Sat. 25th Oct. 2014 – Knocknarea Arena Sligo IT

Ireland’s Folk, Roots & Indie Festival celebrates 10 years of quality music on the Wild Atlantic Way
22nd – 27th October 2014

www.sligolive.ie

Sligo is thrilled to welcome back a band whose fusion of different musical influences perfectly encapsulates the unique attraction of Sligo Live Festival.   Horslips ‘the band that defined a generation” will explode onto the stage at Knocknarea Arena on Saturday, 25th October 2014.    Tickets are on sale now from www.sligolive.ie and Ticketmaster.

One of Horslips’ very first gigs lit up Sligo Sounds 71 – Ireland’s first ever rock festival.  At that time nobody had seen an act like them, mixing prog rock with traditional music. They turned trad into Rock!   Fintan O’Toole described it well in the Irish Times “Within a year, Horslips, extravagantly coiffed and dressed up like peacocks at a wedding, were tuning up their electric mandolins. Within another year, they were the biggest rock band yet seen in Ireland.”

With hits like ‘Dearg Doom’, ‘Trouble (With a Capital T)’ and ‘The Man Who Built America’, they paved the way for later bands from the Pogues to U2.

In 1972 Horslips surprised the music world by bringing the Rolling Stones Mobile Studio to Ireland and recording Happy To Meet…Sorry To Part their first album. An enormous seller on the home market, it was picked up by RCA for the UK and Atlantic Records for the rest of the world.

When Horslips released the follow-up album, The Tain, in 1974, Melody Maker described it as “a monumental album”. It became The Times (London) album of the year and was awarded five star status by Downbeat magazine in America.

By then Horslips were headlining tours of Britain and Germany, where the single Dearg Doom was a chart hit.

Two more studio albums followed before Horslips released the work that firmly established them in America as a highly imaginative rock ‘n’ roll band with a distinctive Irish quality to their sound.

The Book Of Invasions, released in 1977, displayed how Horslips had taken their early semi-acoustic experiments to full-throttle rock drama: combining their traditional roots with a rock ‘n’ roll dynamic to create a unique musical identity.

The albums that followed, Aliens and The Man Who Built America, both charted in the States and Horslips spent three years touring from coast to coast.

By the time they released their live album The Belfast Gigs in 1980, Horslips had decided to disband. That didn’t stop Billboard describing it as “inspired”. In Ireland, their live version of Shakin’ All Over became their fastest-selling single since their debut Johnny’s Wedding eight years earlier.

Horslips stopped touring late in 1980.

The band made a triumphant return to the stage in late 2009 with sold out concerts in Belfast’s Odyssey Arena and Dublin’s O2 and released Treasury – The Very Best Of Horslips. This was followed up in 2010 with another show in the O2 as well as Killarney’s INEC, The Royal Theatre in Castlebar and The Waterfront in Belfast. In 2011, they appeared at the Celtic Connections festival and performed a special St. Patrick’s Day Concert in the Waterfront in Belfast with the Ulster Orchestra.

They play a handful of dates each year, now that they have more time free from their subsequent careers and this year Sligo Live features one of these rare opportunities.

Horslips play the Knocknarea Arena on Saturday, 25thOctober 2014 at 8.30pm. Tickets are €28.50 with a limited number of premium seats available at €33 from sligolive.ie and from Ticketmaster.

Horslips join a line-up at SLIGO LIVE 2014 which also includes SHERYL CROW, O’Hooley & Tidow, NoCROWS, Simone Felice, Rackhouse Pilfer, The Barr Brothers and many more.

For festival details and regular announcements log onto: www.sligolive.ie,  follow us on Twitter @sligolive or like our Sligo Live Festival Facebook page www.facebook.com/SligoLiveFestival.