Feile Joe - What it's all about
In 2007 The Joe O'Toole Song Competition was born. This was a tribute to the late Joe O'Toole who was famous for his song writing and story telling. Established by three of his best friends, Thomas Smyth, Des Crilly, and Petey Doran.
The Song Competition has since expanded to a weekend long "mini-festival" now called "Feile Joe". This weekend promises to bring the most talented musicians from every corner of Ireland together for a weekend of music, banter and entertainment not to be missed.
Feile Joe is a charity event which aims to raise money and awareness in aid of The Niamh Louise Foundation: "The main activities of the charity is to provide suicide awareness, prevention, intervention and postvention services across the areas of Armagh and Tyrone, particularly to rural areas which can be very hard to reach and highly stigmatised."
Feile Joe 2011
With a fabulous steak night in O’Tooles Bar and Restaurant followed by an auction and traditional music entertained the masses as the opening Friday night of the charity weekend began. Saturday kicked off with a kids’ talent show keeping everybody entertained with contributions from young singers, musicians and dancers as well as some ‘stars in their eyes sytle’ impersonators!
Saturday night was an overwhelming success when ‘The Kilkennys’ came to town! This group of young balladeers lifted the roof at O’Toole’s and had everyone on their feet. With a capacity house and generous guests the charity buckets got fuller and fuller!
Some tired heads awoke on Sunday to carry on with the craic. In keeping with the celebration of Joe O’Toole’s life and loves, a truck run and tractor show filled the roads around Keady and Armagh on Sunday morning and all the hungry mouths appreciated the “Big Breakfast” laid on in O’Toole’s with all proceeds going to help the worthy cause, Niamh Louise Foundation.
The highlight event of the weekend on Sunday evening, was the Joe O’Toole Song writing competition when local song writers as well as those from farther afield were welcomed to showcase their recently composed songs. It proved to be a roaring success with writers of all ages and backgrounds taking part. A big congratulations to the winners, Des Crilly, Terry Óg Conlon and James Curran.
In the lead up to this year’s Feile Joe weekend, fundraising for Niamh Louise was in full flow and with a healthy body healthy mind attitude. A 5K ‘Dam Buster Run’ proved to be a very popular event and, despite the bad weather around Seaghan Dam on the night, the people proved not to be phased and showed up in their masses.
A new addition to the fundraising events this year is the ‘Feile Joe Mountain Challenge’ which involved climbing to the highest peaks in each of the nine counties of Ulster over one long weekend. This is a challenge not for the faint hearted! A great weekend’s craic was had and with more and more people expressing an interest in this challenge since the walkers returned, next year is likely to get bigger and better! Keep a look out on O’Tooles Bar website if you think this challenge is for you.
Bronagh O’Toole, chair person of the Feile Joe Committee said ‘we weren’t sure that we could match the success of last year’s Feile Joe however, this year has proved to be a highly successful and enjoyable event and we think we will exceed last year’s fundraising total for Niamh Louise Foundation which was £14,000. A big thank you to all those who donated and participated in this year’s Feile Joe, all contributions and help where much appreciated.’A big thanks in particular to our main sponsor Electricity Saver Ireland.
