This weekend Limerick is hosting a block party in which local Limerick and national Irish acts play in five different venues across the city. Myself and Cathal Ryan sat down with Jack Brolly, founder of Lower Your Expectations, to discuss Féile na Gréine:
CATHAL: Tell us a bit about your background?
Well first, of all, I was the Costellos DJ for two years but I quit doing that and started running gigs in The Blind Pig because I worked there as a bartender. I kept doing that until it shut down but then Pharmacia opened and I got to run my first night here! My friend Rocky then opened The Commercial so I moved the nights up there. In the midst of all of that, I got to run a festival with my friends called Open Ear on Sherkin Island.
CATHAL: Where did LYE (Lower Your Expectations) come from?
My brain aha! I came up with the name for that in college as I always wanted to run gigs, my own gigs, so I came up with Lower Your Expectations. I was getting so sick of nights out at the time so I pretended it was going to be fun tunes like they wanted but then they would arrive and it was just going to be noise music and a strobe light until they left so I called it Lower Your Expectations.
EILÍS: Is there a lot of organisation involved in putting together something like this?
There is! I think once you’ve done it once you can do it million times. You know what you have to say to the artists you know what information you need to gather. So, for example, you do the initial contact with the artist, you don’t really need to agree on a fee with them, most of the time they won’t have agents they are just your friends. It’s informal it’s on Facebook. Normally it works out like ‘would you be up for playing our event’ and they just say ‘of course I’ll keep that free.’ Then you would go to the venue tell them these are the people I have in mind, try to get them excited about it so that they give you sponsorship for example. Although I have never been given money before to run an event when we went to these venues for this event we just said trust us and they did which was funny.
CATHAL: So ye got sponsored by the bars?
Yea we got sponsored by all the individual bars, like Mother Macs and all the others are all helping us by giving us money towards it. It is how Ger and I got it off the ground. It is good for the bars, it is good for Limerick and good for everyone really.
EILÍS: How do ye go about curating the lineup?
So I wanted to get like half local acts and half acts from around the country that wouldn’t normally play in Limerick that no one else would think to book. Mine and Gers goal because we have been running gigs for so long was to use our connections to pull off something for quite cheap that should be quite expensive, it was kinda like an exercise for ourselves more than anything. If no one showed up we would still be happy with what we have done because it is free anyway so it doesn’t really matter.
EILÍS: Do ye need permission from the city council or anything to run an event like this?
Nope! I didn’t even let them know. We are going to apply for funding next year. It was a case of being able to put this on ourselves independently this year to the best of our abilities then come next year we can go to the city council and show them what we have done and then get funding from them to expand.
EILÍS: What happens with the profits of Feile na Greine do they all go back to the musicians themselves?
Yea! They’ll go back into Féile na Gréine or DIY LK and LYE it won’t be going into anyone’s pockets! We have everyone covered money wise at the moment but I don’t think there will be profits as it’s very tight at the moment. Apart from the Friday night and that’s just to make up a kind of a deficit so if there is a profit it will be 100 euro which we will probably just buy beers for the band with.
CATHAL: The bands are probably just happy to play and get exposure?
We have built a relationship with these artists and they are happy to come down and have the craic like all the people I have booked are just happy to come down and session on for the night like, just have fun and play their set.
EILÍS: It is advertised as Limerick Block Party so is it important for ye to showcase Limerick talent?
Kind of but also not massively. We showcase Limerick talent for the rest of the year all the time. Like there is a load of Limerick acts on it but for me, it’s about creating a cohesive piece. What I learned from doing open ear or LYE is that it is not about putting on the event it is about planning the acts. I mean there is an art to the curatorial aspect of it. You want it to work well together. What I wanted from working with DIY LK is they would pick their live acts and we picked our acts so there was a diversity. There are lots of electronic bands at night time to play off the fact that we have live bands during the day. A lot of people are used to just some DJ so it's nice to see musicians come in with a load of synthesizers to play the music they made. So that was in my head at the daytime we would have bands play live and then electronic bands at night time to match the live aspect of it.
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EILÍS: Why is the name in Irish?
Awh man! I love the Irish language and music. Open Ear and LYE is all Irish music, I love Ireland. I didn’t come up with the name Féile na Gréine personally, I think it was Chris or Diarmuid but which ever one of them did the second they said I was like yes thats the name. Feile na greine and it's as gaeilge, that is savage. It translates to festival of the sun, I was thinking of doing another gig in septemer called Feile na Geire. Feile na greine, it just looks cool!
EILÍS: Who came up with the poster?
My friend Hugh Heffernan, he's a big part of LYE and my best friend for years. He designs all the posters for LYE. He designed the logo for Frank and Honest coffee if you know that. He works in Piquant the graphic design studio. The video today we used all of Piquant's gear, Piquant have been very good to us as well.
CATHAL: Sum up Féile na Gréine in 3 words?
Féile na Gréine. Festival of sun. Irish music rocks! There you go haha it's all Irish music!
Big thanks to Jack Brolly for talking to us and Cathal for conducting this interview with me and transcribing it.
