Next weekend sees the seventh Hard Working Class Heroes (HWCH) festival take place across six venues in the Temple Bar area of Dublin.
The festival is now established as an essential must-see/do on Ireland’s music calendar, but you’d think that through the years the level of quality acts would be dwindling. Not so, says organiser Angela Dorgan.
“The most nervous time for me is after the close of the applications,” she says, “because you’ve no idea what the quality will be like. But our aim is to showcase music of a certain calibre, and that’s where we are most consistent, I think.
“Also, you might reckon you know all the acts that are out there, but so many of them beaver away in the studio, and then seem to use the HWCH event as a benchmark of sorts. As long as we keep doing that and being that to bands, then we’ll keep going.”
Ninety-nine bands line up for this year’s festival, so you’ll hardly get to see them all, but jthere’s something for everyone in the audience. Headline acts are recent Domino Records signing Villagers (Andrews Lane Theatre, Friday, October 16th) and Fionn Regan (Button Factory, October 17th). Full details from www.hwch.net.
