Digging For Fire
A mishmash of memories around the ups and downs of the Limerick band scene in the early 1990s on RTE Radio 1.
Digging For Fire by composer Daragh Dukes, along with radio producers Eoin O’Kelly and Kevin Brew.
Daragh and Kevin used to be in the band called They Do It With Mirrors. Eoin was formerly the lead singer of The Hitchers. I became familiar with these bands while living in Limerick during my art school years in the late 80s and early 90s.
Eoin asked if he could use one of my Limerick photographs to represent an audio piece the trio performed at the Hearsay International Audio Arts Festival in 2019. The image is of a figure standing by a smouldering bonfire in bleak surroundings. In the audio piece, Eoin describes the image and reflects on this particular time of youthful creativity.
Limerick smoke
My photograph taken through a gap in the wall down a Limerick lane as some boys were starting a bonfire in the wasteland.
The three amigos decided to make a radio documentary based on their performance at the Hearsay festival. You can listen to it here. It’s an honest, poignant story of the many twists and turns their lives took as they pursued their musical dream.
Eoin asked me to talk about my time in Limerick and my photograph. I'm elated to have a small part in this documentary. It was such an influential time in my life, when everything changed as I pursued my passion for creativity full-time.
They asked my husband, Micky ‘Pixelated’, and me to help them with their promotional artwork. The only image they could find of the three of them was in the Limerick Leader newspaper archive. In the early 90s, bands' posters were generally made by hand and then photocopied.
Digging For Fire
The yellow coloured paper would have been used extensively at the time to create flyers as it was cheap and readily available. Micky found a font similar to the Letterset one he would have used in the early 90s. He also created a couple of short video clips to highlight the show.