The ground started swelling, and reaching, and breathing – and I was brimming with teeth, at the apex of a shroom trip. What else could I do? I made a vow to protect the land, to never harm it, only ever look after it as best I could.

Then I went back to watch the last acts of the last night of Kathal Fest, all the while giggling in only that way you can when you’re overcome with gratitude and giddiness, wet-eyed with yawning wonder.

It had been a well-earned respite. It’d been a very long week.

Denise Dombrowski and I probably would not have tried to make a little independent festival in a field I own in Clare if we’d known exactly what we were getting ourselves into.

And that is why I’m a firm believer in wilful ignorance. How else can you get what’s daunting done, but by sheer blind, blissful, self-delusion?

–

Before Kathal fest, Denise, Robert John Hope and I went on tour. We played Whelan’s in Dublin, with Ri Dunne and Dan Reid in tow – onwards playing Limerick and Galway with Rufus Coates & Jess Smith joining us.

The whole while we were playing, and journeying around in Rob’s family’s Punto – Denise and I tried to source what we needed to build stages and a compost toilet – which would later be quipped ‘Victory’ due to the struggle entailed in its making.

Suffice to say, putting on a DIY non-profit festival in a field you own, sans any plumbing, or electricity, or any funds – is a tricky thing.

But, it has its advantages. When you’re fighting off an avalanche of correspondence, and constantly troubleshooting things you need to beg, steal and borrow – you don’t have a lot of time to concern yourself with what usually troubles you, like playing a show that night.

And the gigs went better than ever. Attended-wise and attentive-wise. It felt as if going up on stage and playing was the best break any of us could hope for. It felt like being back in the garage as a teen, blasting out Offspring songs, trying out new techniques, for the hell of it. I even started standing for the first time in years on stage, and a strange new vibrato thing occurred in my voice in place of where I’d typically strain or near-shout, going for a note I was ill-equipped to muster.

Thinking is the enemy

I’ve often, quite paradoxically, thought that, but, it was a mantra showing its fruit in every night we played.

And it helped, immensely so, where we were attempting the unthinkable – an Irish festival for 70 people, with absolutely no idea, or experience, in what we were exactly doing, or getting ourselves into.

Ireland in the summer, when it actually gets one, is like no other place on the planet. The Irish are famously windswept and interesting, well that’s a particular Scot, but, it isn’t far off. The whole Irish psyche isn’t versed in the idea of sustained sunshiny temperament or temperature. For good reason, too. On the last night it took a whole team to save our second marquee from a storm, having uprooted and ended up in the hedgerow at 4am. No wonder, the whole place seems to be expecting the bottom to fall out at any given moment.

“Jaysus, it’s hot”

“Don’t even mention it!”

As if we’ll jinx it!

And one time, I think I did. We were going so well. Midday. I was on my fifth consecutive day of sunburn at the festival and said:

“It’s actually a bit too hot…”

“DON’T SAY THAT!”

And within minutes the storm clouds came.

But, despite our superstitions, and, perhaps blatant alchemy, when the storms pass, and the rain lessens, and there’s an actual chance to put on “a party” – as I called it to any local farmers who came by to say hello as we lugged a rock attached to a thread of bunting over an oak tree – the people show up, and come to help.

A farmer, who handed me an envelope, saying “I’m the man who grazes cattle on your field, that’s for you”, with a small sum of hugely needed funds, asked what we needed for “the party.”

“Sawdust” is all I could think of, my mind being preoccupied with the endeavour myself and Jamie Collier had undertaken, the bane of our existence, building from scratch a locally-sourced wooden toilet, with a compost removable wheelie-bin beneath.  

“Arah, sawdust..” he thought for a moment, “I’ve barely two stacks”

Not only did he bring two stacks (more than enough for a few days of a festival), he brought a tractor full of gravel to shovel over the mud trench that had emerged at our entrance.

Another farmer didn’t even stop to say hello, as he dropped off sacks of firewood, quickly turning on a heel going as quick as he came.

But, it was one particular neighbour that really cemented my sentiment towards how immeasurably lucky myself and Steph were to land a piece of land in this part of the world.

Our neighbour, an older gentleman, came each day to chat, and introduce us to other neighbours, and offer help such as a “genny”

“We already have a generator, but thanks!”

He went on to tell us his brother, who kept donkeys on our land, was getting sicker and sicker by the day.

One morning, the second day of the festival, he came staggering over.

He told me while breaking down, his brother, who lived one field down, had passed away.

He insisted we keep the music going, and only asked if Steph and I would attend the wake that night, at nine or ten.

“I’ve never even seen a dead person before” said Steph, quietly to me after he’d left.

That night we went. And we were welcomed with all the generosity, and warmth of family, as we sat and ate triangle sandwiches, having seen the man who kept donkeys on my land, lying still, as people trembled.

We walked back in the pitch black, hearing the music of Belgium Blue quietly whisper in the distance.

“Please don’t stop the music, it’s getting us through it, breaking the silence”, said Michael.

We walked back, and sat to see Bui’s set – the perfect blend of insightful musings, and weezer-esq grimy beauty.

There’s nothing like getting lost in the tones of sound, sitting on a camping chair, with a cold can, and knowing, no matter what happens, these loveable monkeys, called men and women, who “snore all around us, laying about in tents”, as Jamie Collier put it, in his transcendent set, have your back – will be there to comfort you, if the emotion is too overbearing, or the plight of playing, or making, or just any rut of life feels too fragile or forced.

You sit into the song, and let them take you.

You sit by the fire after, and let it talk to you.

You hear the words and laughter of your friends, and let it wash over you.

This experience, setting up a festival, was one of the harder ones I’ve gone though. And I’ll be indebted to Denise most of all, for the rest of my days, who fed 70 plus people over three days, and mostly handled the bookings, questions, qualms and directions of every one of them, in the days leading up. Jamie Collier did the sound, and helped build our festival, along with my uncle, Mike Bonner, without whom, this whole festival would have been a non-starter. Shane Ryan helped us saw and build, and gave endless lifts here and there, and supplied his dad’s generator, and the marquee that the storm near-took. Dan Reid, when the money ran out mid-festival, bought all our sustenance and cans – holding a sign by the end of the festival with a code to his bank that simply read “Pay Dan.”

The culmination of it all made moving a piano from one end of a field, and then back again – worth it.

How many things in life can make you feel like that?

–

And this whole thing started out of the grief for the man I’d been shouting with over melodies, and grudging tones, since we were 14 in his garage, Kathal Larkin. We planted a tree in his honour in our field, as his parents looked on, and I couldn’t get a word out, at first, because of the upheaval of emotion.

And then I spoke. And it was alright. And Shane Ryan, who dug the tree, helped me, Steph and Dan cover the sapling in soil, with our hands, while propping each other up, the way only good friends do.

And that’s what we came to think the whole world was about, least it was evident in the little one we had created.

–

So, I sank back into my camping chair that last night, as the tarp of the walls bled, and eyes, and faces, merged, and drifted, and Mark Loughrey from the stage said “sorry, Conor, this may not be the best time to play this” before going into a rendition of one of my songs, and it was like I’d heard it for the first time.

And so many things were like that. Like, seeing behind a curtain, one that had been veiling so much of life.

And then I left the field.

And began plotting and scheming.

For there’s too much of life out there, and too much already spent, and too little time to grasp what’s left, so what else is there for for it – but build buckets, find friends, sing songs, and sow seedlings.

–

Conor Kilkelly, 27/8/2025

Photography – Julio Santos