The Pub at the End of the World

Campbell’s Tavern is located 13 miles north of Galway city in the village of Cloughanover. For promoter Sandra Joyce, born and bred down the road, the Tavern is much more than just a place of work.

Long established as a music venue, it has been in the Campbell family for over 25 years. “Years ago, my family and a lot of families in the area would have known The Tavern as a dance hall,” says Joyce. “The venue was used on weekends for local bands coming in doing jives and quick steps, that sort of thing. It has a long history of ceol agus craic. Local showbands would have come down. As kids, we were brought here by our parents. I remember Sunday nights were huge. The Tavern has always been a social pub, it’s a very well-loved place, and it’s known for doing something different.”
A decade ago, responsibility for running the venue was handed down to Willie Campbell. It had fallen into disuse, as the dancing scene fizzled out.
“Trade got much slower and the venue closed,” Joyce recalls. “It was a dream of Willie’s to get it working again. He’s a huge fan of every type of music, and always has been. But he had a different approach from that of his parents. He aimed high and got on the phone and the email, and fought his corner to become a reputable venue. There were a couple of agents in the country who were extremely good to him and the venue, which of course helped a lot.”
As Sandra admits, the atmosphere of the place is hard to convey to someone who hasn’t been there, and when you’re trying to book acts, the black and white of the capacity and location can be a major stumbling block.
“I think I speak for a lot of smaller venues in Ireland, in that we don’t get a look in because it all goes on capacity. It’s down to money, which is fair enough. Artists in this country don’t get paid enough, because there isn’t the population here. But a couple of the agents came and loved the place, and the major acts that have played here – Georgie Fame, Richie Havens, John Martyn – gave us the opportunity to make it work.”
Over the years, word of mouth among the industry has eroded much of that stumbling block. “The music, the artist, the people and the place… To create that magical vibe, you need all the elements, andl that’s what we strive for. When the artists play here and experience that, they go back out onto the circuit and it’s all word of mouth. You can’t get any better promotion than that.”
Indeed, but like many small venues tucked away in the sticks, selling tickets is the hardest part of the job.
“The challenge is always higher,” she acknowledges. “We don’t open during the day, so it’s a social pub, not a daytime pub, and as we’re off the main road, we don’t have much passing trade. It’s also a very small venue – the seated capacity is 110. Every gig is a risk. But it’s a team effort. The crowd is quite mixed. People come from Galway city, Tuam, Castlebar, all over. During the summer we had some artists who were touring nationally stop over – Lisa Hannigan, Iris DeMent, Greg Brown, among them. They were big gigs. Greg Brown’s only Irish date was with us. For Iris, we could have sold her out three times over. People will travel for something a bit different. We cover a lot of genres, but everything that we do is specialised. We don’t run gigs seven nights a week. It’s not even picking and choosing: you take what you can when it’s going, and that could be five gigs a month, or one every two months.”
Hot Press can well believe it: if we stumbled upon a cosy, intimate venue out in the wilds with the likes of David Kitt, Bell X1, Erin McKeown, Damien Dempsey, Steve Cooney, Mike McGoldrick, Dermot Byrne and Grada headlining over the last few months alone, we’d be praising God too.
“For the likes of those people to be ringing up asking to play gigs here is a real privilege,” Sandra concludes. “All the hard work is paying off. We’re very proud.”