Pub whose regulars sunk its planned demise
“There are people from all over that come here and the connection is through the music and, importantly, it is multi-generational.
“I am in my thirties, here with my sister Caitriona who is in her twenties and her friend Helen Diamond and her friend Brendan who in his fifties.
“Then you have Larry Masterson and Mick O’Grady who are a little older sitting at the next table over.
“Mick is in his seventies and I would often come in specifically to listen to him. Fascinatingly, he is from a generation when there were house dances and he has a particular rhythm when he plays.
“It is for dancers — and you can pick that up when he plays.”
It is an interesting point, that folk/ traditional music gains such benefit from the mingling and mixing of generational feel and style.
Kennedy herself is from south-west Donegal ( her parent are from Adrara/ Glencolumbkille) and points to Ireland’s most organic/ international success of all, locals to her, Clannad.
Their initial incarnation, pre-Harry’s Game and Robin of Sherwood, was the music of their surrounds, of Rathlin and Tory and the other islands, getting it down, music that could well have been lost in time.
“My own music is informed by Clannad because we were both looking for music from similar places.
“But down here in Dublin we get all different influences, I love a song played here by Mick O’Grady called The Ebola!
Fiddle
“At the same time I am pretty open and have been known to try a bit of heavy metal, maybe a bit of Black Sabbath on the fiddle.”
If Kennedy is pointing to an open community, another of the activists, concertina player Eoghan O Ceannabhain agrees.
“I suppose this is a major hub for a community that is growing in Dublin but one that has it’s roots in a lot of other places.
“My own connection was that my dad was in school with one of the owners, the Mulligans, and he stayed with them when he came to Dublin first.
“For all of my adult life it has been an important place for me, not just in sessions in the bar but in the back room which is the area that is under major threat.
“It has been where there have been concerts, music lessons, all kinds of things.”
In this, the chances of seeing the next big thing in The Cobblestone is a lottery because of the openness, the idea it is pluralist, open to all, inviting — and, of course, meant to be fun.
“In more recent times,” continues O Ceannabhain, “there has been a lot of talk about the bands that have come out of here and gained international recognition.
“Acts such Lankum, John Francis Flynn, Lisa O’Neill and others and this place would have been important for those people.
“Yes it is about that, but there is a whole community of people who might never make an album or might never get recognised outside this community and The Cobblestone community is important for them.
“Sometimes while people mistake this as a ‘revival’ because they have heard some act that went international, our reality is this is a musical home for decades.”
The battle for The Cobblestone is actually really only just beginning.
There is sure to be more applications for planning permission and there will have to be continued vigilance.