by Ronan Casey
This week, Ireland loses one of its longest-established music venues as The Stables and Yukon Bar close. Owners Tommy and Miriam MacManus have, after 43 years at the helm of their Dominick Street venue, decided to call it a day.
They pulled no punches when they said the closure is down to a changing environment in the licensing trade. Pubs throughout the country are suffering, and that is acutely felt in Westmeath where 20% of pubs have closed in a decade. In the past eight years alone 47 locals have called time – that’s one every two months.
Changes to the trade, changes to the music business and changing patterns of customers since the recession has led to a difficult trading environment, and having enjoyed many years as the foremost live music venue in Westmeath and the Midlands, the couple have decided to take retirement from the pub business.
“The pub game has changed utterly,” says Tommy. “Music is also no longer what it used to be. People expect it to be free and don’t want to support the artists, either at gigs or by buying their albums, so the time was right for us to step back.”
“We need a life for ourselves and now is the time to do it,” remarked Miriam.
But sadness at the closure is offset by a lifetime of happy memories for the MacManus family, whose venue has been the epicentre of music in the midlands for a long time.
“In 43 years we can safely say we were never bored,” joked Tommy. “We met a lot of friends and we have had great customers, amazing staff, incredible musicians and promoters along the way. We have nothing but happy memories.”
MUSIC CENTRE STAGE
From day one, music has been at centre stage for Tommy and Miriam, both big music fans, a love which transferred to their three children, Aimee, Andrew and John.
Opened in 1971 (the year Topic was first published), The Yukon Bar was originally O’Brien’s Bar. Tommy, who had mined in the Yukon in Canada as a youngster, renamed it The Yukon in 1976 after he and Miriam got married and made upstairs their family home. They did up the new family business, adding a popular music lounge, but the biggest change happened in in 1989, when The Stables was born after they converted the back yard and the remnants of old horse stables into a purpose-built music venue.
Twenty five years has been a long time in roc ‘n’ roll at The Stables, and in that time the award-winning venue has hosted a who’s who of local, national and international music.
As Tommy looked back on a lifetime in music this week, he laughed when he recalled that the first band that was booked to play was a Cajun outfit called The Big Mistake!
With a small crowd there, Tommy and Miriam wondered if the name was prophetic, but thankfully things went from strength to strength almost immediately with their venue and they never looked back.
THE STABLES
In its early days, the venue earned a reputation as being one of the foremost blues clubs in Ireland with great rhythm and blues players from home and abroad drawn to play there.
Soon there was live music most nights of the week, with the weekend ending (or the week starting) on a Monday night when the original Blues Band held court for many years.
As genres came and went during the 1990s, The Stables remained constant with bands every weekend. In the front bar, weekly residencies from talismanic talents such as Marc and the late Jeremy Oliver, Declan Byrne, Dec Murray and the late Cani Bruton, as well as Noel and Declan O’Farrell (who also promoted gigs there) ensured there was music front and back at the venue.
National Awards from IMRO and Hot Press followed a decade of hard graft by promoters Ronan Casey and Declan Murray, together with engineer Frank Byrne, and fellow promoters Andrew MacManus, Marty Mulligan, Justin Moffat and David McGlynn.
At the end of the 1990s acts such as The Frames, Damien Rice, Damien Dempsey and others started to bubble in Dublin and this transferred to Mullingar, where they were drawn by an appreciative crowd, a paying gig and music-loving promoters.
Acts such as Des Bishop, Oscar-winner Glen Hansard, Jon Kenny and Pat Shortt, Paddy Casey, The Walls, Mundy, The Frames, Rodrigo y Gabriela, Hayseed Dixie, Eric Bell, Sharon Shannon, 808 State, Lisa Hannigan, Bell X1, David Kitt, Saxon, Ricky Warwick, The Saw Doctors, Joseph Arthur, Luka Bloom, Mary Coughlan, Duffy, Therapy?, Hothouse Flowers, Ronnie Drew, Josh Ritter, PJ Gallagher, Tommy Tiernan, Kíla, and even a few moonlighting members of Dire Straits, have all played storming shows in the Dominick Street stronghold. Members of U2 and Sinead O’Connor were in the audience for gigs. Christy Moore and Joe Dolan also visited.
LEGACY
But the greatest legacy of the venue was that it served as a breeding ground for thousands of local and national acts. Up-and-coming local acts had few opportunities to play anywhere, and no matter who the visiting artist was, a local act had to be on the bill. Bands could rehearse there, jam there and run their own gigs there. The Blizzards were famously signed on the strength of a Stables show in front of Oasis manager Marcus Russell.
In more recent times, Damien Rice, Paddy Casey, Damien Dempsey, Republic of Loose and Mick Flannery used The Stables to hone their craft when they literally couldn’t get a paying gig anywhere else.
Rice made The Stables his ‘home’ venue for two years, before he went on to achieve massive worldwide success with his “O” album. Oscar winner Glen Hansard, now a global star, once played there for a bag of chips with the late Mic Christopher.
‘The rectangular music room was hailed this week as “Mullingar’s Cavern Club”, a candle-lit shelter from luxurious pubs that always revelled in its dirty, rock ‘n’ roll roots, serving music in its proper environment.
There is one final night this Wednesday, 1 October, before Tommy and Miriam retire. They have left a huge legacy and without them, the midlands would certainly be a culturally poorer place.
