Special Consensus mandolinist Ashby Frank has agreed to send us updates and photos from their current tour of Britain and Ireland. Ashby is unsure how much web access he will have during the tour, but promises to send his musings whenever he has the chance.

Two more pub shows in the books, and quite a few more to go.

Everything’s still going well, and we’ve been lucky enough to stay in quite a few nice places. That can get kind of tricky over here sometimes, so I’m happy about that. We’ll see how that goes for the next two weeks.

The day after our show in Sixmilebridge, there was a horrible windstorm with gusts up over 75mph. Not fun travel weather. Luckily we haven’t had far to drive to each show.

In Galway we performed upstairs in a pub where they had a jam session going on downstairs, which was pretty cool. It’s odd for us to see all age groups in one place enjoying the same music, but both young and old seem to enjoy the traditional tunes here.

On to Limerick where we again performed in the upstairs performance room of a traditional pub.  We enjoyed a good meal (They love curry over here for some reason, and I do too) and then picked our little hearts out. The place we stayed in had internet, but it was roughly $13 for about 5 hours worth and we didn’t have a lot of time in the room so I didn’t go for that. Expenses from food, to gas, and internet are so high over here. Hard to get used to.

I got a good bit of sleep (I still can’t get over this sinus congestion) and woke up in time to pack half way before the fire alarm went off. I hobbled down the stairs with my 54 pound bag, my mando case, and computer bag, and got to the lobby just as they turned the siren off. Fun.

On the way here we hit some snow and bad roads…

Tomorrow is a really long drive (maybe 7 hours) back to Northern Ireland which normally wouldn’t be that long for us, but packed in a van like we are every 1 hour feels like 3.

I’m sure we’ll make it though. Hopefully I’ll be able to check in again soon.