Electric Picnic festival goers will get a chance to hear Dave Gergarty of BellX1 fame air tracks from his new ’80s sounding solo album Monomania, which is being released this weekend.
Going under the moniker Join Me In The Pines (JMITP), Dave said he’s “big time” looking forward to performing on the Jerry Fish stage this Saturday afternoon with his band.
He told The Beat: "It’ll be great. It’s a very different thing obviously (from Bellx1) – I’m up front and centre stage and busy singing throughout the gig rather than off to the side being able to take more in because there’s less ... as a singer you’re definitely more in the moment.
“And there’s more pressure. But I suppose with that comes a high payback.”
The JMITP band are currently in the middle of a festival tour, which included Vantastival, Forbidden Fruit, Kaleidoscope as well as Electric Picnic.
They were invited to open for Hall & Oates in Dublin’s Iveagh Gardens and the Cork Marquee gigs too.
And JMITP also opened for David Gray in the Marquee. Joining Dave on-stage are: Marc Aubele (keys and vocals), Mick Major (bass and vocals) and Tim O Donovan (drums and vocals).
Dave added: “After all the excitement of doing Join Me In The Pines, It is nice then that BellX1 had a couple of gigs there in July.
"And it was nice to just kind of sit back into the familiar space of playing the BellX1 songs in front of a BellX1 crowd.”
Dave said “at times” he prefers being centre stage and being more in control, but added: “And then, as I say, it’s nice to fall back into the familiar of BellX1.
“It’s nice that they’re so different, you know. It’s so different that it’s not one has to replace the other. They are very different beasts.
“It’s very different music as well –that’s the thing with the current (project) Join Me in the Pines gigs, we’re playing all the new music, so it’s all upbeat, it’s all kind of ‘Go-go-go’ and there’s no kind of slow sets, shall we say, in the old Irish disco style.”
We can’t wait to gauge the audiences’ reaction to all the new ’80s style songs, which we reckon will go down really well with fans of Prince, Bowie and Nile Rodgers.
lDave’s band JMITP will be playing at the following venues around the county in October: The Commercial, Limerick (Friday, October 11), The Black Gate Theatre, Galway (Saturday, October 12),Coughlan’s, Cork (Friday, October 18), and Lost Lane, Dublin (Saturday, October 19).
