Mick Hanly: I have so many Lobby memories, that it all just kind of melts into one great gig in my mind.
I can't remember playing a bad gig in the Lobby, it was such an incredible venue, and there are fewer and fewer of them around. It was a venue that never let you down and I think one of the things that made it special was always being made welcome. Every aspect of the venue was geared towards musicians, and you were always made feel at ease. Of course the audience were an important factor, and were made up of people who shared a love of live music. The atmosphere was of expectancy and quality and I think it permeated through the whole place. People on the road gigging would always include the Lobby in Cork as a special gig on the way. Great memories.
Niall Vallely: We spent so much of our time in the Lobby, having started out there with Nomos. We did a residency upstairs and from 1991 onwards I played in sessions downstairs. A community of people developed who went to see things regularly in the Lobby and I think the interesting thing about the bar was that there wasn't such a big distinction between people who were into trad or folk or blues as you might find in other venues. Pat Conway managed Nomos after a while so we spent a lot of time there, from doing the crossword at the bar in the afternoons to rehearsing in the evenings. For myself, coming to Cork from Armagh, where there was lots of music but no real scene, I went to everything that went on in the bar at the start. There were some amazing gigs with the likes of Andy Irvine and Begley & Cooney. There were lots of times, too, when gigs were put on by Pat just because he himself wanted to hear the band and there aren't too many venues like that around the place.
John Spillane: About three years ago, long before there was talk of the place closing, I starting writing a song about three moments down through the years that stuck out in my mind when I thought of the Lobby.
I had been playing there over a long period of time, first with the Stargazers in 1989 when we released the single Princes Street, which we launched in the Lobby.
Later in Nomos, we rehearsed upstairs and held band meetings in the venue and it became our headquarters for a good many years. I think the standards were higher in the Lobby than elsewhere and there was a greater respect for the music. I remember so many amazing gigs there, including an old blues singer from Mississippi. I gave up singing the blues after hearing him - it was a valuable lesson in authenticity for me. For me there was a time in my career in the early 1990s when things weren't going so well and I might have been playing to about 20-30 people. I was playing once a month, and I forced myself to have a new song for every gig and that period really helped me in later years. I've a lot to thank it for.
Annette Buckley: I have very fond memories of the Lobby in Cork. I did my first gig there about 10 years ago when I was doing a music, management and sound course in Coláiste Stiofáin Naofa in Cork. Since then, Pat Conway, the owner, has been very good to me, from giving me supports, to my own headline gigs. I launched my EP Untitled in the Lobby in 2001 and had an amazing night, a night I'll always remember! I played my last headline gig there last July and it was a very emotional gig. The Lobby will definitely be sadly missed."