We’re fans of unusual venues at Banter – from an artist’s kitchen in Donegal with a Picasso on the wall to a former bomb shelter in London – so rocking up to the O’Herlihy’s back garden in the wilds outside Macroom was par for the course. The occasion was the Mountain Dew Festival, the little festival in the heart of the countryside which has been running since 2011 featuring a hand-picked selection of local and international acts each year.
This time out, festival organiser Colm O’Herlihy invited us to host a Banter Sunday Brunch Summit and we were delighted to say yes. We’re huge fans of the Sunday morning radio review shows except we don’t think they’re done as well as they could be so we decided to do a Banter radio review show to see what it would be like. One thing we learned is that Marian really does earn her loot.
We’d Nialler9, Angela Dorgan (FMC/Hard Working Class Heroes), Brendan Canty (Feel Good Lost) and Stevie Grainger (Red FM, formerly of the Pavilion and DJ Steamy Gee) reviewing the papers and having the chats about whatever caught their eye. We’d Eileen Hogan from UCC talking about the Sir Henry’s exhibition on-campus. We’d Jack Crotty from Rocket Man talking about his adventures in food to date (Rocket Man’s slow-cooked buffalo kebab from the night before got the thumbs up all round).
We’d the infamous Meltybrains? telling jokes and larking around. We’d festival organiser Colm O’Herlihy talking about why he puts on this event. We’d sweet performances from Daniel Martin Moore and Joan Shelley. And we’d a few Banter firsts with an onstage costume change and a panelist spectacularly leaving the stage. A great day out in Co Cork.