Gaughan's Irish tour Epistle, Part the Sixth
Galway, 5.30pm, Tuesday 16th Oct 2001

That was a sleep worth having. I didn't get up until well into the afternoon.

Turned out last night that they'd booked a support who turned out to be a very fine singer. I can't stand the habit of getting someone to play an opening set then telling them to do 20 minutes. That's no good; they've just got in tune and cleared their throat and it's time to get off. And it doesn't do much for the audience either. So I suggested he do 45 minutes and I'd take it from there.

I got onstage at 10.30 and played until 12.20 and by the time I'd packed up etc, it was almost 2am when I got back to the hotel and 3am before I got to bed. So a late rise today was well in order.

I was watching the audience coming in and thinking it was all a bit slow in filling up - the reason they book me here for at least two nights is that the place is usually packed. Then someone asked me why I was playing the same nights as Christy Moore was 2 miles up the road at Salthill! Of all the people for me to clash with Christy is probably about the worst. Anyone who would come to hear me would also go to hear Christy and for health reasons he doesn't do many gigs these days so people grab the chance whenever he does. He's possibly the biggest-drawing solo performer in Ireland and in a way I'm glad he's doing 3 nights or I wouldn't have had anybody there at all last night. I have a lot of time for Christy and if I wasn't playing myself I'd be at his gig. We go back a long way.

The sound engineer at the Roisin, Ruari, is excellent and great to work with. Last night's sound check took 40 seconds. These days, some people can make really hard work of a solo voice and an acoustic guitar which doesn't plug in and I'm used to seeing them turn pale when told I have no pickup and want a mic on it. I can't see the point of spending a lot of money on a good instrument, years of playing to get it to sound its best, then slapping a pickup into it and making it sound like every other guitar in the world. I've spent decades getting my guitar to sound like my guitar and that's what I want it to sound like. I don't want to add chorus and loads of other effects to it. If I want to plug in, I'll go back to using a Fender Telecaster and a large Marshall stack, thank you. The reason I play acoustic is not because I don't like being electric - been there, done that, got a wardrobe full of t-shirts.

Doing sound for an acoustic solo performer is a whole different beast from doing thrash bands and there are a large number of people unfairly accusing themselves of being sound engineers. The really skilled ones who truly do know and care about what they're doing are relatively few and finding one is like finding gold.

There's a cafe down the street that boasts of serving all-day breakfasts so I'll go and find out the truth of that. Then it's the Roisin Dubh again.

25th January 2005

Tour Dates - last update 30 August 2005

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