Club Red Presents: Little Green Cars, 3/27

21 Mar Club Red Presents: Little Green Cars, 3/27

With major support from the Telluride Ski Resort, Denise Mongan’s Beyond the Groove Productions is pleased to announce, hot on the heels of St. Pat’s Day, Little Green Cars, one of Ireland’s buzziest indie groups. Show is Sunday, March 27, at Club Red at the Telluride Conference Center in Mountain Village. Doors, 8 p.m. Tickets, $20 (GA) – $25 (Preferred Seating) here or call 970-728-7432. All ages encouraged (Green Cars is a very young band). 

Ireland, the land of leprechauns, blarney, and beer, also gave us, drumroll please, the flavored potato chip: Joseph Murphy turned the lowly spud on its head in 1954 when he introduced cheese and onion chips.

More facts about Ireland’s contributions to the world from uk.askmen.com.

If you’ve ever used soda water to remove a stain, you have Robert Percival to thank. The Trinity College professor created the bubbly beverage in Dublin in 1800.

An Irish engineer and bespectacled County Clare man named John Philip Holland developed the first submarine to be formally commissioned by the U.S. Navy in 1900.

Modern agriculture got a helping hand in the 20th century from Harry Ferguson, a whip-smart County Down bicycle repairman who invented the modern tractor.

Back in 1915, Prime Minister Winston Churchill issued a commission for a vehicle that was “capable of resisting bullets and shrapnel, crossing trenches, flattening barbed wire, and negotiating the mud of no-mans land.” In other words, he was looking for something that could safely transport him through Belfast’s sketchiest neighbourhoods. The result was the world’s first tank, a nearly indestructible armoured vehicle created by Blackrock engineer Walter Gordon Wilson.

One of Ireland’s most accomplished scientists, Holywood House resident John Joly cemented his place in history in 1894 when he came up with a technique for producing colour photographs from a single plate.

Although it may not have seemed like such a great invention when you were failing your chemistry in secondary school, it’s hard to discount Robert Boyle’s creation of this multilayered scientific discipline. The uber-intelligent Munster native came up with the foundations of modern chemistry in 1661 when he published The Sceptical Chymist, an oddly spelled, but highly influential tome that laid out his groundbreaking theory of elements as the undecomposable constituents of material bodies.

Although the Irish didn’t invent the English language, it can be argued they perfected it. From the searing satire of Jonathan Swift to the brilliant blather of James Joyce, Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw, Irish scribes have always displayed an enviable gift of gab. In the words of acclaimed author T.E. Kalem: “The English language brings out the best in the Irish. They court it like a beautiful woman. They make it bray with donkey laughter. They hurl it at the sky like a paint pot full of rainbows, and then make it chant a dirge for man’s fate.” For those of you keeping track at home, Irish writers won the Nobel Prize for Literature three times in the 20th century, which is a remarkable record for a tiny island nation boasting only 5,900,000 citizens.

Beer drinkers around the world owe a debt of gratitude to Arthur Guinness, the innovative Irish brew master whose delicious dry stout still bears his name. Guinness first began brewing ales in Leixlip before transferring his booming business to Dublin’s St. James’s Gate Brewery, where he signed an unprecedented 9,000-year lease at £45 per year. More than 250 years later, his famous “Pint of Plain” has become the best-selling alcoholic drink of all time in Ireland with sales exceeding €2 billion annually. Slainte!

Then there is U2, a band which first began redefining pop music in 1976 when Bono and his mates began producing their unique style of stadium-rattling hits. The group has since sold more than 145 million albums worldwide and won an unprecedented 22 Grammy awards.

And now there is the hot, happening Little Green Cars, an Irish indie rock band (and sensation) now on a U.S. touring and appearing at Telluride’s Club Red in Mountain Village thanks to Irish lass and concert impresario Denise Mongan.

“Fear, loathing, remorse and anguish have rarely sounded so joyful,” said the Irish Times, about the group’s sophomore release, Ephemera, named for a poem by Nobel-prized poet W.B. Yeats about slowly fading love.

