Only in Greece! How can a small mountain town of 14,000 inhabitants host a 4- or 5-day St. Patrick’s festival? Well, Grevena manages it, and it is a commercial and artistic success.
We set off at 10:30am on Saturday, 18th March, our destination a restaurant called Marmita in a village called Megalo Sirini (Μεγάλο Σειρήνι) just outside Grevena. There were four of us plus the tin-whistler’s son.
The drive was easy and we got there more than an hour before our scheduled start time. Stelios, the organizer, delivered the additional musicians, not local talent as we were expecting but musicians from Athens up for the weekend. The size of the taverna was ideal for a session, and the audience were really responsive. We played (with breaks) for about three hours. We had made the decision to return to Thessaloniki that evening rather than stay overnight as we wanted to get to our Dubliner gig in good time.
Lesson learnt: Do a gig before a session. Even now six days later, my hand still aches.
19th March, D-Day or Μ-Μέρα. I got there early BUT I have never seen the town centre so busy on a 2pm on a Sunday. Even the pay carparks were full. I had to do three circuits of the town centre before I managed to get into my usual car park. When I got to the pub there were scenes of utter chaos. Equipment all over the floor, musicians doing last-minute practice, a manager taken aback by the huge numbers of musicians! Slowly but surely we got things together and got things going by 4:20pm. All the practices paid off and we were well received by the audience.
We managed to complete our program, which — to me — means 1) there was little fucking-around between numbers (the bane of amateur performances) and 2) we didn’t disappear during the break. Trying to get musicians back on stage after a 20-minute break can be like herding cats.
Since I got back to Greece in 2019, it has taken over three years to do our first plugged gig. In 2021 and 2022 we did two unplugged open-air gigs in the summer. I’m beginning to feel, the Covid nightmare is finally past us.