17. – 30.9.2015

30. Irish Festival in Finland starttaa 17.9. Hämeenlinnassa, jossa festivaalin avaa Paddy Casey. Festarikeikkoja nähdään myös Helsingissä, Vantaalla, Porvoossa ja Heinolassa, esiintyjinä Paddy Caseyn lisäksi upeat Boolabus, The Young Folk, Droichead, Helsinki Harps, Family Day, ETC Theatre Company, Kevin Collins, Ants in the Pants ja muita artisteja. Lisätietoa festarista ja esiintyjistä saadaan lisää elokuussa.

 

Keikat

 
 
 
 

Paddy Casey

The Irish music festival in Finland has the great pleasure of welcoming one of Ireland´s most esteemed male music artists to head our Hämeenlinna and Helsinki concerts this September, starting in Verkatehdas, Hämeenlinna on the 17th of September and concluding at the Virgin Oil concert hall, in Helsinki, on the 18th of September.

Paddy burst onto the music scene in 1999 with his first album-So be it. It was voted best debut album by the Irish music press and the following year, his single Sweet Suburban Sky, was used as the soundtrack for the very popular TV series Dawson´s creek, He enhanced his growing reputation by supporting the legendary R.E.M and the Pretenders the same year.

Paddy ´s next album in 2003 called-Living Living-had 4 hit records and the album reached the top of the Irish charts. In 2004 and 2005 Paddy was voted best Irish male artist at the Irish music awards.

In 2005, Paddy had one of the highlights of his career when he supported one of the best bands in the world, U2 on their Vertigo tour. Paddy has performed on popular American TV shows, such as The David Leterman show and is a regular performer on Irish TV stations.

In 2012 Paddy released-The secret life of-which gained wide acclaim. Paddy´s influences include Prince, Duke Elington and the Waterboys .

It is a great honour to welcome Paddy to The Irish Music festival in Finland.

