Irish poet Neil McCarthy returned for another installment of The Voice & The Verse, a night of stories, poems and music. In recent years Neil has toured as part of The Voice & The Verse with stalwarts Niall Connolly and David Rynhart. Neil is my favorite poet, in fact, one of the few I like. I thought I would never say such a thing, but I wish there would have been more poetry. However, Neil brought 3 great musicians with him and time was tight. It could very well be the last time we see him in Budapest because the lovely Jeanett has stolen his heart and they are getting married and moving to the US soon. If so, it was a fine, fine farewell. Neil recited, "A Fire Escape in Brooklyn," "Bits of Me," "Our Morning Went Unheard," "Down the Melancholy Hallway," and My Digital Bone." We have a a few of Niel's books (with Stephen Murray) of poetry for sale at Treehugger Dan's.

Bryan Benner is, as Neil called him, an American opera singer performing folk in Vienna. Bryan recently accepted a full vocal scholarship at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama in Glasgow, Scotland. Bryan has a great voice and is a mean finger picker even with a broken nail. He performed all original songs:
"One My Way"
"Running Man"
"Waterflower"

Bryan also put down his guitar and played cajon to  accompany Domink Nostitsz. Dominik runs The Laden, a a venue in Vienna he translated for me as The Living Room, and also writes and performs his own very good songs. On Wednesday we heard:
"Brother"
"The Fortunate Story of the Magpie"
"A Little Paradise"
and the soon to be legendary "Introducing: Human Resources Management.."

Dominik grabbed an Internal Recruitment book from the discounted books behind the stage and started singing the words from the book, then Bryan grabbed a cheap romance book from another shelf and they traded off verses reading from the respective books. Side splitting stuff.

The musical headliner was Ultan Conlon, a singer-songwriter from Galway, Ireland. Despite honing his craft on the Irish music circuit for a number of years, it was 2010 before he released his critically acclaimed debut album 'Bless Your Heart' which was described as ‘the most impressive Irish debut since Damien Rice’s O’ (Hotpress & Evening Herald). Legendary folk singer John Martyn sang with Ultan on his song "Really Gone" in 2006. Ultan has recently covered one of Martyn's earliest songs "Back to Stay," for the tribute album Johnny Boy Would Love This also featuring Snow Patrol, The Cure, David Gray, Beck, Donovan, Lisa Hannigan and The Swell Season. Ultan was soundtrack producer and music supervisor for the forthcoming feature film Seven Songs For Amy, as well as contributing original songs and arranging the score. May of this year will see the release of his second album Songs of Love so Cruel. He played:
"The Will"
"Really Gone"
"In The Mad"
"Paper Roses"
"St Dymphna's Well"
"Eternally"
"Vessel"
"When I fell in Love With You"
"The Golden Sands"

Of course with Neil, it was a moral imperative to make the pilgrimage to Szimpla Kert after the gig, recently voted as the 3rd best pub in the world by Lonely Planet readers. What a nice change to be there smoke-free. Upstairs coming back from the bar, a pretty woman walked by with a tub of fresh carrots. I said a bit too loudly, "carrots!" and she swung around and offered me one. Then she charged me 150 huf. I do not know if this was spontaneous or her cunning plan all along, but it was a great carrot, and a true bargain compared to Szimpla's outrageous 700 huf open-faced grilled sandwiches. Also as usual with The Voice & The Verse crowd, I staggered home at 2am well sated with amazing music, poetry, new friends, and...umm...a carrot.