SUMMER MEMORIES/Philip King: 'SUMMER IS DIFFERENT – the light and the length of the day come together to offer a sense of timelessness and freedom.
“My first holiday, to the townland of Cillaruth at the foot of Mount Eagle, in west Kerry, had a lifelong impact on me. I was sent there to learn Irish as a young boy of 14. I fell in love with the place and I always associate it with summer. There’s a magic, a real cadence and rhythm to it. Its magnetic pull still has a hold on me. I now live less than half a mile from the house I first stayed in there.
“Working as an independent, there’s a big blur between work and holiday – you could argue that you’re always on holiday.
“I lived in Dublin for more than 25 years. And summers in Dublin were always full of music, gigs in the Baggot Inn, nights in the Meeting Place with the Bothy Band and Christy Moore, other nights in Slattery’s on Capel Street and free gigs in the park in Blackrock.
“I spent one remarkable summer touring Holland and Germany with Scullion and the late lamented John Martyn. We’d ferry from Dún Laoghaire to Holyhead and drive the van through the night all across England to Harwich. We’d take turns at the wheel – four boys and the bard.
“The greatest of all the festivals was Lisdoonvarna; a very Irish event. I played with Emmylou Harris one year. Everyone knew each other. I recall climbing through a window into the Falls Hotel in Ennistymon at four in the morning and joining Emmylou Harris and Dave Edmunds who were playing a session there. After the festival it was customary to go to Doolin and take a day or two off. We’d sleep in the van – this was in the days before zombie hotels. And BBs usually meant the beady eye of de Valera over the bed, ensuring a certain level of enforced chastity.
“After Doolin, you’d take the unofficial trad trail, following the music up the coast. You never tired of the rolling wheel and the sense of freedom. We called into music-playing friends, and bars were very welcoming. From Alec Finn’s bar in Oranmore, to Neachtain’s in Galway and Hughes’s in Spiddal, there was a different bunch of musicians in every place. It was a sonic trail with hotspots all the way up to Donegal. There was a sense of the authentic, hidden Ireland. Being a musical gypsy, it was like running away to the circus.
"One of the highlights of Bringing It All Back Home[a television series made by King that celebrated the international influence of Irish music] was a summer serenade – Don and Phil Everly singing Down In The Willow Garden, drinking Michelob beer and squirrels sitting on the window sills all enjoying their remarkable harmony.
“The last few years I’ve holidayed in a place called Sabran in the Languedoc [in France]. It’s beautiful and hot, a place to go and shut down completely.”
In conversation with Alanna Gallagher
Scullion play The Set Theatre in Kilkenny next Sunday, August 15th as part of the Kilkenny Arts Festival. See kilkennyarts.ie
