Irish Monday

Jamie and Allen

A night of folk music and Guinness – not the worst way to start of a week 🙂

Monday night we headed to The London Irish Centre in Camden. A festival called The Return to Camden Town celebrating Irish culture is currently going on in Camden and Jamie Smith (who we saw last year as well) was playing with his new band Smith: Byrnes: O’Sullivan and this was the release concert of their first CD.

There were two bands playing that night, the first one with was a guy playing different a instrument for almost every song with his band. This was a bit more traditional I guess and then there were Jamie and his friends playing a bit more upbeat with a drummer and guitar. I really enjoyed the music, it reminded me of my days back in high school when the folk festival was in town there.

I shot a video of the first song they played; Exotic Snowball. The sound in the video is not good so if you want to hear what it really sounds like go to their myspace profile and hear the song there.

Tina Dickow at Shepherd's Bush

2009-10-15 Tina Dickow in Shepherd's Bush 045

Last night Ann and I went to see Tina Dickow (or Tina Dico as she goes by outside Denmark). I’ve been a fan of her for a couple of years and in February when I saw she would be playing in London shortly after I moved here I was quick to buy tickets for it. So we got great seats at Shepard’s Bush Empire just a few rows from the stage.

The warm up act was Norwegian Thomas Dybdahl who has had some airtime on radio in Denmark and has made a couple of great songs. It was just him and his guitar on stage for the most part and I thought he played very well.

Thomas Dybdahl on stage in Shepherd's Bush

Dico’s concert followed and it was great. She has been living in London for the past 8 years and are leaving now so as she was explaining it playing at Shepherd’s Bush was both her biggest dream and a way to say goodbye to London. She played songs from all her albums with two guys backing her.

Tina Dico/Dickow on stage in Shepherd's Bush

I’ve seen her perform a number of times before but this time the latest being at Roskilde Festival last year and in a bookshop in Ann Arbor three years ago.

I think it was my first sit-down concert for this kind of music and I was both good and bad. Good because we had an excellent view and room but bad in the sense that part of the intensity of being at a concert is lost when you sit down. However I thought the concert was really intimate and enjoyed Tina’s personality matching the songs. But the best part was to see the concert with Ann, it was really great to experience it with her and to show her some of the music I love.

I’m writing this as I’m looking out over The North Sea. This morning I jumped on a bus and headed out of London for the first time since I moved here. This weekend I’m geeking out with 52 other Rails developers in a hostel in Margate where we are having a “conference” called RailsCamp.