Slane launches details of second Johnstons Festival

Details of the second annual Johnstons Folk Music Festival to be held in Slane in May have been announced. Inspired by the huge success of the inaugural festival held last summer, the organisers have arranged for three concerts to take place over the festival weekend, to which all folk music enthusiasts can eagerly look forward to. The festival begins on Friday afternoon, 25th May with a free concert at 4 pm featuring Mick Moloney and Friends in St Patricks Church, Slane. Regarded as an authorative figure in Irish music, song and folklore, Mick Moloney joined the Johnstons Folk Group from Slane shortly after their huge number one hit record, 'The Travelling People' and was a very influential member of the group. Paul Brady would also later join and the group went on to have great success in the sixties and early seventies, not only in Ireland but also in the UK, Scotland, Europe, particularly the Scandinavian countries and the USA, where their recording of the song 'Both Sides Now' broke into the American hot one hundred, a phenomenal achievement at that time. Mick Moloney now mostly tours the folk music concert halls in the US and this is a rare and wonderful opportunity to see him in concert in Ireland in what promises to be a wonderful evening of music and song and storytelling. On Saturday night, 26th May, the festival continues when the legendary Sands Family from Rostrevor in County Down take to the stage at the TLT, in Drogheda, County Louth at 8pm. The Sands family featuring brothers Tommy, Colm, Ben and sister Anne have been performing either as individuals in their own right or as a family group for the past forty years and continue to sell out concerts wherever they play using a repertoire of their own songs, some of which have been recorded by many of the great folk singers around the world. They continue to be a huge attraction right across Europe and the US and this summer coming they will play 15 sell out concerts in Germany commencing on Friday 4th May up to 20th May before they play the Johnstons Folk Music Festival which is the first of a 10 concert schedule as part of their 'Around the World in Forty Years' tour. Tickets can be purchased at the TLT box office on (041) 987 8560. The festival concludes on Sunday 27th May in the festival concert hall in Slane at 8pm with a new era of Johnston family talent taking to the stage when sisters Elizabeth and Rebecca Johnston along with their first cousins Sarah Jane Johnston will showcase their emerging talents along with other guest entertainers. In keeping with the precedent set last year the proceeds from the festival will go into the Adrienne Johnston music fund.