Westival homecoming: Christopher Coe returns to Westport after 35 years

The 50th edition of Westival kicks off tonight and there's something poetic about Christopher Coe’s return to Westport. The town where he first discovered the transformative power of music, where he’d sneak into Castlecourt as a teenager dreaming of one day playing there, will finally get to see him perform—35 years later, having toured everywhere from Colombia to Australia, having played Glastonbury, and having become a creative partner to dance music legend Carl Cox.

“Life goals achieved. I can retire now," Coe laughs when asked about finally playing the Castlecourt, the venue that loomed large in his teenage imagination.

The Frank Hastings effect

For Coe, like many young musicians in Westport, it all began with guitar lessons from Frank Hastings. “Frank introduced a lot of kids to the joy of just playing music with the guitar,” Coe recalls. “So he was the starting point, actually. And I realised that I just loved it.”

But it was another local institution that would truly shape his musical identity: Corco’s Electro, the only record shop in town, run by Peter Corcoran, who remains a dear friend to this day.

“Growing up in Westport in the 80s, I used to go in and hang out and listen to records and buy records,” says Coe. “We used to talk about music, and there were a whole bunch of musicians that would come by on a Saturday, and it was really quite fun. I mean, a tiny town in the west of Ireland, and there was such a cosmopolitan vibe.”

It’s a memory that still brings warmth to his voice: “We grew up in a small town in the west of Ireland, but we thought we were living in the village of New York.”

That cosmopolitan energy fed something in the young Coe. He didn’t just want to listen to music—he wanted to share it: “I started getting into actually playing records. I used to invite my cousins and my friends up to the attic at my house and have ‘Chris’s disco’.”

The teenage DJ’s ambitions soon outgrew the attic. Dick Bourke from Dazzle Disco would lend equipment to the sixteen-year-old, enabling him to develop his craft. Meanwhile, Coe would sneak into Castlecourt on Saturday nights when Ron Rosco was running the show, absorbing everything, dreaming of the day he’d be on the other side of the decks.

“I’ve never played the Castlecourt,” he says. “It was my dream as a young fella. Finally, I made it.”

Meaningful connection

There’s another layer to this homecoming that makes it especially meaningful. Coe’s mother, Kay Coe, was on one of the early committees that started the Westport Arts Festival back in the 1980s.

“Back then, they used to have all the artists come and stay at each other’s houses because they couldn’t afford, you know, it was a small festival,” Coe explains. “So we had lots of really interesting people coming through every year that I met as a kid because of mum’s association with the festival. And I went to a lot of really interesting events and shows and literary things and poetry and art, all because of her involvement.”

Now, decades later, he’s returning not as a kid watching from the sidelines, but as a performer: “It’s really, actually, personally, really important to me because of this full circle.”

The journey from that Westport attic to international stages has been extraordinary. Coe has played virtually every major festival imaginable, including Glastonbury twice, Awakenings and beyond. He’s toured extensively with Carl Cox, one of electronic music’s most revered figures.

“Carl Cox opened the doors, which I’m forever grateful for,” says Coe. “But we have a really great working creative relationship, and we’ve been able to develop some amazing ideas for his live show over the last few years.”

The partnership has pushed both artists in new directions: “He’s come out playing live, which is most unusual for a DJ of his stature, to then suddenly go, right now, I’m going to play live. So I’ve had a lot of input into that with him. We’ve worked very closely together. It is a very big creative partnership in lots of ways.”

Yet for all the globe-trotting and festival headlining, there’s something about coming back to Westport that feels different. Perhaps it’s the realisation that the foundations laid in Corco’s Electro, in Frank Hastings’s guitar lessons, in those Saturday nights sneaking into Castlecourt, were more substantial than he knew at the time.

As Coe prepares to finally take the stage at Castlecourt—the same venue where he once pressed against the walls as a teenager, dreaming—the journey doesn’t feel complete so much as continuous. The boy who thought Westport was the village of New York discovered the world was bigger than he imagined, only to find that the most meaningful moment might be coming home.

Westival will mark not just a performance, but a reunion—with the town that made him, the friends who shaped him, and the teenage version of himself who never stopped believing this moment would come.

Special anniversary

Now in its Fiftieth year, Westival continues to champion both homegrown and international talent, uniting artists and audiences in one of Ireland’s most picturesque cultural settings. The 2025 programme captures the essence of what makes the festival so special, a celebration of connection, creativity, and community.

This year’s musical offerings include performances from Matt Molloy, Tolu Makay, ZASKA, Christopher Coe (Live), and Niall McCabe, each bringing their own unique sound and energy to the Westivalt stages.

MORE Christopher will be performing live on Saturday night from 9pm in  Bar 23, Westport Plaza Hotel and tickets are €25.For the full programme and to book tickets, visit www.westival.ie.