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The White Horse Guitar Club, with its 11 members, is the kind of thing that on paper couldn't work. But in person, it's a treat, writes Barry Egan Music
It was starting to get dark last weekend in County Laois. Eleven triumphant musicians (aka The White Horse Guitar Club) had just come off The Salty Dog stage at Electric Picnic. They had made some impact on the crowd in the big muddy field at Stradbally. You can see why President Michael D Higgins and wife Sabine asked them to play Culture Night on September 22 at their slightly less muddy field-come-garden at Áras an Uachtaráin.
The White Horse Guitar Club have something out of the ordinary. Their story began on March 14, 2012 when Joe Carey invited guitarists to join him at his renowned music venue, The White Horse in Ballincollig, "with no set agenda other than gathering together and playing guitar".
Over 20 musicians showed up that day; 11 of them have been together ever since as The White Horse Guitar Club.
It was not been without its ups and downs. Joe Philpott (resonator guitar, slide guitar, vocals) recalls a gig early in their career in the medieval village of Sermoneta, on a hillside outside the province of Latina in Italy.
"It was picturesque," he says, "And there were 11 hairy heads with guitars..." The 11 hairy heads with guitars stationed themselves on a deck outside a local bar "run by a man named Piro". Centrally located, they were in full view of local passers-by and surrounded by the balconies of residential homes of the locals. "We were ordering 11 bottles of local beer at a ferocious rate," and in between each one, they'd play a song. Before long, a crowd gathered, all looking on with "a combination of curiosity, confusion, and a sort of restrained admiration," he says.
"We were clapped and cheered. At one point, there was a delay in our drinks order. We noticed a truck pulling up. Piro and his bartender were frantically unloading crates of beer through the back door. We found out later that the claps and cheers were for the amount of beer we went through, and not necessarily directed at what was an embryonic version of...