ByCronanScanlon
RORY Gallagher and his band, The Island, have recorded a video for their new Christmas single which is due to be released this weekend on YouTube and iTunes.
Shot in the Abbey Theatre in Ballyshannon last week, the video will accompany the new single, the first song they have released since the whole ‘Jimmy’s Winning Matches’ mania.
Speaking to the Donegal News this week, Rory said his Christmas song comes with a serious twist.
“It is called ‘The Ballad of Mad Dog Coll,” he said.
“It is a song I wrote about a gangster called Vincent Mad Dog Coll, he was born in Bunbeg in 1908, and became one of the main gangland bosses in New York during prohibition in the 1920s.
He was involved in managing the infamous Cotton Club music venue when he was only 21 years-old and was a hitman and a bootlegger, he was hired to do a hit on Lucky Luciano, one of the most notorious mob bosses of all time.
Luciano got wind of this and that was the end of Mad Dog, at the tender age of 23, not that there was ever anything tender about this man.
“It is technically a Donegal song, but it’s a far cry from Jimmy’s Winning Matches”.
Rory describes as a “funny coincidence” that the video was shot in the ‘Rory Gallagher Theatre’ in Ballyshannon.
“I would like to thank all the staff for being so accommodating and letting us use the cinema screen to show old gangster footage in the background of the band’s performance,” he explained.
“The last five singles I have released have all gone top 10 in the iTunes Rock Charts and Jimmy’s Winning Matches even broke through to number 9 in the official Irish top 20 charts in October.
Here’s hoping that ‘The Ballad of Mad Dog Coll’ will have the same impact nationwide”.