This show, a benefit concert for the victims of Hurricane Katrina, was the brain-child of Christy Moore. “I was looking at TV reports from New Orleans and I personally felt a need to respond,” he said. “I started to make calls. The Red Cross gave me the nod, Vicar Street gave up their first available date.”
At short notice, Moore recruited artists such as Damien Rice, Lisa Hannigan, Mary Coughlan and Declan Sinnott. Together they served up a feast of folk and blues. Highlights included Moore and brother Luka Bloom performing ‘City of Chicago’ and ‘Wounded Knee’, Mary Coughlan singing ‘Ride On’ with Christy on guitar and Rice and Hannigan duetting on a fantastic version of ‘Volcano’. As ever, Moore made the audience the focus of his attention, encouraging them to sing along wherever possible.
There was no proselytizing. Moore merely explained the gig’s purpose: to send a message of solidarity to the dispossessed people of the delta. The money raised was, he said, “a tiny drop in an ocean of despair”. During the famine of 1847, he continued, the Choctaw Nation (Native Americans inhabitants of Louisiana) sent $70 for the relief of hunger in Ireland – “this at a time when they themselves were suffering deprivation”.
Later, Freddie White’s offered a moving rendition (and great impersonation of Louis Armstrong) on ‘Black and Blue’, a song about racism in the American south.
In total, the benefit raised some €35,000, the bulk going to the Red Cross. The penultimate song of the night was ‘Louisana 1927’, performed by all the artists on stage together. When it ended, cheers encouraged Moore to re-emerge. He ended a great night with the classic ‘Nancy Spain’.