Ronan Collins brings Showband Show to Navan for first time

Night of "pure nostalgia" promised by DJ and drummer

Radio presenter and entertainer Ronan Collins says bringing his first ever showbands gig to Navan will be "a tick off the bucket list."

The broadcaster, who lives between Navan and Kells, will bring his new show ‘Showband Hits & Stories’ to The Solstice Arts Centre on Sunday 3rd November. It will be the first time Ronan has ever performed in Navan despite living a stone’s throw away and says he is looking forward to a night of "pure nostalgia."

"I have lived on the outskirts of Navan for 25 years and this will be my first performance in Navan and it is very important to me,” said the legendary singer and presenter.

"I was very anxious to do this new show and to include the Solstice and I’m really looking forward to performing in such a fantastic venue,” he added.

With his knowledge of the showbands stars and songs of that golden era, Ronan will sing the hits and tell the stories from an iconic time in Irish life and will relive the days of the ballrooms with songs and memories of the showband days.

"This show is something that I have wanted to do for such a long time, it is a passion project," said Ronan.

"We do the hits of the showbands and stars who have departed with one exception, I include songs by Dickie Rock," he added.

"After that it is Brendan Bowyer, Butch Moore, Joe Dolan, Brendan O’Brien and the Dixies. We also include The Freshman and a couple of other songs by performers who are still around that were kind of one hit wonders.

"There was only one woman star in the show bands in the ‘60s, Eileen Reid with the Cadets other than that they were all men."

As well as taking shows on the road, Ronan who started out as a drummer in Dickie Rock’s band has released several compilation albums featuring the bands and hits of the unique era in Irish entertainment. But as he points out he missed the showband "hey day" during the 1960s getting involved the following decade.

"I didn’t go on the road until 1976 and that was with Dickie Rock. It had expanded from the ballrooms into hotels and other venues that hadn’t been there when the show bands were in their hey day.

"I have had such a huge interest in it for many many years from the time that I was a kid that I have kind of turned into nearly a commentator an observer of what went on and I just found that the best way to try to illustrate it was almost 20 years ago we started to put on nostalgia showband shows with the stars that were still around, Dickie Rock, Brendan Bowyer and that continued right up until this point."

Ronan's fascination with showbands started when he was a youngster as he explains: "I was 10 or 11 years old when I first saw showbands in St Peter’s Hall in Phibsboro in Dublin and that was where I got my love and my fascination for the bands and the musicians.

"A tennis club down the road from where I lived is where I met a lot of the musicians and made friends with them through the years and then I became a musician myself in the early 1970s as a drummer.

“It was the beginning of my life long fascination with music, I can pin point it exactly."

A new two-part RTE documentary on the Irish Showband era presented by U2 superstar Adam Clayton will broadcast later this year.

‘Ballroom Blitz’ will explore the rise and fall of the bands of that era. Clayton fronting the show is an interesting departure considering his bandmate Bono had less than complimentary remarks about the music in times gone by as Ronan explains: "Adam is an absolute gentleman and I gathered he has a huge interest in the whole thing because it is about musicians and music and that is what Adam has been involved in since 1975.

"Bono once called it the dark days of music in Ireland but he was basing it on something he really knew nothing about and he had never looked into, I think he and Bob Geldof jumped on a bandwagon."

The documentary aims to capture the impact of the showbands in Irish culture at the time, something that is hard to quantify according to the the broadcaster who said:

"It was a huge social thing at the time, if it was around now and was to disappear you’d be talking about the loss of five to seven and a half thousand jobs, not just of musicians on the road but people who worked in the ballrooms, people who worked in ancillary services, hotels and restaurants and takeaways.

"It brought a different view point to Ireland on music because in the 1950s Ireland was very insular, it was ceili music with a couple of dance bands but the show bands brought music from America and Britain and there was a huge social explosion in music in Britain as well with the Beatles and that was at the same time as the show bands.

"One of the criticisms that was levelled at showbands was that it was seven fellas on a stage playing covers and all wearing suits and the Beatles did exactly that. It is a futile argument I believe,” the RTE DJ stated

"It was an exclusively Irish thing that happened. It had its heyday then it had its second phase from about 1968 - 1975 and when the Miami Showband massacre happened that killed the showbands.

“It had been a short lived phenomenon in Ireland but it was just that, it was a phenomenon.

"Then as years went by, people’s memories of it started to be reignited through people like me and others who had an interest in the showbands and now it is a pure nostalgia thing and the reaction to it is fantastic."

Ronan and his family moved to the Royal County in 1999 and have had many happy years living in Meath.

"My wife and I always had a hankering to live in the country and to get out of Dublin and have a different pace of life," said the singer.

"When we found the house that we eventually bought, it was outside the perimeter of where we wanted to go but the house was so fantastic we decided we’d do it," he added.

"I was going into RTE everyday, the commute never bothered me but when the motorway was built it did make a huge difference, it gave me more time at home and I was able to enjoy the area more. Living in Meath has been a very successful part of our lives, we love it here.

"We are both members of the Headfort Golf Club, we go to the cinema in Navan and we often dine out in restaurants in Navan and Kells and in the greater area."

The legendary broadcaster left RTE Radio 1 at the end of 2022 after 37 years at the helm of a daytime time slot with the Ronan Collins Show.

He now hosts a daily mid-morning show on RTE Gold.

He says the move has given him more "freedom" to focus on other projects.

"I have a different rhythm to my life and I enjoy it very much," said Ronan.

"Now having said that I didn’t think I’d be as busy as I am and it reminds me of that cliche that retired people will always say, I don’t know how I ever had time to work!"