"Everybody who dealt with the Old Oak, they all loved him”: A night of music in celebration of Mossie Connery
Cork’s music community will be celebrating a friend with a night of music, while also raising much needed funds for Cork Stroke Support, writes Ronan Leonard.
A jampacked night of music to celebrate him – and raise crucial funds for Cork Stroke Support – will be held in Cyprus Avenue on Thursday, August 27, featuring many of the musicians he worked with over the years.
Conor O’Brien, probably best known to Cork audiences as Conor Ocean in the Ocean’s 6 and Ocean’s 8 bands as well as The Moondogs, is one of the evening’s co-organisers along with Graham Keane and Suzanne Higgins. Firstly, he paid tribute to Mossy.
“He was such a mentor to me, and over the years became a very close friend. He would have been at my wedding, at my kids’ christenings, all that kind of stuff, so we were quite friendly.”
Conor credits Mossy’s personality as what made him so popular. “He was very well-liked. I was working in the Old Oak as a sound engineer for over 20 years, so both he and I worked alongside each other for a long time. Bands from all over the country would be coming and everybody remembered Mossy. Meet Mossy once and you’d feel you have a connection with him. It was very funny, you’d be walking down the street with Mossy, and people would always be coming up and be, ‘Oh, Mossy this, Mossy, that, and the other’. He was so distinctive looking, and he was so professional yet so friendly, and just had a great attitude.
“He was incredibly respected and liked in so many circles. Everybody looked up to Mossy and when he was your friend, he was very loyal. A few times I was in a bind, and he’d do anything to come and help you. He was just a great guy. Everybody who dealt with the Old Oak, all the staff, they all loved him.”
Mossy’s partner Suzanne, echoed Conor. ‘He was just a great people person, I don’t think he really realised how many people loved meeting him. Even after his stroke the people at Cork Stroke Support noticed that he’d get on with everyone. As part of the programme they helped put together to help with his recovery, he was put it a group of other people and they all got on so well with him.”
There was no shortage of musicians who wanted to get involved with the event, as Conor continued. “It’s going to be quite epic, there must be close to 40 musicians lined up to play, and to be honest if we squeezed in everyone who got in touch offering to do something, the gig would go on for days! Everybody just got behind it straight away, The Old Oak, Cork Stroke Support, Dan from D2K, and all of the bands were the same.”
Conor gave some context to how the line-up came together. “So Graham Keane was in Bog The Donkey back in the day when Mossy was on the road with them. They were very busy back in the 90s, and so Mossy was up and down the country with them, all over the place, and became very well liked across the industry. He’d also spent a lot of time working with their predecessor Double Vision. He toured a lot then with The Laughing Shamrocks, and then more recently with The Service. When he got older and didn’t want to be on the road so much, he did a lot more bands that were coming into The Old Oak, so there are countless other bands he worked with there too.
“The line-up also features people like Joe O’Callaghan from Hot Guitars, Hank Wedel, Audrey Lynch, Martin Finn and Gerrie O’Grady (who is also a board member of Cork Stroke Support). Those guys would have played so many times with Mossy behind the desk pulling it all together.”
Suzanne notes a poignant connection to the line-up. ‘The Service were the last band he actually worked with, his last job. So it’s great they are a part of the night.”
Mossy’s East Cork roots are also represented on the lineup, as Conor explained.
”We’ve also invited a few musicians of different generations from the area who would have kind of grown up looking up to him, he’d have been a kind of legend. The likes of the Hollyz, Dots & The Dude, and Jamie Stanton, would have all seen him around.”
Conor credits Mossy for influencing so much of his professionalism. “He was somebody who taught me as much about dealing with people as with dealing with sound. I learned a lot about how to work with people from him. He was really, really good at putting people at ease, and I’d be a great believer that getting the performance out of the band is nearly more important than the technical stuff. But he had that in spades too, he had the technical stuff, but he was really good at getting people relaxed and being themselves and feeling valued. He was just great at it. I mean, the vast majority of people just go to a gig and they see a band. There’s a lot of skill involved in making it like that, they say ‘people don’t notice a good sound engineer’ and Mossy was very very good. If I was playing, I always requested that he be the sound engineer. He would have been my sound engineer of choice for any time I played in the Old Oak, and I played there with four or five different bands over the years.”
Suzanne credits Cork Stroke Support with great help after Mossy’s stroke in 2020, and hopes the event can raise as much as possible.
“Everyone at the Cork Stroke Support was incredibly supportive to Mossie throughout his treatment at the centre and have continued to support and comfort me over the course of the last three years. It is a fantastic service to have in Cork, and we are extremely grateful to the team at their centre in Blackrock. Not enough people know about them, and they do such great work, they were of such great help to us when we went to them. They helped us with physiotherapy, counselling, and an eight-week nurse-led program to help him recover and adapt to his new lifestyle changes. Their centre is top-class, and it’s all volunteers who keep it going really. It’s something we are glad to help.”
Ahead of the night Suzanne made one small request to everyone coming. “There will be so many people there, I hope everyone will wear name tags so I can remember who each person is! But seriously there’s so many people I want to thank for their help with this event coming together. Conor and Graham have been great help putting this together, all the bands and the crew on the night, Print Profile in Midleton for all the printing, Ger Kiely and all at the Old Oak and Cyprus Avenue, Carmel, Dan and Feena at Cork Stoke Support. And I know there’ll be loads more on the night!”
Tickets for Mossie Connery: A Celebration, a fundraiser for Cork Stroke Support https://www.idonate.ie/donate/cause/corkstrokesupport are €20.
They can be bought in advance at eventbrite https://bit.ly/MossieCelebration or on the door. Additional donations are welcome on the night.
