Gong Xi Fa Cai!

The Lunar New Year approaches, and Gan Ainm are ready to get your long weekend folking with a brace of gigs at two of our favourite haunts!

First up is Friday night at Muddy Murphys - with four days off to follow, what is stopping you! A couple of new numbers and all your old favourites, it will be a riot!

Then, on the eve of the New Year itself, we head back to Little India and get jiggy with it at The Prince of Wales - a Chinese New Year Hogmanay bash, if you will! Expect more bar-top dancing and general shenanigans!!

By the way, do you like the picture? It is part of the new batch photographed by old friend Ross a couple of weeks back. We will post up all the new shots soon, so keep an eye out!

See you at the weekend, and "xin nian kuai le"!

...and on the river flows...

Thank you to all who came along to our final gig with Paul last weekend... despite some whopping tech problems during setup we persevered and had an absolute blast. 'Twas a tad emotional, saying farewell to the man who to many people IS Gan Ainm, and we must thank former band members Barry and Emer for their guest appearances.

Still, as we sing so often, "Life goes on, and 'round we go"... we were back in the studio last night re-jigging certain songs to accommodate them being sung by Alex, Miles or Eoin, and we're already raring to get back in the saddle! And that saddle just happens to be on the back of this Saturday night, 24th November, at the Prince of Wales in Little India, from 10pm...

We'll keep folkin' around... see you there!

Meet the newbie!

Julian is now settled in Hong Kong, and we wish him well... but how about the rest of the band? Where are we at? And what about you lot? When can you expect to see us play again...?

Well, let's waste no time in introducing the new boy... hailing from Belfast, this young man (yes, the average age of the band just dropped) is a dab hand at playing celtic tunes on the 6-string guitar as well as a solid bassist - which makes him perfect to fit into the shoes of our last Belfast-born, 6-stringer-celtic-playing bass player! And what incredibly appropriate Irish / celtic sounding name does this lad go by? Please welcome... Ignacio Calumarte!

Well, yes... he's half-Spanish, so maybe we'll get some more Mediterranean flavour to a few tunes! For the moment, though, we've all been in the rehearsal studio getting back up to speed on your old favourites - and I can say that Iggy is fitting right in! So you can expect more of the same - but slightly different - next time you see us...

...and when will that be? Well, how about you come down to Prince of Wales, 101 Dunlop Street, to see Iggy in his official band debut on Friday September 14th!

We'll see you soon!

Farewell gig... this coming Saturday!

It is with sadness that we announce the imminent departure of Julian O'Connell, our bass player. His professionalism and level head (not to mention his talent!) played a huge part in getting the full-band up and running earlier this year, and he will be sorely missed. We wish him and the family well in Hong Kong.... and look forward to him booking us a tour there next year!! (hint, hint)

Initially it looked like we would not get an official final gig with Julian as all our dates were incompatible... but fortune favours fools like us and thanks to the last minute cancellation of a band at Prince of Wales, Little India, we now have the perfect opportunity to give Julian a rousing send-off!

We also bid farewell to our official photographer, who is moving to Dubai. Lisa did such a fantastic job of making us all look so good that people often don't even recognise us in the flesh!! You can see her work plastered all over this site, including the one of Julian to the left. We wish her, Barry and the kids all the best, and hope to be playing in Dubai's Irish Village for them sometime soon! (again - hint, hint)

So... we will be back with a new bassist later in the year, but don't miss the opportunity to come down and see this lineup of Gan Ainm - the original full-band lineup - one last time!

Prince of Wales, 101 Dunlop Street, Little India
Saturday 30th June from 10pm
Be there or be an equilateral rectangle.

We wish some weekends would never end...

(l) On stage at PoW; (r) dancers at Muddy Murphy's

What a great weekend that was... thanks to all of you who came down, drank like fish, danced like maniacs and generally had a grand old time!

If anyone has any photos or videos of either gig, we would love you to share them with us. You can email them to ganainm.sg@gmail.com or post them on our Facebook page.

We'll be taking a break for a few weeks, but watch out for us back in July... see you then!

The Boys Are Back In Town!

Have you missed us? We've missed you! Hard to believe it hasn't even been a full two months since St. Patrick's, yet so much has been going on since then. We may have seen a few of you at gigs by other bands we are variously part of... or maybe at the theatre production Paul recently directed... or maybe just down the pub for a pint! But this will be the first time you will have seen the seven of us back together again, and we are looking forward to having a right old knees up with you all!

This weekend we have two opportunities to folk you up! The first (Saturday 12th, 10pm) is at the Prince of Wales in Little India and is somewhat dangerously sponsored by Jagermusic, so be prepared for many, many Jagerbombs. The second (Sunday 13th, 6pm) is back down at the scene of our big week two months back, Muddy Murphy's. Two fantastic venues, so it should be one hell of a weekend!

We must thank those kind fellas at Jagermeister and PacBev for their support - so please "like" their Facebook page at  http://www.facebook.com/Jagermeister.SG !!!

Cheers all, and see you over the weekend!

We're ready - are you?!

Well, the band are just about to hit the rehearsal studio for the last time before the craziness that is going to be St. Patrick's week....

We have one final pre-Paddy's gig tomorrow night at The Prince of Wales in Little India, where you'll get to hear some new material for the first time, and then it's off to Muddy Murphy's for twenty-one sets at seven gigs over a nine day period... plenty of opportunity to come down and rock out with Singapore's biggest craic dealers!!!

Check out all the times on our gig list -  Sláinte!

Next gig - Friday 2nd March at PoW Little India