May 17 galway

Day 9 - Friday, May 17, 2002

Ain't no sunshine today. We decided to follow the coast to Galway through Roundstone. It took us a couple of tries to find the right road out of Clifden, but we eventually succeeded. I'm sure the drive is beautiful, but the clouds were so low, we were unable to see the 12 Bens. When we reached Roundstone, we headed for Malachy's Roundstone Music. We went a little crazy there. Just a hint to all of you who are thinking about purchasing a tin whistle. It appears that the more expensive they are, the worse they are. I played a £130 whistle and it was terrible...bad tuning and bad sound. The £5 one was much better. Still, the best I've bought was in the US. Being in tune with itself is a pretty major problem. We found all sorts of great music books there. It's a fine store.

We continued along the coast, stopping on the island (Inishnee) on which some of "The Matchmaker" was filmed. This is a very gray day and not very photogenic. We finally decided that touring the whole coast wasn't going to mean much since visibility was very limited. We stopped at a road side pub along the way. The southern coast of the Connemara is a Gaeltecht area and most of the road signs are in Gaelic. The local language at the pub was clearly Gaelic also. It was a great atmosphere and we just listened to the sounds of the voices. Then on towards Galway.

Felicity managed to navigate us right through Galway, and then in the tiny town of Oranmore, we got lost looking for our B&B. In fact, we had driven past it twice. The Castleview was in a great location and if the owner hadn't been a bit of a used car salesperson, trying to sell us more nights, it would have been fine. Felicity was more dissatisfied than I was. We decided to drive into Galway and see the town. We found the pedestrian mall and had dinner at Busker Browns. The food was good and most of the wait staff was "foreign"....Canadian and American.

We had a plan to catch some Irish music that night so we set off to find it. A "bouncer" at one of the pubs made a suggestion for some trad so we walked in only to find it so jam packet that listening, mush less sitting, was out of the question. It was after all, Friday night and this is a young town. Lots of people out to be seen and do some seeing. We decided to head back to Oranmore to catch the music that the B&B owner had suggested. Ahhhhh, now we were in for some fun.

We walked into the pub and asked the bartender if there was any music that night. He said there wasn't, but a number of his customer explained to him that he was wrong. He was more right than they knew. We got a front row seat!!

A couple of men started loading in some equipment at about 9:30. Oh, they had equipment...amps, preamps, mixers, monitors, speakers, electric keyboard, electric guitar and enough cables to stretch to Galway. The looked like they might be father and son. They finally got everything plugged in and while I was away seeking the facilities, started in on there 1st tune. It was promising enough considering the looks of the ensemble. The older gentleman was backing up on the electric guitar while the younger was adequately bumbling around on the concertina. BUT IT WAS ALL A RUSE! The concertina was put away and it was time for an entire set of unknown (for good reason) country western. "Dad" continued his scratching at the guitar while his son played one finger piano melodies with one finger chord accompaniment in the bass. The best part was, between each tune, the son, slowly and methodically programmed the ever so cool drum machine to play along with them. Ah technology, ain't it grand? Sometimes he would program it wrong and he would have to start over. Each song began with a two measure drum machine "solo" while the boys picked up the tempo and away they would go, usually with the younger one taking lead vocals. What a night!!! I'll never forget it!! After making it through most of a set without laughing or heckling, we decided to head back to the room and let some surprisingly entranced young women take our seats. They are starved for entertainment in Oranmore.

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