The April Shoestring Collective

If you are one of the handful of peeps who read this blog you'll know that The Shoestring Collective (TSC) invited me along again to read at their April 'Saturday Night In' which was on last Saturday. It was shaping up to be a big night after the collective collared a couple of significant acts - namely Vyvienne Long and Colm O Snodaigh, which did no good for my nerves in the week beforehand. But as it turned out on the day, my nerves weren’t as bad as last time - even if they still had a presence, given I’d decided to read some freshly written stuff. Interestingly, Since the overcrowded madness of the first night I read, TSC is now a ticket only event – which may have dented the numbers slightly in the past. Luckily, this night was still jammers, but this time thankfully not the - women and children first, fuck the women I’m over meself - type of jammers, like last time – which was nice. Anyways, things went thusly.

Colm O Snodaigh started off proceedings with music from his latest solo album 'Giving'.



Colm is part of Kila - the mad frenetic, almost ecstatic afro-gallic, duck or you’ll get a bang of a strobe or dreadlock affair. But alone Colm and his acoustic guitar are very different, and offer a very poised, spiritual performance. He sang a fair few songs and gave interesting musings on their origins. I saw a delicacy in his music, and a curious molecular integrity to Colm himself...

This to me signifies a man very, very at home with his self and his art - he's all there as they say, and he did a great job of starting off the night.

Next up was supposed to be Tara Smith, but there was a bit of audience trouble, two men in the crowd suddenly decided to loudly discuss their love lives, interrupting the flow of the night and preventing Colm Cunningham wfrom introducing the next act – people were confused and incensed until they noticed that the men wore identical oversized glasses... It turned out that this was another shoestring act, a tribute to Peter Sellers by Jerome Corby and Declan Roche. It was a fun thing to do, and shook up the audience, in a good way. Hopefully TSC will cook up more of this malarkey.

After that small craziness Tara was introduced properly to the Audience. Now I know Tara from a workshop we both attended a while back, I know her as a pretty Bostonian author living in Dun Laoghaire with quite retiring ways, but on stage it was like a switch was flicked, and she became a hard as nails grandmother reflecting on her tough abusive upbringing on a New England farm. The story was brilliant - Well told and excellently written. The switch flicking energetic performance reminded me of Mia Gallagher, firebrand writer of the bestselling Hellfire, which was no coincidence it transpired, as Tara had grind sessions on creative performance with Mia just that day. It showed, this gal was channeling something, and when she read, nay related, about the thunderous heavy stormclouds rumbling towards the farm in her story I practically saw them, big angry portentious black things they were....

I nearly expected it to rain right there and then. It was awesome, inspiring stuff.

Oh, and by the way (or left of stage) Ciaran Cunninghams photography was on display for all to see and buy. Ciaran's an NCAD graduate. His work is pretty good, city scenes imbued with warmth and life, and close up brightly coloured studies of nature. I'm not trying to sound pretentious here - okay maybe a little - but I found the stuff really interesting, and am trying to do it justice. Bottom line is i wanted some, but being too poor to buy on the night i'm currently in negotiations with Ciaran regarding purchasing smaller (cut price) pieces, failing that i'll raid his wheelie bin.

Aj wiebermans got nothing on me.

After that I was due up, pending a short intermission. So, i took the time to ponder my list of pieces, schmooze, hit the jacks and neck a bottle of Heino (muck – but at three euros a pop who’s complaining). All while I was being introduced upstairs, I know yeah, late for me own funeral blah blah blah. I clattered back into the room and to the podium to completely mess up my first poem. But, after that car crash of a beginning I hit my stride with a poem about a car crash and then it went pretty okay. I perhaps milked the whole ‘I’m a scrud from the streets hear my pain guvnor’ angle with a lot of crime based material but I got a good response overall. Afterwards people were nice, real nice. Especially about a poem I wrote for my daughter Rebecca. In a slight aside - I met a very gracious writer/director afterwards. She said i wrote a bit like Conor McPherson, and suggested i check out his plays. I did and fuck me the bloke is brilliant - a revelation to me. Really, check him out. I bought a book - four of his plays, and they read as quick as short stories, crazy, simple, complex and dark. Deadly.