Kevin Collins

Kevin Collins first became interested in music when he walked into the study of his father’s house as a child to find the Clancy Brothers (Ireland’s first internationally successful ballad group), sitting around a table with his father counting money. His father was their Bank Manager and financial advisor and they had just returned from an American tour with suitcases full of dollars. He was invited with his father to a ballad session in a cellar bar that night and he was captivated by the music.
He took up the guitar in school and got involved with all the usual school groups and when he left college he was a competent guitarist and went straight into a professional band in Dublin called the Riveria Showband as their lead guitarist. Showbands were very popular in Ireland and the U.K. at the time and they toured extensively. After a year or so he joined the Johnny Wilds Combo which later became the very successful Jokers Wild group working across Europe for a number of years. Two albums later and a radio show twice a week they became well established.
On a holiday home to Dublin at Christmas he was approached by George O’ Reilly of TV and Radio Production Services who asked him would he be interested in working with Ireland’s Queen of country music Masie Mc Daniels. He was keen to get back home so he accepted the offer and recorded the song “An Okey from Miscokey” with Masie which became an instant hit in Ireland. They toured Ireland and England and he found that he was spending more time away from home again. He had being developing an interest in Jazz and Blues for some time and Johnny Wilds who he had previously worked with in several bands was now the Sax player with the Guinness Jazz Band and asked him would he become the guitarist and singer with the band. So he was off on another adventure. At this time he had met and fell in love with his wife Irene and within a few years they had two lovely daughters and extensive travelling became an issue again. He decided to form his own Blues band and took a residency in the Waterfall in Dublin where he played five times a week for several years with great success. He often remarks that this was his happiest time and best band he ever played with as the band was completely made up of session musicians and members of the RTE Light Orchestra (Ireland’s national radio and TV station orchestra). The band was called Blues Reactor and is still talked about to this day.
At this stage he had also developed business interests as he was not working and travelling during the day. At this time he decided to take a break from the music industry for a while. After a few years he got the itch to start playing again and one evening over a pint of Guinness a friend told him about a successful ballad group they had locally where he lived and they needed a guitarist and would he be interested and so he went back to where he started playing ballads and traditional Irish music. This group was called Aisling and they were friendly with other local musicians and singers like Ronnie Drew and the Dubliners.  At a Christmas charity concert he met Ronnie who he played with on that show and Ronnie wanted to take a break from the Dubliners so asked Kevin would he play with him to help him on his solo career for the start up. It was not long before Ronnie got his confidence and was happy to work on his own but they remained friends until Ronnie passed away some years later. Jim McCann who was considered a great ballad singer with such hits as “Grace“and had made a name for himself with the ‘Ludlow’s’ group, replaced Ronnie Drew in the Dubliners and was friendly with Kevin as they had met years earlier in the showband days, so when Kevin decided to open a bar in Tenerife in the Canaries he asked Jim to join him for the opening. Jim was delighted and they got to play together and later played together occasionally. Unfortunately, Jim got cancer and passed away recently but to this day is regarded in the ballad scene as one of the best deliverer of a ballad and a fine guitar player.
It was shortly after this that Kevin met Kevin Molloy previously of the Dublin City Ramblers one of Irelands leading ballad groups. They became friends and remained so to this day. Last year they put an album together called “the Celtic Road” and called themselves “Dunan” and toured in the United States. This was an Irish name Kevin Molloy found in a church and proved to belong to a very interesting person.
While in the States on a number of occasions Kevin Collins met a number of well regarded Blues musicians and on one occasion got the opportunity to play with the Buddy Guy Band.
Living near Westport in Co. Mayo for a number of years now he has played and jammed with Matt Molloy of the Chieftains as well as on his own and is a resident musician in Knockranny House Hotel (Westport’s leading hotel) for a number of years. He is also founder of the very exciting BluesDotCom band which comes together for festivals and charity functions.
He has recently formed an American styled country rock band with Ed Holland of Whitewater fame to great success and has just returned from touring the United States where they were asked to play for President Obama at a function in Chicago. They have had three single releases over the last twelve months all of which have been radio hits and currently their song “Keep Them Kisses Comin” has been No.1 on the radio play charts in the West of Ireland for the last seven weeks. They are also playlisted on national radio RTE One. They appeared ‘Live’ on Irish Television last week at the Mayo Day celebrations and their videos and music has been played on Sky satellite TV channels more than forty times in the last three months. That is a serious achievement in one year and they release a new single in August and their new album will be launched in the New Year. Currently managed by KickAss Music Management you can see him on Facebook at  or you can find them on YouTube.

The Young Folk

 Having established an ardent following in Dublin, Ireland’s foremost alternative-folk-pop band The Young Folk look to take Europe in 2015. The Young Folk is perhaps as much a philosophy as it is a name. Hardly a strict folk outfit, The Young Folk acknowledge their folky influences while asserting their own youthful personae with a self-composed alt-folk-pop live set that can include (but is not limited to) acoustic and electric guitars, piano, bass, drums, mandolin, banjo, trombone, melodica, xylophone, harmonica… The Young Folk add their own generational-spin to the legacy of Irish folk-influenced music – a legacy that principal songwriter Anthony Furey knows only too well, being the son and nephew of members of the legendary Fureys. While this influence on the band’s music is evident, younger audiences will also detect a youthful sound much more akin to The Young Folk’s contemporaries. The Young Folk have spent the last couple of years filling some of Dublin’s favourite venues, as well as tours in the UK, USA and Canada, and performances at SXSW, MIDEM, Cambridge Folk Festival, Electric Picnic and others. They’ve bagged support slots for Midlake and Imelda May, and recently played The Whiskey Sessions alongside I am Kloot, Gomez, Turin Brakes, Badly Drawn Boy, British Sea Power and Jon Allen. In 2014 they were invited by Caffè Nero in the UK to perform a series of showcases, winning a legion of new fans in the process. The Young Folk are now on the cusp of entering the studio to record the follow up to their debut album The Little Battle, released in 2014. Perhaps further eschewing the folky sound they started out with, the new material may see the band embracing new genres with increased fervour.