Friday 13 March 2020 – The Pavilion, Ormeau Rd, Belfast
LAST September, music biographer Colin Harper curated a fabulous one-off ‘Warehouse Remembered’ concert at the Pavilion, celebrating the legendary Belfast venue ‘The Warehouse’, on Pilot Street, which ran for 18 months across 1994–96.
The gig, which raised over £900 for nature charity Fauna & Flora International, featured reunions of popular local acts Stonefish, the Bush Turkeys, Disreali Gears and Strawman, as well as Peacefrog founder member Dave McLarnon leading a ‘supergroup’ of local players.
The success, and fun, of that concert last year has led to a ‘Warehouse Remembered #2’ which will take place on Friday 13 March – this time with a charity purpose closer to home, and close to the local music community, as Colin Harper explained.
Harper: “Pete Major from the Holsteins got in touch and said they’d love to reunite for a Warehouse Remembered show if I fancied running another. Pete told me that Holsteins drummer Brian McNamara and his wife Alison had adopted two children with Foetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder and had started a local support group, FASD Aware NI, moving towards registration as a charity. Making this support group the beneficiary of the concert felt like the right thing to do to – and all the other musicians participating agreed. It’s on Friday 13th – what could possibly go wrong?”
On 13 March, aside from the Holsteins, Dave McLarnon will once again corral a supergroup of local legends in Dave McLarnon’s Hat Band, to perform a set of Ulster rock classics. The rest of the bill features song-writing sensation Brian Houston in a one-off blues-rock trio with Bush Turkeys’ bassist Ali MacKenzie and punk legend Petesy Burns (the Outcasts) on drums, and One More Great Adventure – a fabulous new back-porch country-rock quartet featuring former Devlin/Devlin Law maestro James Devlin and members of fellow Maghera 90s outfit Asterix. This mix of indie-pop, blues, country and rock classics is exactly in the spirit of The Warehouse.
Alison McNamara said: “It’s lovely to see Brian’s old band getting together to do something like this – and lovely to see other musicians that might once have been rivals giving their time to support our support group! FASD is not a very well-known condition and we found that there was a need for a group in Northern Ireland to support and inform parents. Every day is “groundhog day” where our boys are concerned – everything has to be repeated in the hope that what we want them to learn sinks in.”
Brian McNamara added: It’s great to be able to get back on stage and play again and also get to play alongside these other great acts. That they are giving up their time for us is truly wonderful. I don’t think they know what a massive gesture it is to a small charity likes ours that depend on gifts like this. My eldest, Reece, is learning to play the guitar and his younger brother, Jordan, is hopefully going to follow me behind the drum kit. The legacy goes on.”
Tickets are £10, limited to 150, and are available on the door or in advance at TicketSource.co.uk: https://www.ticketsource.co.uk/whats-on/296-298-ormeau-road/the-pavilion/warehouse-remembered-2/e-xdakly