Donal MacErlaine played some kickass classical guitar then. He got off to a shaky beginning, having to change tack with one particular song, but he sailed through the rest of his set. I’m no classical guitar expert or nothing, but I’ve messed up enough three chord numbers to know this guy is steeped in his craft. Fingers gifted from the gods he has.

Deftly and nimbly his hands did scamper over the strings as two daddy long legs dance in Reynard’s after too much pink champagne – that’s the worst metaphor ever written right there, and i thank you all. But anyways, listen, he was brilliant, only thing was I would have liked to have heard more.

After Donal came TSCs resident poet of sorts Brian Conaghan, he read a few short poems, most notably an anti-Thatcher rant about her cancelling the free milk in Scottish schools. Which was followed by a piece about the hypocrisy of racism in Ireland. Brian does the vitriolic rant well, but there followed a few 100 word shorts on love which I preferred. And I think sucked a bigger reaction from the crowd, especially one about a coupling that floundered on the cliché of the romantic bubble bath because Brian was stung with the bad end (taps in his back and the plug up his arse).

I felt his pain.


And then, after another short break, comedian Tomie James was up. I was out for his introduction and can’t remember why, but when I got back into the room the place was tittering gently as Tomie quietly ranted about pikies - minority slagging.... I held my breath a bit. Picking on easy targets can make a stand up act bomb pretty quick. But pikeys weren’t his main mark, just collateral damage. Contraband dvds were the true target and served as a link to the highlight of James' act. A gag filled riff about the black market for dvds of cheesy bus rides spawned from bus eireanns crazed introduction of plasma screen tvs displaying the road ahead on long journeys (actually happens...like wtf!?). When he was lashing into Bus Eireann everybody came along for the ride.

Tomie was working off brand new material - sheets of paper full of deranged scribbles which he tossed to the ground as he finished them (He doesn’t care! He’s a comedian!). It could have pissed people off, but I liked it. It was a nice touch. Actually, I should have nicked them afterwards....

Finally we had Vyvienne Long, ah Vyvienne.....


A true headline act – top of the bill and the type of woman that men love to pick up, literally, and run away to live with in a cabin in the mountains. Like Bjork or Joanna Newsome (I love them both), Vyvienne is petite, quirky and almost elfin. But without the journo bashing nuttiness and over squeaky sonics. There's that incisive wit and elemental femininity in her lyrics. Her quirkiness showing in her very funny songs and inventive cello playing as she played a delectable set, even banging out her version of Seven Nation Army as her support cellist burst in late to join in midway through. It was acoustic, but it was electric if you know what I mean. The whole audience was enamoured so much that Vyvienne became the first ever performer to give an encore at TSC. Getting this act in was a real coup - she's the real deal. Check out her site. Her album will be out soon – keep an ear out for her unusual musings, especially ‘Random Man on the Motorway’ a song close to my heart, we were all that man once – I know I was... (i was gonna put a random man in the next pic, but it's late peeps, i'm tired etc....).

So it you have there. The Shoestring Collective. Go i tells ya....GO!! It’s contemporary Dublin art at its best, no ego, no sponsors, no bullshit. My non writing buddies who treat the ‘Orts’ like a werewolf treats garlic (as in what the fuck is that!?) loved it and want to go back. Seriously, it’s special, a bunch of people trying to facilitate creative endeavour, that's it, nothing more. You’d be mad not to go at 10 euros a ticket, and with great music, art, laughs and maybe a nice sunset shining in on quaint surroundings you’re onto a good thing. Oh and the booze, there’s cheap booze too, get in there, trust me, you can’t lose.