An unforgettable experience at Jim O’ the Mills for The Cobblestone takeover show

On Saturday night, 11 April, I attended The Cobblestone takeover of Jim O’ The Mills pub in Upperchurch. Two traditional music groups came down from the famed Dublin pub for the night, with the openers being The Len Collective, followed by Ispíní na hÉireann.

It was my first time at Jim O’ The Mills, and upon arriving all the way out in Upperchurch, I was greeted with something that wouldn’t be out of place in The Shire from JRR Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings books. I, along with my colleague John, approached the entrance to the pub, which was lit up with multicoloured fairy lights, as people flitted from the barn into parts of the house, readying the stage for the musicians.

Jim O’ The Mills itself is one of those rare rural pubs that feels like it is built entirely around people rather than anything formal or structured. It is part pub, part home, part music space, with the bar, the open fire, the adjoining house and the barn all blending into each other. It has built a reputation over the years as a place where traditional music, storytelling and everyday social life sit side by side, without any sense that one is separate from the other.

We entered the pub and were greeted with people sitting around the open fireplace, chatting and sipping pints. Jim Ryan, the famed “Jim” of the Mills, was sat by the fire with his signature paddy cap on, telling stories to a group of eager listeners. I grabbed a pint of Guinness from behind the bar, which only sells Guinness on draught, and waited for the barn to be ready for the night’s show along with lots of other eager guests.

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At around 8:30pm we were brought out to the barn and sat into a tightly packed but comfortable set-up looking onto a uniquely narrow stage that worked perfectly for live music in that setting. The space had a very absorbing feel to it, you were close enough to the performers that there was little separation between stage and audience and the whole room felt like it was part of the performance.

The Len Collective opened the night, and from the start they felt like something slightly outside the usual boundaries of trad music while still being firmly rooted in it. There was a contemporary edge to their sound, with arrangements that built and shifted in a way that felt layered and intentional. At times they reminded me of a trad interpretation of something akin to the British band Black Country, New Road, in the way the instruments moved in and out of focus rather than simply sitting underneath a lead.

A wide range of instruments filled the space, fiddle, bouzouki, guitar, concertina, uilleann pipes, Irish flute and more, all weaving together rather than competing with each other. Alongside this there was strong vocal work throughout, including both more conventional singing and sean-nós passages that cut through the room in a really striking way. At the centre of it all was Méabh Mulligan, whose family are involved in running The Cobblestone pub in Dublin, and who held the group together throughout the set.

Next up was a more comedic and raucous act, Ispíní na hÉireann, led by Méabh’s brother Tomás. A more punk influenced take on trad, the band played a mix of original songs and storytelling pieces, including tracks that took swings at the hipster culture of Stoneybatter, as well as stories rooted in places like villages in county Monaghan that were delivered with a clear sense of humour and exaggeration.

Tomás was joined on stage by banjo player, singer and banjo-player Paahto Cummins and bodhrán player Declan Gillen, who drove the rhythm throughout. The three of them brought a looser, more chaotic energy to the stage, but it was still tightly played where it needed to be, and the crowd were fully with them from start to finish.

Though an avid music listener and fan of all varieties and genres, trad music is not usually my first port of call. However, I was genuinely blown away by both the talent and the setting on the night. It made me want to go home straight after, download Duolingo and start learning Irish, and dust off my mandolin to learn some trad songs. Being in Jim O’ The Mills feels like being transported somewhere else entirely, with Irish spoken naturally and songs performed throughout the space with no sense of pretence around it.

After the main sessions, everyone returned to the pub where people took turns singing songs with no backing. I felt nearly ashamed that I didn’t have my own mind-catalogue of Irish songs that I could pull from at a time like this, not because anyone made me feel that way, but because I was watching others engage so freely and confidently with a tradition that felt very alive in that room.

Leaving Jim O’ The Mills, I felt a new sense of pride in my heritage, as well as a sense that I should be engaging with it more than I currently do. The pub is not a place that makes you feel out of place for not being better at Irish or music. Instead, it is the kind of place that makes you want to engage with it more, simply because of how inviting, unjudging and warm it is, and because of the people who run it and those who frequent it.