‘It takes a big man to boo in the middle of a crowd’’. So says Christy Moore, tackling the hecklers who have interrupted Jinx Lennon’s set. ‘‘But long after you’re gone he’ll still be singing those songs.’’ In an interesting departure from the conventional headliner/support act divide, Christy Moore has invited Damien Dempsey and Jinx Lennon and Miss Paula Flynn to appear as special guests during his two nights at Dublin’s Tripod.

Some of the audience aren’t getting it, though, and after Christy opens the show with a blistering version of ‘The Well Down In The Valley’, accompanied only by his own driving bodhran beat and promptly leaves the stage to Jinx Lennon there’s a palpable aura of disbelief. It’s folk but not as we know it. It calls into question what we know about folk music and when we get as far as ‘Flesh Taxi’, which deals with prostitution and people trafficking, the crowd feel they’ve been pulled too far from their comfort zone and a few isolated boos emerge from the darkness. But when Damien Dempsey sings ‘The Twangman’, half an hour later there isn’t a murmur. It’s a story of a pimp who slits someone’s throat with his twang knife but it’s a 200-year-old song and nowhere nearly as close to the contemporary experience. And that neatly defines the dual pull of tradition and innovation that keeps folk music visceral and vital. When Zozimus wrote the ‘Twangman’ 200 years ago it must have been as raw and shocking as Jinx Lennon’s work and Dempsey salutes that, making it a central song on an album that reaches back into a tradition that he fears will be lost to the young audience he attracts.
Taking the stage afterwards with Declan Sinnott at his side Christy seemingly effortlessly resolves the ying and yang of his guests. There are old songs, new songs, humour and tragedy salted away throughout his set, all delivered with a passion and intensity that visibly drains him by the end of the first of the two nights. By the second night Jinx has found the balance and injected a little more humour to balance the bleakness and when the extraordinary siren-like wail from Miss Paula Flynn at the climax of Planet Of The Apes brings the set to a close it’s like an epiphany and the response is rapturous. Damien Dempsey swiftly takes the stage afterwards and delivers a rivetting set kicked off with a raucous Rocky Road To Dublin and propelled on from there above a chant of ‘DA-MO, DA-MO’ from in front of the stage. Christy finally takes the reins and the rest of the night is his. Sensing the crowd’s appetite for more when many might be tempted to call it a night, he grins . ‘Myself and Declan have no work to go to in the morning’ and they head into a final round of songs that cap one of the most fully rounded nights of folk music, not to mention one of the best gigs I’ve seen.
Billing itself as the ‘last music cafe before America’ Petr and Mary Pandula’s Magnetic Music Café in Doolin once again serves up something more than tea and curranty bread this summer with another season of ‘Best For The West’ concerts on the slate. The first of the concerts features the Long Notes, Colette O’Leary’s post-Bumblebees trio in which she’s joined by Brian Kelly on banjo and mandolin and Jamie Smith on fiddle. It takes place on Sunday July 20. The following Sunday Winifred Horan and Mick McAuley from Solas will be performing material from their duet album Serenade, although they’ll be expanding the line up with the addition of a guest guitarist. The young guns of Teada will be filling the tiny venue on Friday August 1. Thursday August 7 sees Scottish harpist Catriona McKay pay the music café a visit in the company of Shetland Island fiddle player Chris Stout and guitarist Tommy O’Sulivan. On Sunday August 10 you’ll find the Siobhan O’Brien Trio there and on Saturday August 16 there will be a performance by the Christy McNamara Trio as the noted accordion player and chronicler of the traditional scene steps out from behind his camera. The following Saturday Sarah McQuaid punctuates her tireless touring with a stopover at the Doolin venue and the season closer on Friday August 29 is a concert by fiddle duo Liz and Yvonne Kane for which they’ll be joined by guitarist John Blake.
Busy with all things Kila, Eoin Dillon hasn’t found as much time this year for solo shows as he did last but he has a couple of Dublin gigs lined up for Whelan’s where he’ll once again be joined by Steve Larkin, Frank Tate and Des Cahalan on Monday July 7 and Monday July 21.