The Bog Project Headlines Róisín Dubh’s Halloween Fright Fest
By Lisa Geraghty
It’s that time of year again and with the return of Halloween comes the return of The Bog Projects annual Halloween gig on their fourth consecutive year performing on the night of frights.
Dillon Kitt, the lead singer of the Galway based band, and his fellow bandmembers Oran Conneely and Cillian Jordan are looking forward to the night. “It’s going to be great craic, this is our fourth year doing it now, which is fantastic, we didn’t think we would make it four years to be brutally honest.”
The gig will take place this Wednesday 29th of October in The Róisín Dubh with tickets costing €11. This year The Bog Project will be supported by local band The Cherrypickers and The Proton Pool Party.
Dillon, who is also a member of The Cherrypickers, is looking forward to this collaboration, “It’s going to be two sets in one night which is fantastic. Proton Pool Party are a great bunch of lads from Donegal. Theres a lot of enthusiasm amongst the three bands for the gig and hopefully it will bring a bit more hype and a bit more energy.”
On the fourth year of the Halloween gig, Dillon looks back to where it all started. “We started out with the trad band in Covid, but we eventually got into funk music, soul music, rock music. After Covid we met up again just the three of us. We were big into Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, so we met up and jammed a load of that and had a great time doing it so we said we might as well do a gig.
“I think it has grown a bit, I think when we started doing a gig at Halloween we started out with covers. Our whole set list was covers, bar one song we had written at the time. Now we have grown to introduce our own original material into the set list. The first two gigs were in Áras na nGael which is a lot smaller. It’s great to graduate to a bigger venue, must be a sign we are doing something right”
The Róisín Dubh are well known for supporting local bands, and Dillon highlights how important that is to Galway gigging culture, however being a part of a local band doesn’t come without its challenges. “The Róisín do give great time to the bands. The only problem with them gigs is the money, it’s very hard for a band to make decent money gigging around Galway, especially because the Roisin is pretty much the only venue left that will consistently do local gigs like that.
“Theres other places around the city as well but the Róisín Dubh is kind of the main place. It’s got the culture there as well for the local scene, but it’s very hard to make money doing this. If you’re in a band, you’re probably more than likely in college working a job at the weekends and in between your lectures trying to organise gigs and write songs.
“We all love to do it, everybody’s who in a band loves to be in a band that’s the whole reason they are there in the first place. If we were getting paid a bit more, I think the gigging scene would be a lot more vibrant.”
Tickets for The Bog Project: Halloween Party can be bought on The Róisín Dubh website.
