Apologies for the silence. Like so much of the globe, we have just been trying to navigate this extraordinary time we are living in on a personal level. In March we were just about to get ready for our annual St. Patricks Festival at our home venue, The Porterhouse when only a few days before the news came in that Ireland was going into lockdown. At that point, the summer tour still seemed a long time away and very much a possibility. I don’t think any of us had any idea what was ahead of us at that point…

Five months later, we are still here waiting and hoping. In my 20 years with Sliotar, this has been by far the longest we have gone without playing a single show. And as much as we fully get that there simply was no way we could play a show, it is still painful not to be able to do what we love. But we can only hope that there are better days ahead. We truly hope you guys are keeping safe, where ever in the world you might be reading this.

Right now, it is hard to plan for the future. All we can say is that we cannot wait to get back to playing live shows whenever that might be. There have been some promising signs of small concerts starting to happen around Europe. In Ireland, there still are a lot of restrictions in place, and live music is hard to come by, so we wait.

So I would like to leave you with a small bit of reflection. As far as we understand, Mother Earth has evolved through 4.5 billion years of evolution on this planet. Nature has a beautiful way of just doing its thing, not doubting or questioning what is. It has a lot more complex plan than us humans individually or collectively can comprehend. Nature provides us with everything we need to survive, always has. Us humans seem to have a tendency to think that we can somehow outsmart nature. Maybe, just maybe it is time to start to listen to the Mother Earth once again? Food for thought. Love one another, stay safe and we hope to see you all someday soon again.

J.P. from Sliotar