New music festival for Mayo this August Bank Holiday weekend

A pair of musicians are promising to ‘bring the noise’ to the shores of a lake in County Mayo as they prepare to launch a new music festival.

The Conncert, featuring an eclectic line-up, takes place the August Bank Holiday weekend at The Lodge, a 120-year-old pub which overlooks Lough Conn. 

The seeds of this unique day first germinated when Ballina Punx legend, Conor Hickey, realised that two of his friends had independently, and unknowingly, been planning the same event. 

The pair, John Breslin and Patrick Hallinan, both wanted to bring some fringe sounds to their home county, with a day of boundary-pushing music from local and extralocal alternative artists, a space to celebrate the DIY values shared among those artists and a chance for some good craic while doing so.

The three have since assembled the following line-up of acts to perform on the day, including Belfast’s three time Northern Ireland Music Prize winners, Junk Drawer, Poor Creature (featuring members of Lankum & Landless), Fixity from Cork, and many more.

_{The Conncert official flyer}

The Conncert crew all spent their formative years in the local underground and punk community in Ballina, with each bringing this influence to other musical ventures.

In keeping with the spirit of co-support and independence, the gig is arranged so that all proceeds from ticket sales will go directly to the artists and sound engineer on the day.

Mr Hallinan said: “We’ve such a rich vein of interesting music in Mayo and beyond, so it feels good to do something supportive and to bring folks together to enjoy this.” 

Mr Breslin, who went to national school only a stone’s throw from The Lodge, called bringing these ‘brilliant and weird acts so close to home’ a ‘great’ opportunity.  

“I’ve done a bit of touring around the DIY community in Europe and the US and have always been blown away by how well we’re looked after.  

“So the plan is to bring a bit of that to the Conncert and hopefully show the players and attendees a fantastic time,” he added. 

The Conncert takes place in The Lodge, Cloghans, on Saturday, August 3 at 3pm. 

Tickets, which cost €20, can be bought on the TicketTailor website. For more information, please see the Conncert’s Instagram page or contact theconncert@gmail.com.

See below the full list of participating acts:

Junk Drawer 

Poor Creature 

Fixity 

Hands up who wants to Die 

Cobra Truth 

Rún 

Y0P 

John of the Apocalypse