Sarah McQuaid: Tour Diary

I first met Donnchadh Gough a good few years ago, when he was playing bodhrán with the band Danú and I was living in Dublin, where his sister Breffni was a good friend of mine. Donnchadh and his wife Helena now run The Local, a justifiably popular little spot

A relatively short drive today to Kilworth, where I was making a return visit to the Village Arts Centre, a beautiful venue in a former church. We had a bite to eat at the Corbett Court Hotel, where organiser Liam Howard had kindly organised accommodation for us, then headed over to the venue to set up and soundcheck.

McCarthy’s Bar in Dingle is one of my all-time favourite places to play in Ireland, so I’ve been looking forward to my third annual visit there ever since it was set up after last year’s gig. As we drove through the Kerry hills towards Dingle (having made our way across the country by way of Ferbane, where we stopped

Up with the lark this morning in order to set off at 6:30am for RTÉ headquarters in Dublin, where we had a 7:30am call for a live interview and performance on RTÉ Radio 1's “CountryWide”. Singing at that hour of the morning is just plain wrong, and I’m afraid I croaked audibly at one stage, but it was great

Instead of driving directly from Omagh to Dublin, we made a detour up to Belfast so that I could do an interview with German journalist Markus Dehm -- which in turn meant that I was also able to meet my pal Colin Harper for lunch, making the journey even more worth while.