Gettin' Wet And Weird in Wexford Town

By Richard Deering

Wexford town is the best town in Ireland. Nowhere comes close. As soon as I'm crossing that river Slaney, I just get that feeling like something weird and wonderful is going to happen and it usually does.

This time was no different as we embarked on our guerilla style pop up tour around Leinster to promote Medals. There's a bit of apprehension attached to landing in the middle of a town, unloading a van of band gear, setting up and playing to an unexpecting audience.

Will anyone stop and listen? Will someone get annoyed and tell us to leave? Will Michael remember all his drum gear?

No. Michael will not remember all his drum gear.

I've been playing bass for nearly 10 years now, which means I've spent a lot of time with drummers of every shape and head size. I do not envy them. The joy of getting to go wild and smack a few drums now and again is short lived, when the reality of it is that the majority of their time, they are hauling around 17 massive plastic cases with another 29 separate bags to keep all their strange doo dads and whatchamacallits inside.

We landed in Wexford and Michael had realised he forgot his clutch. (I have no idea what that is but it's about the size of a tube of lipstick and makes the hi-hats bounce up and down).

Where the lesser drummer might have panicked, Michael being the wizard that he is, quietly sourced some materials and began constructing his own clutch made of tape and I'm sure various leaves and sticks found on the ground of the bullring in Wexford. After the briefest delay, we were ready to go, makeshift clutch and all, but that beloved Irish weather had other ideas.

We began to play in a drizzle, we continued to play in a shower and we packed up in a good old fashioned downpour. The people of Wexford town were absolutely sound out and gave us plenty of attention when they could stick the rain but unfortunately we had to call it early for fear of our amps exploding and damaging the pike man statue in the middle of the square. A big shout out must go to the man from The Undertaker bar who offered to open up his outdoor umbrellas for us, alas we soldiered on as the gear was already wet and we couldn't face moving all the gear for a second time, but fair play to him all the same.

All in all, it was an excellent learning experience for the first leg of the Foot Squeaker guerilla tour. We learned that amps can take a fair amount of water before they explode, we learned that shelter would probably be a good call going forward, and we also learned that Michael can build and forage his way out of any drum hardware disaster. The biggest takeaway is something we already knew, and I've known for definite all my life, Wexford town is the best town in Ireland and we will be back, bigger, better and wetter than ever.

Up Wexford

Up Footsqueker

God bless the weird and wonderful.