“If you had a time machine, which Rory gig would be your first port of call?”

That’s the question I (Lauren) recently posed to the followers on my Instagram fanpage.

Their responses were varied and covered all eras of Rory’s career, with everything from Irish Tour ’74, Rockpalast ’77 and Ulster Hall ’84 to Out in the Green ’86, Temple Bar ’92 and Montreux ’94. There were even a good number of votes for the early days of the Fontana Showband.

While I would dearly love to have seen any of these concerts (and any other Rory concert for that matter!), there’s one show above all that immediately came to my mind: Rory’s 1993 acoustic gig at Cork Regional Technical College. 

For those of you who have been following my account on Instagram for some time now, you will know the obsession that I have with acoustic Rory. Indeed, it’s hard to get me to shut up once I start talking about it! There’s not a day that goes by when I don’t watch Rory’s 1977 Me and My Music appearance on RTÉ or listen to his 1992 Guinness masterclass (more on that in a later post!), while I rate Cleveland Calling Part 1 up there with some of his finest work. Indeed, some of my favourite Rory songs are those played on the acoustic guitar (‘Don’t Know Where I’m Going’, ‘Just the Smile’, ‘Out on the Western Plain’) and I know I’m committing blasphemy when I say that I prefer his 1932 National Resonator to his beloved Strat.

But acoustic guitar was also Rory’s true love. He often told interviewers that it was acoustic that he played most at home, and he encouraged all budding guitarists to learn acoustic first to harden their hands using heavier strings. As he so nicely and succinctly put it, “you can’t Minnie Mouse” with an acoustic guitar. Rory also often talked throughout his career about his dream of recording an acoustic album – something that Dónal (partially) achieved on his brother’s behalf with the 2003 posthumous release of Wheels Within Wheels.

So, while I desperately want to go back to Rory’s 1993 acoustic gig to experience first-hand his unique Celtic twist on traditional country blues, his hybrid picking, his slide technique and his range of tunings, there’s actually an even greater reason why I choose this gig over any other. Yes, this gig is particularly special because it was in honour of one of the most important people in Rory’s life: his Uncle Jimmy.

Jimmy, or James, Roche is a fascinating and truly inspirational man who achieved so much at a time when Ireland was a largely rural and impoverished country under the stifling grip of the Catholic Church. With few opportunities for higher education in Ireland at the time, young Jimmy moved first to Canada and then the United States where he obtained undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in Physics and Biology. Shortly after graduating, he moved to Detroit, obtaining employment in a car plant, part of the city’s growing automobile industry.

Jimmy returned to Cork in the late 1950s and, several years later, married Kathleen O’Callaghan, a neighbour who lived on McCurtain Street where the Roche family ran the Modern Bar. The couple promptly moved to Waterford, where Jimmy worked in the city’s crystal manufacturing facility. But teaching was where Jimmy’s heart lay and, just one year later in 1961, he took up a post as a Class 3 teacher at Crawford Municipal Technical Institute back in Cork. He then went on to become Head of Physics at Kevin Street in Dublin (1962-1967), before being appointed to the position of principal back at Crawford in 1968 (which became the Cork Regional Technical College in 1976). He also served on the governing body of the University of Limerick.

Jimmy was a pioneering principal who aimed to shake up traditional styles of teaching and modernise and expand the subjects available to students. Despite much opposition to his plans, Jimmy was successful and, during his time at RTC, he expanded the arts element of the college, introducing four degree courses and new learning technologies.

Jimmy’s intelligence, resoluteness and innovativeness are all characteristics that are clearly shared by Rory and go some way towards indicating why the two men felt such an affinity with one another. However, there was one thing above all that created such a strong bond between uncle and nephew: their love for music.

In his time in North America, Jimmy had been exposed to so much music that he had never heard before in Ireland and avidly spent his wages on the latest records. When he returned to Cork, he brought with him full back catalogues of country, blues and folk singers. As Dónal noted in a 2012 interview with Marcus Connaughton, the feel of American music “became more real because of and thanks to Jimmy.” While he and Rory had been trying to develop a sense of what America was like through the songs of Lonnie Donegan or the cowboys Roy Rogers and Gene Autry, Jimmy provided them with first-hand accounts, helping develop their love of travelling musicians and the Wild West even further. Dónal recalls that Jimmy was also a very fine singer and would sing regularly at family parties, his favourite musicians being Jimmie Rodgers and Hank Snow.

In the same interview, Dónal notes that Jimmy was an “inspirational figure for Rory” and that his brother had a “huge grá” (affectionate love) for him. He was the first man that Rory ever saw in a leather jacket and, as a young child, he was fascinated by the garment (which I’m pretty sure is the one Rory started to wear in the late 80s and is now in Dónal’s possession). In the late 1960s, Jimmy would travel regularly to London to take computer courses at IBM in Sandhurst. Dónal recalls how he would drop him off and pick him up in the Taste van and that he would crash on the floor of the brothers’ bedsit. In fact, Jimmy and Rory were so “very, very close” that Rory recorded Hank Snow’s ‘I’m Moving On’ (Jimmy’s favourite song) as a subtle tribute to his uncle on Taste’s debut album.

Sadly, Jimmy passed away very suddenly in March 1988. He was at a social function with his wife when he collapsed, suffering a fatal heart attack. He was just 58 years old. According to Dónal, Rory took Jimmy’s death “very much to heart,” so much so that only two gigs took place between March and November that year. Talking to his friend Rudi Gerlach in 1990, Rory confided that it had been a “tough couple of years” and that he was “always thinking of [his] family” and all that he wanted was “health” for them and himself.

