Taking Galway by Storm

Okay, maybe "by storm" is a bit of an overstatement, but I've had some good luck with my banjolele the past couple days!

I had been looking forward to Wednesday like all week. Wednesdays are probably my favorite nights of the week anyway, because I have FanSci game night and then three euro pints at the College Bar and open mic night. This week was particularly awesome because my friend Fergal ran a Call of Cthulhu game for me to play in, which is a roleplaying game I'd been wanting to try for a while, and it was really fun. I was also planning to play at open mic night for the first time and play I did! I was awfully nervous but I think it went pretty well. It's hard to know exactly how I sounded when I'm up there, but people definitely thought the banjolele was cool and it seemed like they got pretty into my song. (I played "Fight" by Ben Kweller which is really catchy and twangy.) Like, everybody clapped along at the end part and they seemed to like it! I didn't make it into the semifinals but this one bloke came up to me and asked if I'd be interested in jamming with his band, which sounds awesome! I haven't heard back from him again about it but I'm pretty excited. After open mic night ended, my friends wanted to go to this club but I wasn't really in the mood for clubs... I was in the mood for banjolele, haha. So I did some street performing on Shop st at like midnight, haha. It was mostly just fun, some guys came and talked to me and we ended up hanging out on the sidewalk for a little while and I was trying to teach them a few chords. I just love things like that, chilling with people spontaneously.

Last night I didn't really have much to do so I went out busking again, earlier this time and trying to get more tips before everyone was too drunk. I played for like an hour and made like 16 euros, which is awesome by the way. But it's also just really fun to be around on Shop st when people are out and about. I like it when people kind of get into it, even if it's only for like thirty seconds, haha. But people are definitely nice and they interact with you and say hi, so that makes it fun. And I'm not complaining about 16 euros in an hour haha. So I'm gonna keep learning more songs and keep doing that, it's a pretty sweet gig. Unfortunately I don't have pictures yet still because I'm a jerk but I'll take some soon, and I do have some videos that I'll have up after I get good enough video to upload them.

So it's been a banjolele week in Galway, and we're soon to head off to a fun weekend in Cork!