Everyone has a local, the pub most conveniently placed for a meeting – or parting – of friends and many are still alive with the sound of music. Though the crowds seem to stray more so to dedicated music venues, you’re still lucky to catch some decent live music at this or that boozer. It may just be me but there’s something fairly comforting in the sight of a one-man band and a portable PA.
Ganley’s has long been a holy place in both its local and the wider scene, I know many an Irish lad who’d cut across three lines on the Tube to catch an All Ireland game there, and alongside its rowdy but not too unkind atmosphere, you’re always promised three things; cold beer, company and regular live music.
I caught Nic Bennett perform there during a mid-July heatwave after an equally heated hurling final. Bennett is a special kind, a crowd pleaser without any sacrifice to his artistic integrity. Track after track brought out the not-as-defined-as-his-own vocals of two dozen members of the crowd. The pub game is hard, it’s not easy to perform to an audience you can only expect to acknowledge you passively at first – and you have to fight to win them over, in that Bennett is tactful.
In song, folk who were a few short hours prior fiercely divided by county colors were singing, or at least swaying together. There’s not much else that could have that effect, except that song we all know all a bit too well.
Bennett appears casual, his presence not small but compacted and yet he exerts such a force.
His setlist very purposely arranged with the intention of continually firing up the crowd, no track fell with a bum note, in our eyes at least. Sonically, he is this chameleon, confident in Cash, Gallagher, Weller and more.
Playing to the audience, as opposed to showcasing yourself is an understated talent, and maybe some of us look down upon performers reliant on covers; but it’s a skill, and there is success in it – and it is done here masterfully.
The back of the bar is dark, there’s no two ways around that but in song, Bennett worked to make it not so. Those dim connotations of a seedy public house slip away a few verses in.
You’ll be able to catch Bennett up and down the country this summer, perhaps in a beer garden as well. Wouldn’t get that at the O2 now, would ya?
