GERRY MORAN recalls an evening the Watergate Theatre in Kilkenny when Liam Clancy held the audience spellbound
It was one of those nights in the Watergate Theatre in Kilkenny – a night when you could hear a pin drop; a night when reverence ruled, leaving us, the audience, hushed and enthralled. It was a night with Liam Clancy and it was a night to remember.
Liam Clancy certainly knew and understood his audience and so The Jug of Punch was the perfect song to start with – a famous Clancy & Makem drinking song, of course, but also a song that gave its name to the Clancy Brothers’ famous pub in Kilkenny back in the late 1960s.
The night was literally a celebration of song and story; songs and stories woven together by a master craftsman into a rich tapestry of entertainment.
What made Liam Clancy’s performance memorable was his extraordinary energy and enthusiasm, his dancing eyes, that lilt in his voice and, above all, the fire in his soul – even then at seventy years of age.
