AS TENS OF thousands of people poured into the capital this weekend for the Oasis gigs, quite a few keen music fans took the road out and headed to Limerick city, for the three day ‘music trail’ style festival, Féile na Gréine. 

This is one of a number of small fests up and down the country that have transformed Ireland’s live music scene, and it’s giving a platform not just to new and experimental artists but to the city itself:

Mother Macs, Pharmacia, Treaty City Brewery and other venues are hopping for three days straight, as between eight and ten thousand people take over the city’s clubs and bars. 

Though it still feels DIY, the professional feel of the festival today is a far cry from its origins, when a group of friends put on 20 shows in 2018. 

Hugh Heffernan chatted with The Journal outside of Treaty – one of the festival’s venues – in a crowd of festival goers enjoying pints outside in the sun on the second day.

He said that back in 2018 when he and his friends put the first Féile na Gréine on for an audience of just 600 it felt like they were doing it for themselves, and for each other: 

“We never had a choice really. I think all of us grew up with music, lots of us are musicians, and we’ve always enjoyed putting on live gigs.When I was about 20, I used to screen print gig posters in my room and then give them out to promote the guy’s gigs.” 

The graphic designer returned to his native Limerick in 2018 after a stint in Dublin, and he immediately got involved in the local music scene.

“There were always crazy good rock bands coming out of here. Giveamanakick is probably one of the best examples. But then the recession hit, that’s when I was in college, and electronic music came to the fore, because no one could afford to book a band; it’s easier to pay one person instead of paying five.

That’s really where I cut my teeth, and started understanding how to make live music events happen, and how to make them happen in Limerick, and we’ve taken that ten years of experience and come together to put this music on, it’s all about making experimental music accessible to people,” Heffernan said. 

Ash O’Connor has been a volunteer with the festival for years – she’s also the lead singer of Limerick post-punk band His Father’s Voice. 

On a shift break in the corner of Mother Macs, she explained why she got involved in the first place. 

“I played the first Féile and I fell in love with how it made me feel, how community rich it was, and I’ve wanted to volunteer every year since. 

“Limerick tends to clear out sometimes when there’s a lot of festivals going on around the country, so this gave us something to do, and it was really exciting.

“Then it grew and other people started coming, and they started sharing that sense of community,” she said. 

O’Connor said that it’s the newness of the acts themselves that makes the festival special. 

“It’s a music trail that’s put on for people interested in underground music, who don’t necessarily even know the artists, they want to be spontaneously surprised with new acts, and it’s somehow retained that, and I think that’s because we’re all artists. 

“It’s very DIY, it’s unapologetic about it, and I think that actually rubs off in a nice way amonst the audience,” she said. 

O’Connor said that completing funding submissions for the festival has become a year-long endeavour, and that community-run festivals like this one could do with more Government body level support to keep them going. 

“Not to grow it, but to just support it and make sure it’s sustainable, and that it continues to happen. This is the perfect little storm for artists that are just starting out, that want to show what they can do, for artists starting out like me, it’s the first time they play to that size of a room,” she said. 

The owner of Treaty City Brewery, Stephen Cunneen, makes a special ‘Féile’ pint for the festival. 

“We collaborate with another brewery in town and run a beer, it’s served in most of the venues that operate as part of Féile and all of the revenue from the beer goes towards getting next year’s festival,” he says. 

Cunneen said that this year, the festival rose to a new height: 

“The biggest takeaway for me this year is seeing people from the capital, Galway, and Cork here in August – which is a real holiday time – to see Limerick for this fantastic music festival. The guys are doing an absolutely stellar job,” he said. 

Popular national and international acts like Maria Somerville, Joshua Burnside and Amanda Feery entertained the Féile crowds this year, but perhaps the most hotly touted event was seeing Limerick home band Giveamanakick perform their first gig in ten years on the street outside of the commercial. 

“It’s their first time out in the ten years since their ten year anniversary, and that was the first time they’d played in ten years even then, so it’s been like, twenty years,” one local festival goer explained with wide-eyed devotion. 

Stephen Ryan, guitarist and lead vocalist, donned a World War II style gas mask and sang standing on a speaker above a mosh pit of frenzied teenagers. When he broke away from the crowd to perform a guitar solo surrounded by his kids on the steps of a local camera shop, you could’ve hardly imagined the Gallagher brothers themselves would’ve won a better reception.

Keep an eye on the festival’s site for info about next year’s Féile Na Gréine.