Do you believe in magic?

I’ve been to all six festivals in Lisdoonvarna, four times as an act and twice as an ‘audient’. But my first memory of Lisdoonvarna goes back to when I was playing the Meeting Place in Dorset Street in Dublin in early 1978 and I was told there were two dodgy looking fellas downstairs looking to have a word with me. That wasn’t unusual for the Meeting Place!

They were two fellas up from Clare, Paddy Doherty and Jim Shannon, and wanted me to give them pointers about running a festival. And that’s how my connection with Lisdoonvarna got started, about three or four months before the first festival.

A festival like that was a rare thing in those days. Unlike today, when you have a rake of festivals nearly every weekend right through the Summer, back then you’d be lucky to get one, maybe Macroom with Rory Gallagher, the Rolling Stones at Slane or Carnsore. So, for a number of years I think Lisdoonvarna and the Ballisodare Festival were the peak of the summer for music.

The first time I went to the site I was feeling particularly good – maybe I’d been enjoying what you referred to as ‘jazz cigarettes’, so anything would have impressed me in that very content state of mind! I think I gave out a very loud “wow!” It’s all a bit hazy now – as it was then!

I stayed in Spanish Point with my sister and travelled over and back each day. I don’t recall any anti-lobby or anti-vibe from locals opposing the concerts, but then the kind of people I fraternised with were for it anyway.

When I went down with Moving Hearts, we stayed in a bed and breakfast and I have a distinct memory of BP Fallon walking around in a dressing gown with a tea-bag, searching for a cup and hot water to make his breakfast. He looked a bit eccentric.

One year I played with both Planxty and Moving Hearts and that was confusing (laughs). But the memory that stands out for me is of Seamus Ennis, in his mid-to-late sixties, coming out onto the stage with his pipes strapped on. It was just wonderful. Many of them mightn’t have known who he was, but the audience loved him.

I remember the year Chris de Burgh played and the fireworks went off and the cows went mad – like an early version of Mad Cow Disease! But the cows are a lot more sophisticated there now, they’re well used to the carry-on.

There’s loads of people who went to the festivals in Lisdoonvarna and never left, including Skippy from Dublin and The Sheriff from Glasgow. They arrived for the first festival and made a fortune by getting hold of big sheets of plastic and cutting them into squares and selling them for the fans to sit on.

I wrote the song ‘Lisdoonvarna’ because I was due to go on one year before Rory Gallagher at either the second or third festival. I wondered how I was going to go down with Rory’s audience, so I wrote it as an ice-breaker.

At first it was just a couple of rap verses and it grew from there and I recorded it for my Ride On album. I’ve never been tempted to write a follow-up or a revised version. With great license, it captures that era for me.

I met Rory there and found him very gentle. We had a few conversations and we connected in what I remember as a special way.

I have special memories too of a Planxty performance, when Planxty weren’t even on the go. The different members were there in different outfits, and we all ambled on-stage one night and it was wonderful. I read somewhere that we played for three hours. That’s a slight exaggeration!

The bill for this year seems to be more focused on acoustic, folk, world, traditional, mushroom ceili music. In the early days it covered a broad spectrum of music, but I’m very happy with this year’s approach.

I look back on the early days as a magic time, less organised and more rustic. It’s a different world now. Then you could turn up and pay your £3 at the gate. Although the security was far less then than it would be now, I felt perfectly safe. Now if you don’t have a ticket or you’re mad out of it, you won’t get near the site. What happened last year with th ructions was a terrible misfortune, but it brought six glorious years to a sad end.

The truth is that local people are entitled not to have their lives turned upside down by lunatics, and you have to respect that. That aspect of festivals today is definitely better. I have some sympathy for the fears of reasonable local people, but there are unreasonable people too. When you read talk about ‘meadows full of hypodermic syringes’ you know you’re not dealing with genuine concerns.

I wouldn’t want to do the gig unless I knew it was going to be really well organised. It was my suggestion to Paddy and Jim that they involve the Aikens, because I’ve played at their events for the last thirty years and I feel that they can bring the skills and experience needed to see that it’s properly run.

Because it’s different from a small, intimate concert I’ll have to look at the list of songs I’ll perform. I’ll decide the opening song before I go on, and I’ll go out very high on adrenalin and very, very nervous – but then everything can change once you hit the stage depending on the energy that comes back to you. For the first few numbers I’m always very nervous. It’s a case of trying to find your way with the sound and with the monitors, so I always leave some degree of flexibility. I haven’t worked out my full set for this year yet, but I’m pretty sure we’ll do ‘Ride On’, ‘After The Deluge’, ‘How Long’ and ‘Quiet Desperation’.

The temptation if things are not going down too well is to try to get louder and bigger. But sometimes it words better the opposite way. I did a stand-up gig in Barrowlands in Glasgow last month, and I did a soft song and the whole place went totally still. If I’d tried the other way it probably wouldn’t have worked.

I haven’t done a big outdoor gig since the London Fleadh about seven or eight years ago, so this is a big step for me and I wouldn’t do it anywhere else but Lisdoonvarna. I only play when I’ve got Donal Lunny and Declan Sinnott now, so the songs are surrounded with beautiful music rather than just one guitar.

They’ve given me enormous support, not just musically but emotionally as well: it’s the comradeship of having two brothers-in-music on stage with me. I couldn’t do it the old way any more.

Until it was all over, I didn’t realise how lonely it was doing all those gigs on my own. Looking back on it now, I went down a road and walked into a dark place.

But I’m out of that dark place now, and it feels good.”

MICKEY DODGERS

People of a conservative upbringing have been puzzled over the years by the use of the term “mickey dodger” in Christy Moore’s song ‘Lisdoonvarna’. So we asked him to come clean, as it were. “I first heard the phrase in the late ’60s and I asked a guy called Peter Mulregan to explain it and he told me it referred to a nun. Of course you don’t have to go into a convent ‘to dodge the mickey’.”

CHRISTY MOORE’S DREAM LISDOONVARNA BILL

The Clancy Brothers (original line-up)
Luke Kelly & The Dubliners (from 1966)
The Bothy Band (with Tommy Peoples)
Leonard Cohen
Joni Mitchell
Bob Dylan and The Band
Sandy Denny and Fairport Convention
Planxty (to make sure I get to hear the gig!)