View from the Green Room: Session!!!
The Omega Three Orchestra.
Mandolin mad Gerry Madden tells the Garter Lane audience that he’s had a letter from Herbert Von Karajan, conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic, objecting to the three musketeers of folk and blues describing themselves as an ‘orchestra’.
Well…if former Taoiseach Enda Kenny can describe Ireland "as the best little country to do business in" then the Omega Three can surely describe themselves as the best little orchestra to sing the blues.
And, what do you know but just like Alexandre Dumas’s Three Musketeers, there are actually four – Francie White, Gerry Power, Mickey Dower and Gerry Madden. Just a little bit older, though. My own age really. I remember appearing with Francie in the Glass Tops Gaiety Final of 1987.
Francie hasn’t changed much since then. He’s got that gift that every singer dreams of – uniqueness, individuality with a touch of madness about it. If you close your eyes and hear Francie’s voice, you know it’s him.
Dunmore’s Gerry Power is here on guitar and vocals and suffers at the barbs of his mandolin butty Gerry Madden in banter that keeps the set hoppin’, while bass guitarist Mickey Dower is the rock that keeps everyone together for the two hours plus session that has the audience buzzin’.
The trio brings four top-class musicians with them. Mick Kinsella on percussion has travelled up from the Banner County and is the very devil with the harmonica; casting spells of magic over the house as the mouth organ’s sweet melancholy hangs in the silence of the theatre. Dylan Bible’s guitar-playing dazzles as he moves between folk and blues and Spanish like a master of the fretboard. Mooncoin’s Suzanne Rowe gives that extra ethnic feel to the group with her superb work on the piano accordion, while Alan Coonagh could blow any reed instrument known to man as he moves through saxophones and on to the tin whistle.
Tonight’s concert at sold-out Garter Lane feels more like we’ve wandered into a session than a formal concert as we know it. It’s folksy, informal, gossipy and great craic. Old friends are chatted to in the audience and memories from Dunmore, Dunhill and the Copper Coast. Like my old classmate Billy O’Meara who’s in the audience with his wife Nancy as Francie remembers Billy’s mother complaining about Francie’s big deep voice that was frightening the children out on the Cork Road.
But…underneath the blather and slaggin’ and the self-deprecation, there are real artists at play here whose love of what they do is infectious. ‘Killing the Blues’ is just what it says on the tin; ‘Blue Moon’ is moody-broody, ‘Tico Tico…Take Five…Caravan’ are all carefully crafted’.
There are some well-known tunes here that are given the Omega Three treatment…’Perfect Day…Autumn Leaves…Ain’t misbehavin’…Penny Lane…Georgia on my Mind… Everytime we say goodbye’.
Huge applause…standing ovation…handshakes with the performers and hugs and greetings in the vestibule for friends that got lost somewhere along roads we never shared.
A great session in Garter Lane.
