A 25th birthday ‘hooley’ for Queenstown Irish pub Pog Mahone’s last Saturday also celebrated a quarter-century of (mainly) Irish music at the Rees St venue.
‘‘It was always part of the vision of the team that set the pub up that we wanted live music as a corner stone of our offering,’’ director Roy Thompson says.
In fact, managing director Brian Collins says recently-deceased Shane MacGowan, co-founder of Celtic punk band the Pogues (originally called Pogue Mahone, meaning ‘kiss my arse), ‘‘kind of inspired the name of this business’’.
‘‘And also the style of music at the start was the Pogues’ sort of Celtic rock.’’
Thompson recalls a regular early visiting band from Christchurch was The Stout Fellows, whose lead guitarist had a glass eye that came in different colours.
Pog’s has also had a number of legendary resident musos like Charlie Gibson.
Another is Englishman Jamie Relton, aka ‘Jamie Fiddle’, who’s been playing his fiddle and guitar, and occasionally keys, at Pog’s since 2004.
That year he started the pub’s trad Irish sessions with busking couple, Northern Irishwoman Claire Forrester and Englishman Paul Marcham and former local Nat Okazaki.
Pog’s GM Caroline Caulfield calls Relton ‘the hidden gem’’.
‘‘He can play anything, and it’s really good for the trad session because you get a lot of different musicians in.’’
Relton also praises the venue and its staff — ‘‘it’s just a fun place you can hang out and meet people and it’s good for old people like me’’.
Another hardy perennial is guitarist John Healy, from Northern Ireland, who’s been performing every Wednesday, with very few breaks, since early 2010, and frequently with his wife Gemma, who together make up Calico.
Another regular band is Hair of the Dog, whose lead singer Dan Browne, who’s since left town, played at Pog’s for about nine years.
Thompson recalls Browne winning a trip to Ireland through Pog’s.
He says they also looked after their musos during Covid by ensuring they got the wage subsidy.
Since Browne’s departure, Healy’s also stepped into Hair of the Dog, which he says leans towards Celtic style and ceilidh music.
He says another ‘‘incredible‘‘ Pog’s regular is flute and whistle player Dougie Twycross.
Meanwhile, another regular Pog’s muso, Danny Atkinson, tells how nervous he and his bandmate were before their first gig there.
They rocked in thinking they were the cool new kids on the block only to be intimidated by a trad sesh going on before their scheduled set.
‘‘It was just the most musically-intricate and beautiful set, from the fiddle to the vocals, completely not what we were expecting.
‘‘Everyone was well into dancing and singing, and we were expected to follow that with our Bruno Mars and Drake covers.
‘‘I actually tried to convince Joe, the other guy in the duo, there’s no way we can play after them, we were just going to embarrass ourselves and look like twats.
‘‘We had never met them before, but soon found out, once they had finished, how lovely and welcoming they were to have us play, and they welcomed us straight into the musical family of Pog’s.’’
