A Green Light to a Dirty Dog

Having had a resurgence of interest in the Irish language lately, I found myself tuning in to Raidió na Life, an independent Irish-language pop/culture station. I found something I didn’t expect: a dirty dog.

Most of the music played was 70s and 80s hits. From nowhere, the announcer put on a song that hit me with its raw simplicity and beauty. It was a song by “Madra Salach” called “Murphy Can Never Come Home”. The arrangement is very simple, but 23 year old singer Paul Banks has a voice that stops you in your tracks. Madra Salach is of course Irish for “dirty dog”.

I immediately searched around to find everything I could about them. As it turns out, there’s not much. They sound a bit like The Dubliners, or a modern re-interpretation of them, but their first EP only came out earlier this year. By good fortune they had a series of shows coming up. By bad fortune for me, the shows had sold out very quickly.

Earlier this year, Jonathan Woods, from Allied Global Marketing (who had used Tito Pro in its early days as IO) had got in touch to ask whether Tito Pro would be a fit for a series of gigs that they were running along with Heineken. Long story short, we ended up creating a fully custom ticket-purchase flow, with branded checkout, branded emails, and branded digital passes.

We’d been prepping for the job for a few weeks, but at the point I was searching for Madra Salach tickets we hadn’t yet received the gig listing.

Imagine my delight when the day after I had resigned myself to not seeing them live, I was sent the gig listing for the “Heineken Greenlight” campaign that we were working on, and who else on the bill other than Madra Salach themselves. Even better, they were going to be playing in the relatively tiny space of Mary’s Bar in Dublin.

There’s always a thrill when “work” and “life” can collide. I got to experience this in the flesh when I showed up at the venue. The guy at the door asked “do you have a ticket or are you guest list?”. I paused because even though I had bought tickets, I couldn’t help but think “well, I probably COULD ask to go on the guest list if I really had to”.

The gig was incredible. The venue is intimate. Really only about 20 people can fit in front of the stage area. Having got there early, I perched myself in the corner, out of the way, but in prime position, exactly where their excellent sound man was ensuring we all got an aural feast. To really understand how unique it was to see this band play in such a small venue: they announced recently that they’re playing the 1500 capacity Vicar Street in December. I expect by the end of the year they’ll easily be able to fill that twice over.

It was a privilege to be there, in so many ways. To be a small part of the infrastructure even more so. I even got to say a small hello to Paul Banks himself. Something tells me that it’ll be a meeting that I remember fondly as his and the band’s careers take flight.

Much thanks to the Allied Global Marketing team and Heineken for bringing us in to be a part of something so unique and special.