Starboard Home
To the National Concert Hall last night for the second night of 'Starboard Home', an evening of music timed to coincide with the launch of a new album inspired by Dublin Port, Dublin City and the River Liffey.
Commissioned by Dublin Port, 'Starboard Home' is a series of reflections on the port and the city and gathers together a collection of contemporary Irish musicians, all of home have written new songs for the project.
Led by Bell X1's Paul Noonan, who was onstage for most of the night with a house band that included Brian Crosby (once, also of Bell X1) and Crowded Houses's Nick Seymour, we were treated to a 12-piece song series with performances by Richie Egan, Gemma Hayes, Colm Mac Con Iomaire, Paul Cleary, James Vincent McMorrow, Declan O'Rourke, Duke Special, Cathy Davey, Lisa O'Neill and The Dubliners' John Sheahan. And in the middle of it all, novelist Caitriona Lally popped up to share her own thoughts on the port and the city.
Highlights? Well, on a night of many, you might reach for Richie Egan's 'The Liffey Knew', which took a personal, contemporary look at the city and is perhaps the only song in the project that could only have been written in 2016. Later, Paul Cleary's 'Kingfisher Blue' took us back to his formative years, growing up 50 yards from the Liffey in Ringsend in the 1970s. Apart from being one of the performance of the night, his was also probably the best introduction. Although James Vincent McMorrow probably got the biggest cheer with a reference to Robbie Brady in the introduction to his claustrophobic 'Down in the Diving Bell'.
As the night wore on, Lisa O'Neill's 'Rock the Machine', landed us in the shoes of a 1960s Port worker as he walks home to tell his wife that his job for life in the Port has been replaced by modern machinery. O'Neill's unique voice seems slightly abrasive at first contact but once you surrender to her delivery it's hard not to be roused by it. The song series ended with John Sheahan's epic 'Liffeysong' which took us on a journey from the Wicklow mountains, flowing down under the Liffey's bridges and out through the Port to the Irish Sea. The evening began with Gemma Hayes 'Caught in the Rapids' sailing into the city and ended with 'Liffeysong' taking taking us back in the other direction. Which was surely not accidental.
In truth, a couple of the artists played a little fast and loose with the brief - Declan O'Rourke's stunning 'Colossus' was more about a tree than the Port or the river and Cathy Davey's 'What Else', delivered without introduction might best be generously described as a love letter to Dublin from overseas. But even if their content didn't meet the brief, the performances certainly did.
It might seem odd that a song-series would be commissioned for something as unromantic as a port. But then you think about business and trade or emigration and immigration. People leaving Dublin, heartbroken, for whatever reason. You think of Joyce writing about Eviline's attempted escape in 'Dubliners' over a hundred years ago. And then it starts to make sense. There's history and joy and sadness and, yes, romance down there. And where all human life goes, music and song follows.
I came home from Earlsfort Terrace beaming with joy and full of optimism thinking about art and music and how people can still find beauty in the unlikeliest of places. And then I heard about Brexit and it all washed away with the tide...
Starboard Home is in shops and on Spotify. I can't say enough good things about it.
