The stage that sits on the naughty step of Electric Picnic, The SALTY DOG returns after a winter sleeping in the dole office doorway. She gathers herself, cleanses both nostrils from the residue of some cheap snuff and stumbles to the nearest greasy spoon in search of some bands to grace her wind-swept quarters. This 40-tonne shipwreck, washed up in the forest at Stradbally, offers her deck as a stage, and her sails as shelter for scores of deluded and infirm revellers. The ship’s wheel will be salvaged once again from the pawn shop, the masts and sheets hoisted into the sky, and a rabble of musicians and layabouts press-ganged into service. As the sun sets on the month of August this year, the magnificence of the ship-wreck will be revealed with the slow thump of a lone bodhran, the seeping nautical fog of dry ice, and the croaky vocals of the shanty singers trying to find one another in forest of Stradbally. 

If you can recall the faintest detail from the past five years at the Salty Dog, you’re barred. 

Those who have been hoodwinked into giving of their time, include maiden voyagers MOO!, vaudevillians ST. JOHN THE GAMBLER, Galwegian lunatics MIKEY AND THE SCALLYWAGS, the gravelly charms of the beardy men in THE VIKING PROJECT, and border-town lounge rats THE TRAMPZ... In an empty gesture of gender equality, the bombshell who fronts B & THE HONEY BOY can expect a warm reception, as indeed will Pulp Fiction actress BRONAGH GALLAGHER, when she returns to the stage with her mesmerizing Motown and her sequin mini, and there’s a girl in MINNIE & THE ILLYWACKERS, and then CATHY DAVEY steps aboard to show us all how it’s done. The HOT SPROCKETS take Saturday night by the scruff of the neck, not helped one bit by RONAN O SNODAIG and his mind-blowing new work, while RICHARD FARRELL & THE LAST TRIBE and hipsters INTERSKALACTIC will get to nurse the fall-out the next day. The Salty Dog welcomes, with bloodshot eyes to the ground, the hugely promising brothers (real Irish ones, not the ones who touch fists) in CHILDREN OF THE SON... these guys are going to be our great legacy. PETE PAMF will return with his star-studded can’t-mention-their-names sextette [sic], and, of course, repeat offender and the pirate himself THE MIGHTY STEF will strike the final chord of the entire festival...