Scene of the Rhyme Relaunch in Lees under new MC
Tullamore’s poetry and music night The Scene of the Rhyme was relaunched under the capable MC skills of Richard Brennan, Cormac Lally having moved down to Cork.
As usual there was a late start, and in the pipeline along with the usual suspects The Tullamore Rhymers in their collective and individual capacities, there was Curtis Why from Australia, local singer Olivia Burke, and also Harry Smith from Ennis.
The latter really caught the imagination in the weird way that only comedians can… he started off wry and dry and as part of the audience I was smiling politely, until he got to the gag about fathers helping their sons love lives.
His father helped loads of creepy guys get laid, having invented – or working at the firm that invented – rophynol – aka the date rape drug. That had us in stitches, the black humour not taking from the tragedy of victims. After that, he was on fire, and as all the best comedians do, he made his hometown the base and butt of a lot of his set.
Id forgotten Ennis was our Internet Hub town… back in the days of the 56kb modem… and the ultra fast 128kb ISDN lines which the government of the day installed in every home! Those were the days…
Technology has come a long long way since then!
Olivia Burke did a good set – her music is a mixture of originals and covers and very much in the style of Taylor Swift. She will be one to watch for in the coming years, her shy persona hides a confidence and stage presence that will carry her anywhere…
Talking of stage presence… there was also Curtis Why. His music is an energetic form of guitar music and the topics are as bizarre as can be imagined. The Queen of Poetry was superseded by The Cat and The Tree, the latter a humerus song about a cat and a tree, the cat dies and the tree is sad, only for a few years a kitten approaching the tree and introducing itself as the cat of old, only on another of its nine lives.
He is in Galway as I write, and you can catch him busing some of these days if you are lucky on Shop Street and in a few local bars.
In advance of the gig, I had a good chat with him, and we discussed the scene in Australia which he is not fond of, and the Bush Poetry which I love from Australia but which Curtis is not fond of, though he told me he lived some of my verses, which was sound!
I’d read “Three Roses In Her Hand<“ which has become a new staple verse of mine for reading, its short and simple and true and tells in plain verse a situation of the heart of what was not to be… in addition I did Angry Sea and Out of Tune… all of which I need to have off by heart for the gig we have on this coming weekend Secret Sounds, which is so secret the venue is one too!!!
So Ill be out of work Fri morning and on the bus for Kerry and will be taking directions from there where I hope to meet up with some others of the Tullamore Rhymers and the wider poetry community in the country!