In
the few years that we have been together stomping around the country selling
our songs in bars, street corners, and festivals all over Ireland we have had
an amazing array of experiences. Some of them were great, some of them
disastrous, and some of them down right bizarre. From big stages with drum
risers and excellent sound, to standing on pallets in a field with no
microphone stands we’ve seen it all. At least we thought we had seen it all,
but nothing could prepare us for the Lamb Festival. You couldn’t script
it. The writers of Fr Ted would have had a hard time imagining this fiasco of a
gig, and we loved every minute of it.
The weekend began with a trip to the beautiful hill of Uisneach in the center of Ireland
for the third annual Festival of Fire. The festival has been a great success
and has served to re-establish an ancient Irish tradition of the lighting of
the fires on May Day from Irelands central point. The neighboring county’s
await the signal of the big flame and respond by lighting fires on their
respective highest hills. It is a beautiful tradition and a wonderful spot to
spend a weekend. Buckfast made its first appearance around midday filling our
road-worn-bodies with a lovely burst of energy and intoxication. Our own little
red-bearded-dwarf-extraordinaire Fergus Packman came with us to a festival to
stand in on the double bass. This was our second year at the Festival of Fires
and we were very happy to see that they had given us a proper big stage this
year with excellent sound provided by Grouse Lodge Studios, though by the time
they let us go on stage we only had a 30 minute set because the sound man was
giving preferential treatment to a Grouse Lodge artist by letting him play his
boring tunes, we will leave out the poor saps name, but this run of the mill
singer songwriter didn’t seem to care that everyone was leaving the tent bored
out their minds and so he continued well into our allotted set time. Never the less it was a good show and
we managed to get people in and the whole tent dancing.
Many bottles of buckfast later we were enjoying the sounds
of Kila and shaking booty in a field to the songs of the Saw Doctors. You can
imagine my surprise that night when I returned to the campsite only to find
that my tent had disappeared. I was sufficiently warmed by the buckfast and
spent the night on the patio of one of the other Scallywags tents. Little did I
know that it was the sneaky Scallywags themselves who had moved my tent two
fields over in amongst the cows and the bull who was not pleased at the sight
of me crossing his field the next day to retrieve my portable house. Not a
pleasant stroll with a hangover. My head was full of nightmares and regrets of
drinking buckfast the night before. As the great Hermin Melville once said, “There are
certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life
when a man takes his whole universe for a vast practical joke”
There was no time to delay the next morning, as we were due
to play in Roscommon that afternoon for the Lamb Festival. We rolled onto the scene of
the Festival set in the lovely grounds of Roscommon castle around 2pm. Stage
time was 3pm so we didn’t have much time to observe the bizarre scene before
our faces. Children passed by the stage with lambs on leashes; some of the
lambs had football jerseys on them. The manner in which all the children poked,
pushed,
and generally man handled the poor little lambs in the
petting pen behind the stage was a weird sight.
We
quickly took the stage, (a two-foot high shaky thing propped up on barrels of
hay. From our precarious perch of a stage we had a view that overlooked the
entire festival grounds. On either side of the stage there were 5-foot tall
statues made of woven twigs in the form of Rams. Everywhere you looked there
were sheep, and every food stall served up the other sheep’s cousins in a
hundred different recipes, lamb stew, lamb curry, lamb burgers, kebabs, lamb
with rice, and lamb steaks. Live sheep were made to walk past as one of their
family members slow cooked on a spit.
We
started in on the first couple of tunes through a small PA sound system and the
crowd came and formed on the grass in front of us. Families milled around and
half way through our second song a strong midlands accent came blasting over
the castle grounds stereo system, which was five times as loud as our small PA.
“Place your bets now folks for the
sheep race starting in five minutes,” shouted the M.C. over the loud speakers. The
interruption was so loud we nearly stopped playing but managed to hold on to
the small audience we had gathered, but we hadn’t made it through half of the
next song before the voice rang out again, “Okay folks, the race is about to
begin! Gather round and get your tickets, as the first race is about to begin!
Come on now folks, the big sheep race…” this rattled on so loud and so long that we were
forced to stop playing. Two thirds of the audience got up and walked over and
we all had to turn and examine the scene of this “epic” race. When everyone had
gathered round a gate was lifted in this U-shaped pen where the sheep were made
to run and jump over haystacks, while, (I kid you not) a man dressed in a wolf costume
chased them up and hay stacks, hooting and hollering as he went.
