Electric Picnic: 'Every gig I'll be doing, I'll be mentioning we're from Cork'

Electric Picnic will be hosting a number of Cork artists over this weekend, such as Mick Flannery, Kyla Cobbler and Cliffords, but it’s unlikely that any will put in the sort of shift that bilingual poet, singer and performer Julie Goo will. A published poet and former Munster slam poetry champion, Goo will be making five appearances across the weekend, three as a poet and two as a vocalist for the duo Shelovescalpol. She will also be flying the flag for Cork.

“Every gig I’ll be doing, the five gigs over the weekend, I’ll be mentioning that I’m from Cork, we’re from Cork, because it’s Dublin-centric,” she insists.

They’ll be sick of you, I suggest.

“I know, yeah. It’s great,” she says gleefully.

Goo, whose real name is Julie Field, has been performing at Electric Picnic as a poet for the last eight years or so. She begins her series of poetry recitations at 3pm, Friday, on the Word Stage. Her other appearances will be at An Puball Gaeilge (the Irish Language Stage), and at Croí, but these won’t prove too onerous.

“The poetry gigs are only 10-12 minutes,” she assures.

Instead, she is relishing her performances both as part of the duo Shelovescalpol, which comprises her and electronic boffin Mike Millis, as well as playing alongside occasional collaborator An Galar Dub.

“Myself and Mikey, we’re friends since we were about 18,” she explains. “He moved up the city and I was in college for the first time round. Gav, who’s An Galar Dub, is Mikey’s brother. So, we’re all the best of friends for the last 20-odd years.”

While Shelovescalpol can be regarded as her main musical project, she has collaborated with Galar Dub on and off over the past 10 years, most recently on March’s Sclábhaí EP.

“Gav just bangs out tunes,” she ventures. She does not exaggerate. His Bandcamp page features 160 releases going back before 2017 comprising singles, EPs and albums of bilingual drum ‘n’ bass-led agitpop. “It’s all really homemade. It’s amazing the sounds he makes. We’re starting to work much closer with Gav now and it’s great. Mikey is really good at mixing as a DJ so he can mix in Gav’s tunes with our tunes live.”

This will be Shelovescalpol’s third appearance at Electric Picnic, but last year’s event was the first time An Galar Dub joined them onstage at The Hazelwood, the eclectic spoken word and music stage where they will return this Sunday at 3pm.

“It’s a bit of a monster. It’s massive, but I love it,” she says of The Hazelwood. “It’s set in a small little wooded area. It’s a big stage and the three of us had the stage for an hour last year and we’ve the same again this year. Over the last few years it’s become a kind of an Irish language area. It’s kind of bilingual during the day and then in the evening it’s all Irish language.

“Last year was great. We did an hour set. The lads play the music that they’ve produced and Mikey mixes it live onstage and I’m just on the mic. We got a great reception.”

While other stages are shutting down for the night, Shelovescalpol will be entertaining the bedraggled masses at Brutopolis, the late-night stage in the Freetown area of the festival.

“It’s mental,” Goo declares. “It’s just this small, mad area that opens up late at night. It’s perfect for our kind of music. It’s really dark. People kind of wander in, they don’t know what to expect. We did a gig at 2am last year. Like way past our bedtime. But it was amazing. And we have the same this year, just me and Mikey. He’s deejaying there separately during the weekend. That’s what we’re looking forward to most actually, is the really late night time gig. And the sound is great and people are really into the music. There’s no distractions at night time.”

She adds: “We have all these brilliant samples now for Electric Picnic. Like Chris Kent, the Cork comedian, we have a quote of him on about Calpol. We have the Healy-Raes in there talking about how climate is a farce. There’s a lot of fun kind of samples mixed in with stuff.”

When Julie alludes to having a child, I wonder aloud if the group name was inspired by her daughter. She nods.

“She accidently overdosed with Calpol when she was about five because she absolutely loved it. It was just me telling someone that story once which kind of stuck with me, the words: ‘She loves Calpol.’ We kind of did it as a laugh at the start, but it’s after sticking so we better hang on to it.”

Fear not, gentle reader, the daughter not only survived but thrived, and having passed her Leaving Cert with flying colours.

“She got a H1 in her Irish, so my work is done here,” Julie informs me proudly.

And as a reward, she and her boyfriend will be accompanying Julie to Stradbally.

“She’s 19, so it will be lovely to be there with them. And she loves Gorillaz and Fontaines DC, so we’ll be going to all them together. So, it will be lovely.”

No doubt she’ll be expected to turn up for her gigs.

“That was the deal. I said I better give you a ticket, but you have to come to all our gigs and you have to dance,” she chuckles warmly.

“We’ll leave her off the poetry ones, but the music ones she definitely has to come to.”