The workshop on Friday June 18 in Dublin at Walton’s New School of Music was a blast.  Thanks to Michael McInerney and Eugene Ryan for organizing this event.  Afterwards M, E, and me went out to dinner, I had my first glass of Guinness in Dublin–not worth the trip by itself, but certainly a fine glass of beer–and Eugene and I went out to hear a few bands.  Dublin’s a great town for live music, that’s for sure.

The gig with Lowlands was inspiring.  I’ve played on both their records, but this is the first time I heard the band live, and I was blown away by the songs, the energy, and the musicianship.  I had a range of technical problems, including the harp mysteriously dropping out completely on the second song in the set–we never did figure out why–and feedback that ultimately forced us to take the harp out of the monitors, meaning that I was playing with the barest ability to hear myself.  Fortunately the audience could hear me, and a listen to the live recordings, some of which I’ll post soon, shows that the harp was on-target.  There were a total of 8 musicians onstage at this gig–harp, drums, bass, piano, 2 acoustic guitars, 1 electric guitar, and violin, with two of the musicians singing–so the sound was, like, huge.  And boy could those guys play. 

I got about two hours sleep before heading to Heathrow to take a plane home, so we’ll end this post here with a very brief summary: it was a great weekend. Â