MacD on Music: Legendary Gweedore Reunion in Derry this Easter

In a town like Derry, there are certain locations that are synonymous with music lovers of all ages. Places like the Nerve Centre, Sandino’s and Bennigan’s have all become known for their legendary gigs over the years and have helped some of our finest talent to hone their crafts. But before any of those, we had the Gweedore, located on Waterloo Street and run by Willie Barrett.

The Gweedore was legendary and many of Derry’s future icons started out on it’s stage. This Easter Monday (April 1st) sees the third Gweedore Reunion happening in the Nerve Centre, featuring, amongst others, Declan McLaughlin, Bam Bam and the Calling, Tie The Boy (featuring D:Ream’s Peter Cunnah), the Runbacks, Jim Walker and Fremont. This week I’m speaking to Bam Bam’s Paul McCartney and (the much younger) Declan McLaughlin about the legendary venue.

Paul: “[The Gweedore] was a venue back in the day, we were the first band to start playing upstairs. The upstairs lay dormant for a long time. It was about ‘83-’84 and Willie Barrett gave us a gig up the stairs. It was a Wednesday night and it was like a residency, maybe every second Wednesday. You used to get good crowds along because very few people were working. It wasn’t like a post-punk/indie venue. There were a lot of styles of music and stuff like that. There was a lot of rock bands, there was stuff that was more progressive rock, that period there were a few, sort of, synth bands that were of that time. Paul McLoone’s original band, the Carolines, supported us a couple of times. They were the first band that were using keyboards and drum machines playing live in Derry. You had quite a cross section of different things.”

“What we used to do, we had a couple of bands in Belfast that were friends of ours, so we used to bring them up here and they would bring us back to Belfast. That was always a lot of fun and they always loved the Gweedore.”

“To say it would be slightly run down would be a massive understatement. It was in the knackers. There were chunks out of the walls, the toilets were rotten. The carpet was that worn down that it was almost a leather effect. There was almost a shine off it, but anybody we brought up from Belfast loved playing there.”

Declan: “My history with the Gweedore was, during the late eighties, there would’ve been three or four bars around the town where the young ones drank. The Gweedore was the one that was putting on music on a regular basis. I would’ve been in and out of the Gweedore to see bands and just to be part of it. It was through drinking there that I met Willie Barrett who was the manager.

"Willie was friendly with my father, then in ‘89, I had just started in Magee and I needed a part-time job so we were coming down Waterloo Street, I was along with my da and I said to my da ‘you know Willie Barrett, gone ask him if he could he give me a start’. My da walked straight in the door and Willie was working. My da said ‘Willie, would you give the young fella a start?’ and that was it. I started in the bar that Tuesday night and I worked in it for the guts of four years.”

“That was probably where I got some of my own experience of starting bands, watching other people do it in the Gweedore. Over that period of time that I was there, you had the Screaming Bin Lids and the Whole Tribe Sings, but there was Schtum, Cuckoo, Rare, the Stray Toasters, the Nameless, and Tiberius Minnows, who were from Prehen. There was a whole selection of bands and they were all different genres of music. The bar became a real hub for all the musicians in the town and, after the renovations happened, they started putting music on downstairs so me and Paddy Nash started playing there on a Tuesday or a Thursday night.”

“The amount of musicians and artists and writers and journalists, it was the kind of creative hub, or drinking hub of Derry at that time. I look upon it very fondly. There was always an acceptance of people doing their own material. Originality was something that was supported.

"I remember hearing a conversation in the bar one time. It was one of the bar staff. Somebody had phoned that was part of a band and was looking for bookings. The bar person said ‘we only book original bands for up the stairs’. You would never hear of that any more.”

And that’s it for this week. Believe me, I could’ve gone on for another two or three pages about this one but unfortunately I only have so much room here. The Gweedore Reunion takes place on April 1st in the Nerve Centre and they can be found on the Facebook page Gweedore Reunion 2024.