Various venues, towns,dates prices. See listings for details

Festival fever is raging throughout the land, with the various smaller festivals providing neat little stopgaps between the end of the Galway Arts Festival and the start of the Kilkenny Arts Festival, two of the country’s major events.

This weekend in Portlaoise we have the World Fleadh, at which The Saw Doctors will be ploughing their crowd-

pleasing furrow (tonight), Damien Dempsey and Shane MacGowan will share a stage (tomorrow), there’s a rare gig by Moving Hearts (Sunday). Eddi Reader (Monday) and Mary Black (Tuesday) are also heading that way.

In Oldcastle, Co Meath, there is the ever-reliable Le Chéile festival, which has an excellent line-up, including Mercury Prize-nominated Lisa Hannigan and Mundy (tonight), Declan O’Rourke (Saturday) and Fight Like Apes (Sunday).

In Belfast, meanwhile, UK agit-pop band Chumbawumba give it a bit of this, that and the other (Saturday), and The Beat do the same the following night. If all of this isn’t enough for you, then head down south to Skibbereen on Saturday for the Murphy’s Cork x Southwest Festival, featuring The Waterboys, Lisa Hannigan

and Jerry Fish The Mudbug Club; or, on Saturday/Sunday, the Indiependence Music Festival, in Mitchelstown, featuring Ocean Colour

Scene, Mundy, Fight Like Apes, RSAG, Heathers and Ham Sandwich.

You want more? Then get thee to Offaly on Saturday/

Sunday for Castlepalooza, at Charleville Castle, Tullamore, featuring 8 Ball, Angel

Pier, David Kitt, Nell Bryden, Noise Control, RSAG and The Spikes. The bank holiday weekend – relaxing isn’t an option.

Can’t See Those? Catch This

Fatboy Slim, Sunday, Dublin