For centuries, when the going got tough, the Irish would up sticks and go where the grass was greener. So now that it’s as hard to get a decent paying gig in America or Europe as ever it was here, what exactly is a poor boy to do?

Part of it certainly is to evolve, grow up, get tougher and develop some new life skills. Killing grizzlies and chopping lumber isn’t likely to impress anyone nowadays – well maybe it would but those aren’t the skills I’m talking about – so exactly which new tricks do the old dogs need to perfect? Dervish for one have realised for quite some time now that a lot of non-mainstream music gets by on the novelty factor. There’s an audience out there that will go to see an Irish traditional band simply because they haven’t seen one before. Next year, though, they’ll be going to see a throat singer because they’ve already seen an Irish traditional band. They loved it – but the novelty has gone. Bemoaned as they sometimes are, Dervish have long realised that they need to entertain, and that increasingly the entertainment on offer has to move with the times and become more sophisticated alongside the audience it is trying to lure into the theatres.
April 10 sees the Sligo band unveil a brand new stage show for the first time in Ireland. Already seen at APAP (like an American Celtic Connections where bands basically speed-date bookers) earlier this year the Tripod gig will be the first opportunity for an Irish audience to see the band perform with the multi-media show which mixes audio-visual animation footage with old Irish music archival material. The show was designed by animation artist John Callanan, assisted by Dervish member Brian McDonagh.
Another band of old campaigners are turning to new technology to keep the fires lit. As part of their 20th year celebrations the Levellers are giving away two new songs as free downloads from their forthcoming studio album Letters From The Underground, which will be out in the summer. The tracks ‘A Life Less Ordinary’ and ‘The Cholera Well’ were recorded in the band’s own Metway Studios in Brighton with producer Sean Lakeman. Contrary to the usually defensive attitude to free downloads you find with record companies, the Levellers are keen that fans check out the new tracks for themselves, pass on the download link to friends, download them, burn a CD, whatever. The tracks are available to download from www.lettersfromtheunderground.com until April 3.
Sean Keane’s show The Scattering, for which he is joined onstage by a cast of more than 18 vocalists, dancers, poets, actors and musicians including Mairtin O’Connor on accordion, is to be recorded for a live DVD over two gigs, taking place in Galway’s Black Box Theatre on Friday 28 and Saturday March 29. The concept is a simple one. Sean Keane explores the stories and songs of Irish people who for one reason or another have left Ireland and ‘scattered’ to every country in the western world and beyond: the builders, the writers, the singers, the politicians, the navvies, the housekeepers, the musicians, the nurses, the teachers,the thinkers.
After missing her at last year’s Fiddler's Green festival I was really looking forward to catching Eddi Reader at the Spirit Store in early April but unfortunately this gig along with all her other irish dates have had to be cancelled as a result of a back injury she sustained touring in Australia. It looks like she’ll need surgery and she has been warned off anything as strenuous as playing live for the time being. Let’s hope it’s not too long before she’s well enough to re-schedule.
Obviously performing in Trafalgar Square on St. Patrick’s Day whetted Luka Bloom’s appetite for the UK, where he hasn’t toured in 10 years. Although some of his songs like ‘City of Chicago’ and ‘You Couldn’t Have Come At A Better Time’ are standards that do the travelling for him, being performed in folk clubs the length and breadth of Britain. April, though, sees all that change as he does it the old-fashioned way, getting into the car for a string of shows that start with a night in Edinburgh’s Cabaret Voltaire on Thursday April 10, with Durham’s Gala Theatre occupying his attentions the following evening. He makes the long journey down the entire length of England before playing Brighton’s Komedia on Sunday April 13. The following weekend sees him in Loughborough Town Hall on the evening of Saturday April 19 with a London gig in Islington’s Union Chapel on Monday April 21. The following evening finds him in Norwich Arts Centre and on the evening of Thursday April 24 he performs at the Met in Bury before wrapping the excursion up with a show in Warwick Arts Centre in Coventry on the evening of Sunday April 27.