On Culture Night Ireland
Friday, September 21st, 2018, 7.30 pm
Hill of Faughart car park, Faughart Upper, Co. Louth
free admission

For the first the corridor event in 2018, we brought the sounds of contemporary Dundalk directly to the border between the Republic and Northern Ireland – or at least as close as possible. Taking place at the Hill of Faughart, a place directly on the border and of special cultural, historical and spiritual importance in a borderland rich with such places.

Larry is a three piece band from Dundalk. A combination of lo-fi alt rock with raw emotive lyrics & pop sensibilities stems from the likes of Ryan Adams, Pixies and Wilco. They have been honing their live shows around the country in small venues and festivals since forming in late 2017. Larry will record their debut album in Electrical Audio, Chicago with renowned recording engineer Steve Albini (Nirvana, Pixies, Shellac) in early September. It will be released on 12″ vinyl and streaming services through Pizza Pizza Records. Larry is Joey Edwards, Aoife Ward & David Noonan.

Faughart commanded and still commands the entry to the Gap of the North, though invading armies are few today. According to the An Táin Bó Cuailgne epic, Cuchulainn slew 14 men here in the first century AD, and it is also the birthplace of St. Brigid of Kildare, Ireland’s most veneered saint after St. Patrick. And it was on Faughart that Edward the Bruce, brother of Robert, and the last pretender to the Irish kingship, was buried after having been killed at the battle of Faughart in 1318. Before he came to rest on the hill, his body had been hung, drawn and quartered and sent to the four corners of Ireland as a warning to all potential ursurpers. More than 650 years later, in may 1999, the graveyard at Faughart was chosen by the IRA as the place to give up the first body of the so-called ‘Disappeared’. A new coffin containing the remains of Eamon Molloy, an alleged informer from Belfast who had been shot dead 24 years earlier, was left underneath a holy laurel tree, adorned with religious charms, beside St Brigids Well.

British writer Warren Ellis says that ‘myth is how we used to transmit knowledge. Myths are facts embedded in stories worth retelling. That’s how the facts survived in oral cultures.’ Maybe the myths of Faughart tell us to listen closer to the past – and to add our own whisper to it. And this is the reason why local up-and-coming music trio L-Arry will perform a special acoustic set at the Hill of Faughart on September 21st, to coincide with Culture Night.

the corridor 2018 is supported by Create Louth