Not that I have a whole heap of experience in this, but I’m comparing the relaunch of KilkennyMusic.com to the rekindling of a relationship with an old flame that was always meant to be, but something just kept getting in the way.
I first hit publish on KilkennyMusic.com as a PHP-Nuke install with a separate phpBB forum in September 2005. Building up a few hundred active users in an era before Facebook took off, while MySpace and Bebo were still a thing, the website took off quickly. Live gigs followed, a community built up, Christmas parties were had, tours were planned and delivered and all of a sudden a blog is running 40 shows a year.
Cutting a long, romantic story short, loads happened until nothing happened, then more things happened until nothing happened again. Just as things were taking off, a pandemic killed off live music. There was a year or so of solid photo coverage involving Mc Gig Photography, then three years of quiet time.
Maybe it’s a last roll of the dice, a love of music that won’t fade, that Kilkenny’s live music scene is most certainly ‘on the up’, or that my job now also requires me to keep an eye and ear from a radio point of view in terms of what’s happening on the ground music-wise, but I’ve cleaned house (quite literally) to relaunch kilkennymusic.com.
We’ve just had another solid Kilkenny Roots Festival, the city is preparing for a new series in Live At Castle Mills, Ballykeeffe gigs are back again, there’s more than ever happening in Cleere’s, Billy Byrne’s, Set Theatre in the city, while you throw in The Salmon Pool, Abbey Lane, Fennelly’s and more around the county and you get the sense that Kilkenny is more on artists radars now than ever before.
