Here’s a heartwarming story for the start of 2020… Earlier this year, I asked my pal Ali Mackenzie (Ireland’s greatest bass player) if he’d fancy getting a 40-minute set of songs by his mid-90s band the Bush Turkeys together for a four-band charity show I was running in September (featuring popular mid-90s Belfast bar bands reuniting as a one-off).

I hadn’t expected Ali to go the whole hog (or three-quarters of it) and get three of the four from the classic Turkeys line-up together: Ludo on vocals, Dave on drums, and himself – plus relative youngster and local blues sensation Lonesome Chris Todd fastidiously figuring out the electric guitar parts of various former members from recordings. The Bush Turkeys were notoriously prone to rows, fracas, rancour, brouhahas and fallings-out back in the day. Would it manage to hang together long enough to do the charity gig…?

Well… it did. And not only that, their 8-song set proved the audience hit of the night. Three months on, yesterday – the 30th anniversary to the very day of their first gig – the chaps performed an 18-song set at a packed bar in Belfast. Again, the response was sensational. 😀

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