Four Men and a Dog to play first Café Session

A NEW series of gigs in Ennis is about to get underway called The Café Sessions, which it is hoped will bring some of the best of traditional, roots and folk music to the county town.
The first event will take place this Friday at the Queen’s Bar, when Four Men and a Dog will play.
Four Men and a Dog made a name for themselves with an eclectic and vivacious blend of traditional Irish music with a wide spectrum of other genres, such as rap, Southern rock, jazz, blues, bluegrass, polka, country swing and even salsa.
They made their debut performance in Derry in 1990 and later that year they stole the show at the Belfast Folk Festival.
Barking Mad was their debut album and it won the Album of the Year award from Roots magazine in 1991. They have released another five albums since and there will be another one next spring.
Tracy Crawford is involved in starting the Café Sessions, with Ollie Mullooly and Brian Gooney. “The aim of them is to create a new buzz around music in Ennis,” she said.
She feels they can fill a certain segment in the market. “Glór is there but it’s booked so far in advance. If a band plans a tour with three or four months notice, it’s probably not enough time to fit into Glór’s schedule. We just said it’d be good to do something in town, maybe once a month for now and to have a relaxed café-type atmosphere.”
She says that in time they would like to bring in groups that play in styles other than traditional. “Not just traditional music, we’re looking at folk and roots as well. We’ve a couple of ideas in the pipeline that would be trad in late January and February. There are some great folk clubs around the country and it’s that kind of scene and vibe that we’re looking at. We probably will expand to include other genres of music.”
Tracy says Four Men and a Dog are well worth seeing. “They’re an absolutely great band to see live, I would highly recommend them. They’ve been on the road for 21 years and they’re celebrating that with this tour. It’s an unusual thing for them to do, the band play a lot of festivals and big stage events around the world. The individuals in the band are extremely busy in their own right with individual careers or collaborations with other bands. It unusual for them to do, an intimate kind of event like this,” Tracy concludes.