Hey folks!

Thursday September 4th, G2 went to Ireland. We all met up at the airport in Stockholm. No one forgot their passport this time (haha...), so we could easily slip through check-in, customs and there we were, on the plane bound for Dublin. As we arrived, our driver Deborah who works for the Ulster American Folk Park waited for us. Her job was to take us to Belfast and then Omagh where the festival was to be held. We were in a big van again and we were going to Belfast to play live on BBC radio. We got in the radio studio, did a fast sound check and then we had 45 minutes to grab lunch (we hadn't eaten since we got sandwiches on the plane early that morning). So before we knew it, we were playing live on air and it this is BBC 2 Radio Ulster which covers the entire Northern Ireland… We did two songs and then Christoffer and Jimmy were rushed to a TV channel for more interviews and performances.

We arrived to the Ulster American Folk Park in Omagh in the afternoon, ready for supper… Okay, for those of you that don't know what this park is all about, let's say that it's actual houses that the Irish people who emigrated to America lived in. So the houses were taken down, piece by piece, shipped to Ireland and then put together again. Kinda cool, huh? It's a beautiful place and the bands playing at the festival, held in the park, got to play on the various stages places around in the park. The big Marquee was the main stage and it took 1200 sitting people… By the way, the audience was fantastic! Below is a picture of them, from the stage!

To me, and many others, one of the best things with this trip was to hear Michael Cleveland & Flamekeeper. It's a true joy to hear him and them all play… Nice guys to sit down at talk to also!

Another treat was the Guiness…Some in our band are huge fans (we won't mention Jimmy's name) and to all you Guiness lovers out there, it DOES taste better in Ireland. Fuller taste. It's like bringing our acoustic instruments to the US, they just sound better there. If it's the humidity or what it now could be, we don't know… ;-)

There were a bunch of bands there and everywhere you turned, there was a band playing… The surroundings were beautiful with Ireland's green rolling hills…

During one of our two sets on main stage, we played Sail Away (written by Christoffer), a song about a man who leaves Ireland for the US… and it couldn't be more fitting than right there, in the Ulster American Folk Park… this song will be recorded for our next project by the way.

Thanks to Richard Hurst, Richard Hawkins, Deborah and all the people that made the festival great. We felt very welcome and we look forward to come back to Ireland!

Next time we blog, we're probably in the US… it's IBMA time!

Jens, Christoffer, Jimmy, Erik and Tobias

P.S. To see the audience pic, click the link below - maybe you can see yourself!? D.S.