OK, let’s go look for him.’ We went backstage, couldn’t find him. Went into his dressing room, it was all
incense burning and Indian rugs on the wall. We went back out to the stage, and there he was in the middle of all the crew with a pair of leather gloves on, lifting up gear, packing it away with the roadies. Getting his hands dirty... not a problem for him.”

“The same night, Michelle Smith was going for her last gold medal in the Olympics, and we went to the bar, and I sat with Neil Young, and I had a couple of pints of Murphy’s with him, and we watched her swimming. His dad was there. His dad lived in Howth for a while.”

In 2008, Mundy teamed up with Sharon Shannon on Steve Earle’s song, Galway Girl, leading to another summer anthem and a long-running chart-topper. Mundy has been a long-time collaborator with Sharon Shannon. His Christmas-time performance from 2008 of Rainy Night in Soho with Shane MacGowan, during a Sharon Shannon Big Band with Special Guests live recording for TG4, is worth digging out on YouTube.

MUNDY, along with Nick Cave and Camille O’Sullivan, was one of the performers at their old friend Shane MacGowan’s funeral in December 2023, in Nenagh, County Tipperary, only half an hour’s drive from Birr, his hometown. The funeral Mass had several resonances for him.

“One of the amazing things was that the priest, Fr Pat Gilbert, who did the service, was my religion teacher in school,” he says.

“He baptised my daughter. He also brought music, rock ’n’ roll, to our school — he brought a drum kit, a bass amp, and electric guitar into the classroom. There were two other priests from Birr on the altar too, so I felt really supported that day.”

• Mundy will perform at The White Horse, Ballincollig, Cork, 8.30pm, Friday, August 15.
• See: whitehorse.ie