Day 3: Dublin, pt 2
Nau mai
Yesterday we played our second show at the Button Factory.
It was a beautifully overcast day that we awoke to in Dublin, a weather that wanted to be windy, hot, rainy, and fine, and didn’t quite excel at any of these things.
Liz had a morning full of interviews and was holed up in her hotel room chatting away with the computer screen.
Tristan and I again took our morning meal at Tang, awarding this establishment the great honour of a breakfast and travel updates repeat visit. This time I moved a little further down the menu and ordered the Shakshuka, with eggs, harissa, tomatoes and red peppers, dukkah, tzatziki, spring onion, chili, sourdough, feta, and chorizo.
Our activity for the afternoon was a visit to an institution that has claimed the title of Europe’s Leading Tourist Attraction at the World Travel Awards an impressive three times (2019, 2020, 2021).
I haven’t been lucky enough to view or attend one of the gala award ceremonies that this prestigious organisation has been operating for the last thirty years, but if I had I might have seen trophies being handed out for achievements such as Europe’s Leading Airline Lounge 2024, or Europe’s Leading Airport Lounge 2024, or Europe’s Leading Business Hotel Brand 2024, or Europe’s Leading Cognac Distillery Tour 2024, or Europe’s Most Romantic Resort 2024. Its a competitive night with only 150 awards to go around, and we were thrilled to be visiting one of the winners.
The Irish Emigration Museum was an experience that took place in the vaults of an old customs house set on the banks of the Liffey. We descended into a series of brick rooms filled with impressive multimedia displays and interactive exhibits that conducted us through the history of this country’s migration, creatively explaining the amazing spread and impact of the Irish diaspora. Entering each room we found ourselves engaging with information in a unique and clever format, and exiting each room we stamped the cardboard passports we had been issued to keep track of our progress through the galleries.
The hour of three’o’clock arrived and we assembled at the venue for soundcheck, this time enjoying a rehearsal of a much greater length and more relaxed character. Adjustments were made, tweaks were twuk, and we played until we felt confident and comfortable. Four hours later this confidence was apparent in the way we performed our second show of the tour. This Dublin crowd brought an exuberance into the room in the form of a fun and steady heckling, a powerful cheering and applause, and a joyful singing along to what seemed like the great majority of Liz’s lyrics.
Jon had spent some time in the afternoon calibrating our audience microphones, a pair of mics at the edge of the stage that face outwards enabling us to hear the crowd even when we have our earphones in. Hearing in amongst our instruments and voices a surprisingly tuneful chorus of Dubliners doubling Liz’s vocal melodies caught me off guard and felt deeply emotional. The concept that we could travel 18,000 kilometres around the globe and find a room full of people that have developed a relationship with our music is a hard one to comprehend sometimes.
This show was pure fun. It’s hard not to have a joyous time when the energy in the room is so perfectly dialled in by an assembly of patrons who could easily win the 2025 World Travel Awards Best European Crowd For Venues Holding 500 Persons or Under.
What goes up must come down (and be neatly folded and put away).