Regular readers of this column will know that my favourite time of the year is the ten day period when the Open House Festival takes over the backstreets and bars of Belfast. Yes, yes – I know it’s still six months away and I do feel like a bit of a clown jumping up and down about it already.

However, the organisers have just announced the first bands, which include Wilco’s Belfast debut in the marquee at Custom House Square, where they’ll be joined by the Felice Brothers. In an intriguing addition to the bill, Field Music will be performing also. The triple-header is on Friday September 10. It will be your only chance to see either Wilco or the Felice Brothers on this island this year.
Other confirmed artists include Old Crow Medicine Show, fast approaching ‘house band’ status at the festival, the Low Anthem whose show as part of the Out To Lunch festival in January was one of the festival’s highpoints, AA Bondy and Dr. Dog.
Question: do you love live music? Love:live music, Ireland’s first National Music Day, takes place on Friday April 16 and is coordinated by Music Network in association with RTÉ Lyric FM.
In recognition of the influence that music has in our lives, the whole country is invited to join in this celebration of all types of playing – from big bands to buskers. There will be lots of free live events in cities and towns across Ireland. If you’re in Dublin, the Button Factory has a concert featuring the best traditional music on the Music Network roster with performances by Slide, Fidil, Brendan Begley and Caoimhín O Raghallaigh. You need to register at lovelivemusic.com website for tickets to make sure you get in on the night.
Although it crept by almost unnoticed, iTunes sold their ten billionth downloaded song. ‘Guess Things Happen That Way’ was written by Cowboy Jack Clement and sung by Johnny Cash on what would have been Cash’s 78th birthday on February 26.
There’s a lovely symmtry to this, as Clement had been bound intimately to Cash’s career, producing him for Sun Records, arranging the mariachi horns on ‘Ring of Fire’, and writing a number of the Man in Black’s hits.
Canadian Cam Penner has spent the last two years looking at the world through a windscreen. Over that time he has toured five countries, six provinces, 12 states and performed over 300 shows. He has opened for Richard Thompson, Slaid Cleaves, Glen Campbell, Lyle Lovett, and The Flatlanders, and found his own way into bars, theatres, cafes, backyards, and honkytonks.
In the same way Declan de Barra slews back and forward across Ireland and the rest of Northern Europe, so Penner criss-crosses the US and Canada building an audience by stealth, no media campaign, no hype, no bullshit.
Like de Barra, he makes the occasional trans-Atlantic foray, too. He releases his third album, Trouble and Mercy on Monday March 29. Recorded over a couple of days with a couple of friends, it’s a powerful affair, quietly impressive – just like Penner himself, who hails from a Mennonite community in Southern Manitoba, where his parents, the town rebels, ran an illegal roadhouse and his grandfather, a bootlegger, delivered his goods to the rural community bringing much needed remedy.
Growing up in small towns in both Manitoba and Saskatchewan, Penner found an appreciation for common people’s stories. He left at 19 for Chicago where he ran a soup kitchen and worked at a women shelter.
These experiences ignited a passion for social justice and after moving back to Canada, Cam continued working with the homeless for the next 13 years.
Describing his philosophical outlook and songwriting muse he writes: “Sometimes I feel the thousands of souls I’ve listened to are people living inside of me, telling their tales.” Agreed. When listening to Penner’s songs, you can hear the struggle, the hope, the yearning to be better. “I’ve never really written topical songs, I usually write about the emotional struggle, the pull between what’s right and wrong.”
He won’t make it to Ireland in the course of his European sojourn, which is a pity, but for much of April and May he’ll be found on the highways and byways of the UK.
Although sell-out concerts are the stock in trade of the big name promoters and major artists, anyone who goes out to gigs around the country will tell you that at the grass roots level packing a venue is hard work, so the news that Gerry O’Connor’s Seamus Ennis Centre show sold out weeks in advance will warm a few hearts, and it bodes well for the slate of artists just announced to play the venue over the next couple of months, including Dick Gaughan, Chris Smither, Brian Finnegan and Ed Boyd with Joe Kelly and Donal Murphy and Steve Cooney with Gino Lupari.