River Runs Round: A Leeside festival for a new generation 

As your writer catches up with Cork singer and songwriter Matthew Xavier Corrigan on the phone from Paris, the wider picture of River Runs Round festival, happening in Cork between August 10 and 13, becomes apparent - Bishopstown man Corrigan has been living in Paris, France for the past month, a big excursion for the last member of the HAUSU collective to maintain their musical and events base in their home city.

Looking up and down the billing of the weekender, drawing largely on the artistic output of a younger generation of Corkonians, it’s the story of their relationship to the city - from a showcase for female-led gigging collective Sunwell Tapes and performances from the likes of city-based no-wavers Crying Loser and Cóbh troubadour Rua Rí, to the premiere of London-resident Actualacid’s debut film ‘I Don’t Have Eyes on Him’, and a selection of community events that see people exchanging artistic work and perspectives.

It’s an overview of the ways and means available to the post-recessionary generation to build communities and support - from finding your feet locally, to dealing with the question of identity and pride in your home city when concurrent social and economic crises have carried you out on another tide of emigration.

“It started on an aeroplane, I would say”, offers Corrigan. “So I'd been playing with the idea of doing a festival. For a while, it's always been to me, the white whale of cultural production. I love festivals, I've worked on a bunch before, I love playing them, they've always been this really cool thing. I've been lucky enough to work on Quiet Lights and be surrounded by festivals like Sounds from a Safe Harbour, which is so cool. It's always been to me, like the festival is like the ultimate form of art, crushed into this little package.

“Peter O'Sullivan is the festivaI producer for River Runs Round, and he's also the keys player with Alex Gough. We were on a flight to London to play in the Irish Cultural Centre in Hammersmith, with Alex, and the whole way to London, I sat on the plane, and I just talked out a festival, I just described the festival, and Peter wrote it all down. And when we landed into Stansted. I sent an email to Coughlan's, and I sent a message to Rua Rí, and there, I organised the show on the 11th, and that's how it started.”

Assembling and producing a festival that calls on a selection of artists from all over Cork’s intricate network of young creators both at home and among the Irish diaspora is no mean feat - especially while those arranging have been split between Cork, Dublin and Paris. Corrigan gets into festival curation, and sharing the festival’s programming voice.

“The primary curation was carried out by me, but I wanted to make sure that I wasn't the only person with a voice. I was lucky enough to know people, to go to them and say, 'okay, well, what idea do you have? Y'know, if there's something you want to do, come to me and you tell me what it is you want to make it? How can I give you the opportunity to run the poetry events, theatre events, that you'd most like to, obviously, within reason?’

“That's how the programme really came about. We have certain things like the song exchange in Maureen's, which is a pre-existing event that I just felt fit with the curatorial vision of the festival. But, yeah, these kinds of events just happened out of people that I trust to lend a curatorial voice as much as my own hand.”

Among the artists contributing their curatorial hand is singer and songwriter Faoi Bhláth, performing at the festival’s Sunday night showcase gig, as well as helping run the event as part of the Sunwell Tapes collective - a female-led group of bookers, facilitators and organisers that have worked to create safe events and a platform from which to keep building gender equity on the city’s live scene.

New single ‘Witches’, the leadoff from upcoming debut EP ‘Hymnus’, will be out by the time you read this.

“I released one song in 2021, 'Bone House' under just my own name, Etáin, which was great, but there's actually another girl called Etáin, who's also releasing music and even just at this small level, I suppose it was causing confusion. That had happened a few times, so I thought about using a different name. I just liked the idea, because it just gives more freedom to explore different things and try new things.

“I do some gigs on my own, and work with other artists and stuff as a band, so I feel like it's more collaborative when it's not under my own name. I hope that if people are coming in and working with me, that it can be more of a collaborative approach rather than me having my name on it and being the head of the group.

“The overall theme of the EP is bringing together lots of different ideas I like to explore in my music: femininity and power, violence and faith, Catholicism and Irishness and natural imagery that kind of comes into my writing all the time anyway.”

Sunwell Tapes’ latest festival excursion follows a showcase gig held as part of Quarter Block Party last month, and a prior run of gigs, sessions and community discos - run as female-centred spaces to give women and AFAB individuals a place to go gigging safely, and for the organisers’ part, to help build on the work done in recent years to amend gender imbalances on local live billings.

“Myself and all the girls who are involved, we were all in college together, we did music in UCC, and it started when we were in college. This could be a confidence thing as well, but there's a brilliant music scene in Cork, and I always loved attending all these gigs, but it seems really difficult to get involved in that. I actually do think things have gotten a bit better over the last few years, but definitely when we were in college, I felt like there wasn't that many women performing in Cork and so it felt very hard to get involved in it ourselves. Definitely the Angry Mom Collective, with Abbey from Pretty Happy, that was definitely an inspiration to us as well, and the other collectives, like HAUSU and Teletext.

“Our overarching goal is for all of our gigs to be, like, welcoming, and something that people can see themselves being part of, and feel free to join, whether as an audience member or a performer, and that's kind of what we were hoping for. We specifically wanted to promote women, or non binary artists, or people who just haven't, really as much a voice in a really loud music scene.”

On the topic of HAUSU, a collective to whom River Runs Round bears a fraternal connection, music producer and singer Actualacid returns home from London for the weekend to unveil feature-length film ‘I Don’t Have Eyes on Him’, a DIY immersion in the aesthetic and sound that he’s carefully cultivated in the past five years. Elements of the film have emerged already as music videos - the film is intended as a visual companion piece to last year’s album BOREDOMS 400.

“I'm excited, I think, first and foremost - excited to explain to people why I've been acting so weird for the past few years. Anytime I'm talking to someone and they can see my eyes glaze over, gazing off into the abyss, I'm editing it in my head and kind of putting it together bit by bit. It's gonna be nice to finally have people go 'oh, so that's where you grew your hair out to your shoulders, that's why I saw you that day you were wearing that bin bag as a costume'. It's a lot of explanation.”

It’s been over a year since Jack Corrigan unleashed an album that disassembled pop, Memphis rap, shoegaze and psychedelia almost completely, reassembling it through a decidedly Hibernocentric filter over the course of a few years. But as much as the festival allows him to flex that creative muscle, River Runs Round allows Corrigan to check in with his grá for the city.

“I can't wait to be back in Cork, with such a cool ensemble, it's going to be a belter weekend, looking forward to just back in Cork and having a million things to do, just being out there drinking Beamish among the people, where I belong. I'm craving it, on a cellular level.”

River Runs Round festival takes place between Thursday August 10 and Sunday August 13 at venues around Cork - for more info, visit riverrunsround.com.

• Sunwell Tapes’ latest gig features Faoi Bhláth, Fiona O’Connell and Aubrey Hennessy, on Sunday, August 13, at PLUGD Records on Coal Quay. Doors 7.30pm, tickets €13. Faoi Bhláth’s debut EP ‘Hymnus’ is set for release this month.
• Actualacid’s film ‘I Don’t Have Eyes On Him’ premieres on Sunday, August 13, at the Roundy on Castle St. Doors 8pm, tickets €10 including the afterparty. Accompanying LP ‘Boredoms 400’ is available on Bandcamp and across all streaming services.