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GD: Well, yes, actually. It was so disappointing we had Glastonbury on the cards. We were due to
play Glastonbury this year. We also had a lot of other festivals, European festivals in Germany,
France all lined up to play and Switzerland and we had to cancel them all and in Norway, because
with this travel ban and for everybody’s health so obviously there’s nothing you can do about that
but the good news is all of those festivals have rescheduled and booked us for next year, so we will
be back in all those places next year, but for the later part of the year, we’re kind of just still feeling
that out because in Ireland there’s generally a ban until September of gatherings and even after
that we’re not sure if there will be mass gatherings, so we’ll just have to feel it out through the
summer and if we can hopefully reschedule some shows for the wintertime and if not it will be
early next year.
BiTS: in all of the travelling that you’ve done, Grainne, is there some occasion when you were
standing on the stage performing and you thought what on Earth am I doing here? This is
absolutely wonderful.
GD: Yes, very often. The moment when we were playing Lucerne in Switzerland and we were
looking out across this big lake and I was thinking of the smoke on the water and I was thinking I
never thought I was going to be here in this beautiful place or you go up to Svalbard in
Longyearbyen, Norway, which is in the Arctic, I think it’s the nearest settlement to the North Pole
Svalbard
and you’re being told about the polar bears and making sure when you’re walking from the hotel to
the venue if you’re walking outside, just keep an eye out for polar bears and you’re thinking I never
thought I was going to be going to a gig where I ended up meeting a polar bear [chuckling]. As you
said, places like Mahindra or going down to Australia. It was crazy when we went to Australia, we
ended up playing with such an amazing line-up of Irish musicians who we’ve never played with in
Ireland. Sharon Shannon and Wallis Bird and it was just like how did it take us to get to the other
side of the planet to do something like this. I mean it’s been amazing and even sometimes just gigs
where you might be somewhere closer, like Germany or France and you realise that meeting people
there you’ve become friends with and you just think music, it’s like a homely community, another
family away from your own family.
BiTS: If you’re listening to music these days, who do you listen to?
GD: I’ve got some favourites definitely. I love the Stones and then I also love Bonnie Rait. I love Van
Morrison and there’s definitely people like that. Carol King. Actually, I love to listen to Carol King
as well, but then I love listening to Peter Green, who is one of my favourite guitar players. I love his
songs as well. A lot of times it’s things like that. I suppose I’m a bit of a classic person at heart. I