Meanwhile
the M.C. shouted the play by play but as the first sheep reached the finish
line he realized that none of the sheep were marked with any type of ribbon or
color to distinguish them from each other. The crowd shouted to know who had
won, The M.C. simply pointed at the first through the gate and shouted down the
mic, “That one.” Confusion ensued and everyone demanded refunds or that
the race be re-run. The whole thing taking about fifteen minutes, and they
decided to run the race again but this time with colored ribbons tied around
their necks, and when all that was done we were told to strike back up. Which
we were all too happy to do, but the interruptions wouldn’t stop there.
Every
third song we were asked to announce the disappearance of some child, “Martin
O’loghlan will you please come to the stage,” I would have to say across the PA
system. “If any one sees a young boy in a checkered shirt named Martin please
tell him his mammy wants him to come to the stage.” This process would be
repeated every few songs, a different child with a different colored shirt, but
the same annoying interruption that completely broke the flow of our show, but
a gigs a gig and we were getting paid. When it came time for a break in the set
another child had gone missing and Pauli finally leaned into the mic and said,
“Thanks a lot folks, were Mikey and the Scallywags bringing family’s back
together since 2010, see you in a few minutes after the break.”
The
break couldn’t have come at a better time as all of us could feel the effects
of our previous days hangovers sweating out of us in the hot May Day sun. As we
walked towards the shade of the castle wall the booming voice of the thick
headed M.C. came blasting over the speakers, “Gather round for another race…Oh
what?....What do you mean?” he says having a conversation with a woman I can only
assume was his wife for the fierce look he gave her. “So
there is no race now.” He shouts over the mic, “Right folks, Margret’s after
telling me that there is no race now even though she told me a minute ago that
there was and here I am sounding like and edjit because of her.” Some old fellas in Arron
jumpers laugh in the corner and he proceeds to inform everyone over the loud
speakers that instead of the race they were going to start the sheep shearing
competition. Alan joked, “Their gonna shear the sheep to make them more
aerodynamic for the next race.”
Joking
was all we could do to keep our sanity at this point. Our quick two-hour set
was now being delayed for another 45 minutes while the competition was being
held. We climbed the castle wall to get a better view for this, (insert
sarcastic voice,) “extra exciting” contest of intelligence and manliness. We
watched as full grown men grabbed these huge sheep by their front legs and
dragged them across a field to be shorn with the old fashioned shearing
scissors. The sheep writhe around at first in an effort to escape, but
surprisingly they become docile once they are placed in the shearing position
on their backs. The odd woolen beast would continue kicking and would get a
snip from the scissors causing blood to run down the poor sheep’s side. This
went on for a good 45 minutes and then we were shuffled back on to the stage
laughing at the situation we had landed ourselves in. The interruptions and the
announcements of more sheep races continued to plague us throughout the second
hour of tunes. Even the audience appreciated the fact that we were laughing at
the disorganization of the whole affair. Occasionally the guy in the wolf
costume would walk by making it hard to keep a straight face and sing at the
same time. Jokes like,
“What did one sheep say to the
other sheep?
"after ewe"
"after ewe"
And,
I
hear they have 2 new uses for sheep in England.
Meat
and wool.
A
ventirloquist cowboy walked into town and saw a rancher sitting on his porch
with his dog.
Cowboy: Hey, cool dog. Mind if I speak
to him?
Rancher:
This dog don't talk!
Cowboy: Hey dog, how's it going?
Dog:
I'm Doing alright
Rancher:
(Extreme look of shock)
Cowboy: Is this your owner? (pointing
at rancher)
Dog:
Yep.
Cowboy: How's he treat you?
Dog:
Real good. He walks me twice a day, feeds me great food, and takes me to the
lake once a week to play.
lake once a week to play.
Rancher:
(Look of disbelief)
Cowboy: Mind if I talk to your horse?
Rancher:
Horses don't talk!
Cowboy: Hey horse, how's it going?
Horse:
Not bad.
Rancher:
(An even wilder look of shock)
Cowboy: Is this your owner? (pointing
at rancher)
Horse:
Yep.
Cowboy: How's he treat you?
Horse:
Pretty good, thanks for asking. He rides me regularly, brushes me down
often, and keeps me in the barn to protect me from the elements.
often, and keeps me in the barn to protect me from the elements.
Rancher:
(total look of amazement)
Cowboy: Mind if I talk to your SHEEP?
Rancher:
(gesticulating wildly, and hardly able to talk)...... Them sheep ain't nothin
but liars!!!
In the end we
finished our set and hit the road but not without seeing one more sheep race.
That was the last time we played in Roscommon. We were asked back this year but
were already booked for another gig and sadly didn’t get to go back for round
two. I hope they managed to find all the lost kids without us. We look forward
to the next one and the chance to be part of such a bizarre affair.
By: Mikey McCrory
No comments:
Post a Comment