May 23rd - Fleadh Nua - Ennis, Co. Clare

Both Scott and Mike are really into Irish music. 2 years ago, we discovered the annual event in Ennis called Fleadh Nua, so Mike scheduled this trip around this year's festival. Ennis is a really neat old city, the capital of County Clare. It has events and cd releases set up all over the city, but most of what we saw were the session that are held in many of the pubs through out the city.



The blond on the far right is playing the Bouzouki

Knox's Saturday Afternoon

The formal booklet lists times and places for different sessions at pubs around the city.  They say who is playing but it doesn't have a lot to do with who actually shows up. There is a start time although in most cases, this was an approximate time, and as the session went on, more musicians would join, in some cases to a lot of people. The instruments range from violins, guitars, banjos and flutes that we all know, to ones that are not seen in the states at all.

There are squeeze boxes that we saw last time, but this time the guys encountered a Uilleen, which is a modified bagpipe, less predominant is sound and pumped by placing the bag under the arm pit. They also saw a Bouzouki,  which is a stringed instrument which looks like and is played like a small cello.

It is amazing the people who come out, including whole families with kids. And some people are there only to listen, just having a coffee or even just water (not the bottled/pay for it kind).


Queen's Bar
 

Of course, we also ate some great food, Seabass being the big special everywhere and we had a wonderful serving of it our second night. The guys tasted some new beers as well as old favorites like Guinness. I kept to my wine although I am enjoying an Irish most nights too.

The picture of Saturday night at Cruise's is an example of the start but within an hour, there were over double the musicians and we couldn't take a picture because there were too many people blocking our view.



Cruise's Pub right downstairs from our hotel