{"id":606924,"date":"2026-08-28T05:40:21","date_gmt":"2026-08-28T05:40:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/606924\/"},"modified":"2026-08-28T05:40:21","modified_gmt":"2026-08-28T05:40:21","slug":"electric-picnic-every-gig-ill-be-doing-ill-be-mentioning-were-from-cork","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/606924\/","title":{"rendered":"Electric Picnic: ‘Every gig I’ll be doing, I’ll be mentioning we’re from Cork’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Electric Picnic will be hosting a number of Cork artists over this weekend, such as Mick Flannery, Kyla Cobbler and Cliffords, but it\u2019s unlikely that any will put in the sort of shift that bilingual poet, singer and performer Julie Goo will. A published poet and former Munster slam poetry champion, Goo will be making five appearances across the weekend, three as a poet and two as a vocalist for the duo Shelovescalpol. She will also be flying the flag for Cork.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery gig I\u2019ll be doing, the five gigs over the weekend, I\u2019ll be mentioning that I\u2019m from Cork, we\u2019re from Cork, because it\u2019s Dublin-centric,\u201d she insists.<\/p>\n

They\u2019ll be sick of you, I suggest.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know, yeah. It\u2019s great,\u201d she says gleefully.<\/p>\n

Goo, whose real name is Julie Field, has been performing at Electric Picnic as a poet for the last eight years or so. She begins her series of poetry recitations at 3pm, Friday, on the Word Stage. Her other appearances will be at An Puball Gaeilge (the Irish Language Stage), and at Cro\u00ed, but these won\u2019t prove too onerous.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe poetry gigs are only 10-12 minutes,\u201d she assures.<\/p>\n

Instead, she is relishing her performances both as part of the duo Shelovescalpol, which comprises her and electronic boffin Mike Millis, as well as playing alongside occasional collaborator An Galar Dub.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\u201cMyself and Mikey, we\u2019re friends since we were about 18,\u201d she explains. \u201cHe moved up the city and I was in college for the first time round. Gav, who\u2019s An Galar Dub, is Mikey\u2019s brother. So, we\u2019re all the best of friends for the last 20-odd years.\u201d<\/p>\n

While Shelovescalpol can be regarded as her main musical project, she has collaborated with Galar Dub on and off over the past 10 years, most recently on March\u2019s Scl\u00e1bha\u00ed EP.<\/p>\n

\u201cGav just bangs out tunes,\u201d she ventures. She does not exaggerate. His Bandcamp page features 160 releases going back before 2017 comprising singles, EPs and albums of bilingual drum \u2018n\u2019 bass-led agitpop. \u201cIt\u2019s all really homemade. It\u2019s amazing the sounds he makes. We\u2019re starting to work much closer with Gav now and it\u2019s great. Mikey is really good at mixing as a DJ so he can mix in Gav\u2019s tunes with our tunes live.\u201d<\/p>\n

This will be Shelovescalpol\u2019s third appearance at Electric Picnic, but last year\u2019s event was the first time An Galar Dub joined them onstage at The Hazelwood, the eclectic spoken word and music stage where they will return this Sunday at 3pm.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a bit of a monster. It\u2019s massive, but I love it,\u201d she says of The Hazelwood. \u201cIt\u2019s set in a small little wooded area. It\u2019s a big stage and the three of us had the stage for an hour last year and we\u2019ve the same again this year. Over the last few years it\u2019s become a kind of an Irish language area. It\u2019s kind of bilingual during the day and then in the evening it\u2019s all Irish language.<\/p>\n

\n \u201cLast year was great. We did an hour set. The lads play the music that they\u2019ve produced and Mikey mixes it live onstage and I\u2019m just on the mic. We got a great reception.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

While other stages are shutting down for the night, Shelovescalpol will be entertaining the bedraggled masses at Brutopolis, the late-night stage in the Freetown area of the festival.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s mental,\u201d Goo declares. \u201cIt\u2019s just this small, mad area that opens up late at night. It\u2019s perfect for our kind of music. It\u2019s really dark. People kind of wander in, they don\u2019t know what to expect. We did a gig at 2am last year. Like way past our bedtime. But it was amazing. And we have the same this year, just me and Mikey. He\u2019s deejaying there separately during the weekend. That\u2019s what we\u2019re looking forward to most actually, is the really late night time gig. And the sound is great and people are really into the music. There\u2019s no distractions at night time.\u201d<\/p>\n

She adds: \u201cWe have all these brilliant samples now for Electric Picnic. Like Chris Kent, the Cork comedian, we have a quote of him on about Calpol. We have the Healy-Raes in there talking about how climate is a farce. There\u2019s a lot of fun kind of samples mixed in with stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

When Julie alludes to having a child, I wonder aloud if the group name was inspired by her daughter. She nods.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe accidently overdosed with Calpol when she was about five because she absolutely loved it. It was just me telling someone that story once which kind of stuck with me, the words: \u2018She loves Calpol.\u2019 We kind of did it as a laugh at the start, but it\u2019s after sticking so we better hang on to it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fear not, gentle reader, the daughter not only survived but thrived, and having passed her Leaving Cert with flying colours.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe got a H1 in her Irish, so my work is done here,\u201d Julie informs me proudly.<\/p>\n

And as a reward, she and her boyfriend will be accompanying Julie to Stradbally.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe\u2019s 19, so it will be lovely to be there with them. And she loves Gorillaz and Fontaines DC, so we\u2019ll be going to all them together. So, it will be lovely.\u201d<\/p>\n

No doubt she\u2019ll be expected to turn up for her gigs.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was the deal. I said I better give you a ticket, but you have to come to all our gigs and you have to dance,\u201d she chuckles warmly.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ll leave her off the poetry ones, but the music ones she definitely has to come to.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Electric Picnic will be hosting a number of Cork artists over this weekend, such as Mick Flannery, Kyla…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":606925,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[35839,63692,63691,48760,93,61,60,63690],"class_list":["post-606924","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-cork-entertainment","tag-cork-film","tag-cork-music","tag-downtown","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-stevie-g"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/606924","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=606924"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/606924\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/606925"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=606924"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=606924"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=606924"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}