Little Green Cars were still in their teens when they were spotted and signed to Glassnote and recorded their widely-acclaimed 2013 debut Absolute Zero with producer Markus Dravs. That album changed their lives, taking the five former school friends on tour everywhere from Europe and Australia to Russia and the States, which they criss-crossed six times in three years.

Now all in their early 20s, Little Green Cars are both a different band and the same five friends who met every Sunday aged 15 in singer Stevie Applebys garden shed to start writing songs. Those changes, their shared experiences and individual ups and downs are candidly documented in Ephemera, a gorgeous, grown-up album about, well, growing up.

Two deaths, relationship break-ups and their over two years’ worth of touring are among the key events that inform Ephemera’s richly-textured, harmony-soaked rock songs. While the impact of those events will change over time, the intense emotions they evoked live on in the music.

All the time the band were on tour, they were writing new songs, some of which they honed live. All the time they were changing, as were family and friends back home, whose lives they could sometimes no longer relate to. Stevie and Faye O’Rourke – the band’s principal songwriters and interchanging lead vocalists – watched their love lives fall apart. All five questioned who they used to be and who they had become, not least guitarist Adam O’Regan, whose father passed away.

“It’s a transitional album,” says Stevie. “Lyrically, it’s all about change – the end of some eras, new beginnings, learning from the past and looking to the future. Ephemera means things that are important to you, but only for a short time. That could apply to music or relationships or even a particular day.”

All five members of the band – completed by Donagh Seaver O’Leary on bass and Dylan Lynch on drums – contribute to the music and harmonise. Having written on the road, the quintet returned to Dublin in 2014 to make demos. By the end of the year, they were ready to record their first batch of songs. Keen to co-produce, they sought a trusted collaborator. Enter Rob Kirwan, at whose treasure trove Dublin studio the band experimented with sounds, adding electronics, mastering reverb, bringing in a cellist and learning to play the toy-like Omnichord.

A dozen exquisitely-crafted, exceptionally-sung, sumptuously-produced songs shimmer with the myriad of emotions the band has been through – restlessness, regret, love, heartbreak, hope and acceptance among them.

We should hear tracks from Ephemera and Little Green Cars’ freshman album, Absolute Zero.

“The band’s ability to contrast their often dark lyrics with upbeat melodies ensures that there is much more to the record than first meets the eye and, while Little Green Cars may not be the finished article just yet, Absolute Zero proves they undoubtedly have bags of potential,” wrote musicOMH.com when the debut release came out.

As you will discover, if you haven’t already, at Club Red’s show.

Check out this track from Ephemera, “Easier Day.”

And here’s a link to an article about Little Green Cars and Ephemera from the Irish Times.

About Beyond the Groove:

Beyond the Groove is Denise Mongan’s music production company. Its goal: bringing quality live music to Telluride, Colorado, primarily at the new Club Red at Telluride Conference Center. Past successes include Blitzen Trapper, Deer Tick, Matisyahu, Cash’d Out, Justin Townes Earle, Dirty Dozen brass Band, Lettuce, Dawes, Jenny Lewis, The Motet, and Elephant Revival.  Denise has worked in the music business for 30 years and is thrilled to now have the opportunity to be living her passion producing live shows.

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About Club Red:

With a history of sold-out shows in its first two years, Club Red transforms the Telluride Conference Center into an intimate venue showcasing national touring acts. Plush decor, ambient lighting, and VIP seating make this venue unique to the destination.

About Telluride Ski Resort:

Stashed among the highest concentration of 13,000- and 14,000-foot peaks in North America, Telluride offers some of the most spectacular skiing and riding on the planet. Unique culinary experiences on the mountain blend with the world-class restaurants, sophisticated shops, luxury hotels, and great spas. Plus, getting here is easier than ever with non-stop flights from eight major hubs; getting around is a breeze with the free gondola transportation system. Discover why Telluride is “The Most Beautiful Place You’ll Ever Ski.”

For more info visit: www.tellurideskiresort.com.