In 1993, CRT decided to arrange an inaugural arts festival scheduled for November 18^th.  Knowing Rory’s connection to Jimmy, the College asked him if he would headline, performing in their West Atrium. Rory immediately accepted, keen to honour his uncle musically. Dónal also adds that accepting the gig also appealed to Rory’s superstitious side: he saw performing in his uncle’s workplace as having a “Ghost Blues” element.

Despite his enthusiasm, Rory was also incredibly nervous about the gig. He worried that the atrium would not lend itself to a full rock band, but more importantly, he felt that a rock band would be “distasteful” and “too raucous” for Jimmy. Given his uncle’s musical tastes, Rory decided that an acoustic gig would be the most appropriate way to pay tribute to him. However, once he had settled on this, Rory became extremely anxious about performing on his own without a band. He feared that people wouldn’t be interested in seeing him and that he wouldn’t be able to do his uncle justice. So, he brought in good friends Mark Feltham (harmonica) and Lou Martin (piano) for moral support. 

But Rory truly had nothing to worry about. The two-hour gig went down a storm. Working from a very loose setlist, Rory took fans through the whole trajectory of his career: early classics like ‘I’m Not Awake Yet’ and ‘As the Crow Flies’, ragtime favourites ‘Barley and Grape Rag’ and ‘Pistol Slapper Blues’, blues epics ‘I Could’ve Had Religion’ and ‘I Wonder Who’ and later gems like ‘Ghost Blues’ and ‘Empire State Express’. Much to the audience’s surprise (and delight), he even dusted off the mandolin to perform the spectacular ‘Goin’ to My Hometown’. It must have been quite the experience to see Rory perform these songs in such an intimate setting!

Reflecting on the gig in 2012, Dónal stated how he hoped the gig would mark a new direction for Rory. He saw his brother was under increasing stress and pressure, juggling several roles and struggling to cope with the everyday administration of running a band and funding his own musicians. After the gig that night, Rory and Dónal had a drink in the bar at Jury’s Hotel and Rory, in his own modest way, expressed satisfaction with how it had gone. He disclosed to his brother that he was thinking about “getting back to the folky roots of things” and dispensing with a large PA system, trucking, catering and transport. Over the last few years, he had also got increasingly back in touch with traditional Irish music and wanted to explore this further in his acoustic work.

The next day, an interview was scheduled with Marcus Connaughton to discuss the gig. When asked how he thought it had gone, Rory had the following to say:

One’s hometown show is a joy, yet it’s very tense. You don’t want to let anybody down, your family, the audience, yourself. So we brought Mark Feltham, the great harmonica player, along to help out on some songs and Lou Martin, my old buddy from the old days, to play some piano and to open the show. I was a little apprehensive but once we got there and checked it out, the audience was beautiful and warm. It was serious but there was an element of kind of fun as well, which doesn’t hurt. It wasn’t exactly a Segovia recital but it’s great for me cos I can write and play but until I get on stage, the X factor comes into being because an audience, you can really draw from them and get inspiration and fire and all kinds of qualities that you think you have lost or can’t find. We had a great night and I’m relieved and happy and still getting rid of the perspiration but I’m fine otherwise. 

Talking about specific songs from the gig, Rory stated how he particularly enjoyed playing ‘I’m Not Awake Yet’ and ‘Bankers Blues’ after so many years. He also singled out ‘She Moved Through the Fair’ and ‘I’m Ready’ as specific highlights for him. Marcus then praised Rory for the effortless way that he moved from instrument to instrument, telling him that he particularly enjoyed the songs on the mandolin (which has me desperately wanting to know which other songs he played on it!).

In his typically self-deprecating manner, Rory responded that he was “no great mandolin player,” but he supposed he had his own way of playing using triplets. He told Marcus how he was hoping to include more mandolin songs on his planned acoustic album. He also explained how he had recently picked up the bizouki and was going to use that too on several tracks, as well as a 12-string, acoustic piano and double bass. He had already written at least 10 country blues tracks, he added.

Alas, Rory never did record that acoustic album that he so often talked about and his gig for Uncle Jimmy sadly ended up being his very last on Irish soil. In 2018, plans were put forward to unveil a plaque in Rory’s honour in what is now called the Rory Gallagher Theatre in Cork Regional Technical College (today Cork Institute of Technology). The unveiling was to be carried out by Dónal and followed by an acoustic performance by Jacques Stotzem. Unfortunately, the event was cancelled due to adverse weather and is set to be rescheduled following the pandemic.

When asked by the Irish Examiner prior to the proposed unveiling what Rory would make of all the fuss still today around his 1993 performance, Dónal simply had the following to say: “He never got above himself. He was very much the man in the street. He lived to be on stage. When he was off-stage, everything was about getting from A to B, getting to the stage or to write. That’s what he was about.”

Had Rory been asked the same question, I’m sure that, in classic Rory style, he would have told the Examiner: “I don’t analyse it.” But 29 years on, we certainly are analysing it and are only filled with positivity and enthusiasm for what was a truly spectacular night of acoustic music. People constantly praise the MTV Unplugged series of the 1990s, yet fail to recognise that Rory was doing this decades before and, dare I say, much better and with far greater passion and honesty.

Speaking to Dónal after the gig, Rory stated that he only hoped he had done his uncle proud. Not only did you do Jimmy proud that night, dear Rory, but the whole of Cork city too. To quote singer Martin Carthy in the Ghost Blues documentary, audiences never ever forget someone like Rory Gallagher. Therefore, it’s only right that his incredible 1993 performance at RTC is still remembered and commemorated today.