Tell me about the festival. How and when did it start?
I was involved with my own venue, Cleeres, back at the time. We were looking for another event to add something to the tourist season in Kilkenny, so I brought Tom Stapleton on board to book some acts and the festival was launched in 1998. Tom had promoted various artists at Cleeres so we were on the same musical wavelength. Tom stepped down in 2006, the same year as I was finishing up running the pub, so I just took over the Roots reins from then.

What is the site like? Is it a family festival? How would you best describe the Kilkenny Roots experience?
Well the festival takes place over the first weekend in May every year and all events are held indoors as you would want to be a supreme optimist to hold an outdoor festival in Ireland so early in the year.
We use about 30 different hotels and pubs to stage gigs. This year we have 20 ticketed shows and 60 free gigs. These go on from early afternoon until late at night. We get a lot of families at the earlier shows

Can you sum up the festival ethos?
Over the years we’ve mixed long established roots acts such as Guy Clark, Terry Allen, Buddy Miller and Alejandro Escovedo with up and coming performers, many of them making their first visit to Ireland. Calexico, Ryan Adams and Ray LaMontagne were all given their first Irish gigs at Kilkenny Roots Festival. This year we signed Alabama Shakes before anyone else had heard of them. We’re open to anything, new or old, as long as it’s good.
Would you say the festival has developed the way you had expected?
If you had asked me back in 1998 did I think all these fantastic artists would have made the trip to the festival in a small city in the South East of Ireland, I wouldn’t have believed it possible. Like any promoter, if we had a bigger budget, we could look at expanding. Until we win the lotto, we’ll keep on keepin’ on.

Fantastic line up this year. How do you go about deciding on who will play?
There’s a hard core of very knowledgeable music fans in Kilkenny. You’ll meet them in Ryans or Cleeres pub or down in the local record shop, Rollercoaster Records. Everyone has suggestions and after that it’s a matter of availability and budget. I started chasing Alabama Shakes, for example, early last summer. They were still just called The Shakes at the time and after trawling through various wedding bands with the same name, I finally tracked them down.

Who are you particularly looking forward to seeing this year?
Difficult to choose. I will be in and out of every show over the weekend. Put it this way, if I was travelling to this lineup anywhere else I would have tickets bought for Israel Nash Gripka, Hiss Golden Messenger, Alabama Shakes, Danny and The Champions of The World...I could go on.

Was there anyone you wanted to book this year that slipped through the net?
Three that come to mind are Dawes, Jonathan Wilson, David Mayfield Parade, Sharon Van Etten. Touring dates didn’t work out and haven’t managed to buy that Kilkenny Roots Festival plane yet.

What are your favourite moments of the festival in its history so far? What has been the best performance at the festival?
Stand out shows for me include Chuck Prophet, The Sadies, Marah, Duke and The King,  Giant Sand, Buddy Miller and John Grant. The band that literally made the hairs stand on the back of my neck was Calexico. To see them play in a venue the size of Cleeres was a special experience.

What about bad moments?
The festival audience are a very polite lot. Why we didn’t all storm the stage and drag Ran Adams off I’ll never know. He spent fifty five minutes making up songs as he went along and then disappeared without an hello or goodbye. Someone shouted, “Say f**king something.” He didn’t.

How do you see the festival in the future? What artists would you most like to see in the line up?
Survival seems to be the name of the game right now. I will try again for any of those we missed out on this year and keep my ear close to the musical ground to see what’s coming up.

Tell me about John Cleere. Is this the only musical enterprise you are involved in? What is your musical background?
We moved back to Kilkenny in 1988 and set about developing our venue behind the pub for music and theatre mainly. I don’t know when the term Americana was invented, but that’s the music route I’ve travelled. The festival takes up to six months to put together, then I head to Cork to work with the Cork Jazz Festival. My job there is to organise the gigs on the Guinness Music Trail. It can be anything from Jazz to blues to Rockabilly.

What are your favourite records so far this year?
Mark Lanegan – Blues Funeral, Alabama Shakes - Boys and Girls, Dawes – Nothing Is Wrong.
Well these are three I bought this year, although they may have been released earlier.