It’s the eve of June 30th. All across the country the brave countrymen and women of Ireland are settling down for the night. “How is tomorrow July already?” they puzzle to each other, swearing blind it was only March yesterday. “Well for some,” grizzle those who’ve truly lost sight of any joy in life, as the advent of July means that all of the teachers are now well and truly on their summer holidays and essentially getting paid to do nothing.
As the country slumbers, a creaking noise breaks the silence in the town of Birr, Co Offaly. Dust dances in a shaft of moonlight as a dark figure rises from his sarcophagus, a bit like Dracula but with fewer fangs and wearing bootcut jeans. It is Mundy. As dawn breaks, he throws back his head with a triumphant cackle and his name rings out across the land.
Okay, so singer-songwriter Mundy – born Edmond Enright – probably isn’t preparing to wake from a year-long slumber. That’s just how I like to imagine how Birr’s most famous son starts his day as the calendar page for June is dramatically and cinematically ripped off and his hit song July has its moment in the sun.
I also like to imagine radio stations dusting off their copies of July – figuratively dusting as I’m sure most tracks are stored digitally these days – ready for a day of jaunty presenter signoffs as the first guitar twangs of July ring out.
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Mundy’s been on my radar since the mid-90s when his song To You I Bestow was featured on the soundtrack for Baz Luhrman’s Romeo and Juliet. To an addled teenage mind, starved of proximity to any celebrity or glamour of any kind, it meant that Mundy was probably friends with Leonardo DiCaprio, the greatest celebrity of them all.
July is urban roads free of school traffic but rural byroads full of holiday carloads and buses of enthralled Americans. It’s long-term car parks at the airport and the jarring sight of school uniforms already in Dunnes and Tesco
In the early 2000s Mundy was at the helm of the Irish singer-songwriter scene with Damien Rice, Paddy Casey and Declan O’Rourke and it was his live performances and word of mouth that ultimately pushed his music on to radio station playlists, and the yearly homage to July was born. In 2008 Mundy had the highest selling single in Ireland when he recorded a rousing version of Steve Earle’s Galway Girl with Sharon Shannon, who had played with Earle on the original.
The lyrics to July have always tickled me. Not the repetitive and catchy ‘Oh my my my, oh my my my, oh my my my my, July’ chorus, but the harmless yet decidedly pre-#MeToo verses which celebrate July’s warmer temperatures and the amount of skin on show: “Just to see your striptease show, July please try your best to stay.” There’s also a reference to the narrator’s “pocket trout”, which I’ve always understood as an unfortunate public arousal, as well as a woman’s “greyhound skirt” which is slang for a garment that’s very short indeed.
It’s not all horny innuendos though, July also celebrates and evokes the beauty of Ireland on a sunny day and if the past few weeks have taught us anything it’s that you wouldn’t rather be anywhere else: “July please, I’m on my knees, the smell of your fresh cut grass. Your blue sky grins, for all its sins…” That lyric does finish with “look, another gorgeous Levi ass” but Mundy is right, they do all have lovely bottoms in July.
July is urban roads free of school traffic but rural byroads full of holiday carloads and buses of enthralled Americans. It’s long-term car parks at the airport (if you can get a space in one) and the jarring sight of school uniforms already in Dunnes and Tesco. July means a 5am sunrise and a 10pm sunset and a “good luck” to getting that toddler to sleep without a blackout blind. It’s Wexford strawberries and Achill basking sharks and crossed fingers for dry music festivals.
Speaking of music festivals, Mundy is at the helm of one this weekend. Where? Birr of course. July Fest at the County Arms Hotel is headlined by the man himself with support from Paddy Casey. Imagine how high the roof will be blown off the place when Edmond Enright closes with July, an earworm that – love it or hate it – you can’t deny is as catchy as the July day is long. All together now, “Oh my my my, oh my my my, oh my my my my, July.”