We say hello and we welcome our third and final act this Monday night and Danny was in with us there and Danny is based in Berlin and it's a totally international show tonight because our next guests are based in Bologna in Italy and it's a tree. You're very welcome. This is Thomas on the fiddle and Liam on the guitar and Fioranzo. Fioranzo, am I saying that right? Fioranzo. Fioranzo. You're very welcome. Thank you. Thank you. It's great to have you here. You're doing sort of a money tour, Liam. Yeah, so we were in the bridge bar on Friday, on Friday evening we're in the bridge bar and that was great, great crowd and we're in coffee time then on just Saturday evening and that was great as well. I've seen videos of that. It's great and we popped into the Glen bar down on Sunday just to know a couple of lads were playing the Futurians, we just came in and played the Futurians with them and that was great as well. Great crack. Yeah, great. So how long have you formed as a bazaar? It's four years now. It's four years now. Probably a bit more than that. Okay. And so I'm living over in Italy obviously and I met these lads through a good friend of ours called Valentina and she put us in contact with each other. Because we were all kind of playing with different groups and she said, listen to that, you should meet up and play together. And so Valentina, Valentina Bouqui is her name and she put us in contact together and she was the one that kind of put the group together. Very good. And that was very nice of her and since then we've been playing. We play a lot now over in Italy and I want to bring the lads over here to play a few gigs and it was great. And yourself, Thomas, where are you from? I'm original from Closer Bologna. And now I live in Crescent. It's just 80 kilometres away. And yeah, basically I'm born and raised in Italy. Very good. The reason why I'm asking is because maybe it's not, but it seems unusual for say Italians to be playing Irish music. Maybe it's not, maybe it just seems to me. Even initially there's not many of us over there. We're kind of scattered all over the country initially. The musicians who played this kind of music and we're just lucky that we actually live quite close to each other that we can meet up and play. We'll talk more. This is a song I wrote called Fiddle Without a Bow. It's about Castle Bar, where I'm from. Yes. It's about Castle Bar and there was a funny story. A friend of mine went to a session one evening and he opened the case, the fiddle case and there was no fiddle in the case. There was no bow. And there was no bow, excuse me. He remembers a friend like that. There was no bow in the case and he couldn't play at all that evening and that stuck in my mind then, that kind of image. And then it deals with L'Occalana as well, the lake around Castle Bar, close to Castle Bar and the silence there. It's about Castle Bar. Castle Bar, there's a silence around L'Occalana like a fiddle without a bow. Absolutely beautiful. Lovely old traditional style in that. I love that. I love that well done indeed. The Queen says, brilliant, well done. Singing Liam Quinn. So there you go. The best Italian Irish musician in the world. And then this is up my owe.  So how long have you been here? The lads got in Wednesday and then they got down here around Thursday and they're flying out actually on Wednesday. They're flying out on Wednesday. Very mini mini tours. Mini mini tours. And do you come here often? This is the first time we've come now as a group. We've been playing together for four years so it's the first time. We wanted to come over two years ago but then I don't know what happened then. Nobody's going anywhere. And the album, tell us a bit about the album. So the album was called The Cuckoo Sings in May and there's a song on it with that title and people always ask why did you choose The Cuckoo? And it was kind of a bit of a long story but I'll keep it short. We wanted something that would connect the two countries and The Cuckoo is a bird that actually travels comes to Ireland as we know actually travels down through Italy on its way back to Africa. And then we had that song, that rhyme that we all know about The Cuckoo and I was making a putting together song around us and The Cuckoo just fits. You know, a link between Italy and Ireland. And that's the title track and the song on the album as well. Are they all original tracks? During us there's Fiddler by the Bowes on it. The song we just sang there. And there's a couple more original songs and there's tunes on it as well. So Thomas plays some great tunes on it as well. So it's a mix of songs and tunes. Okay. And where'd you record that over in Italy? That was a kind of, yeah, over there. We recorded it over there. It's a bit of a long process now. It took us a while to get it finished. We're kind of the perfectionist maybe. Well, there's nothing wrong with that, you know what I mean? It took us a while now, but we got it finished anyways. As Danny was saying beforehand, he took his time on his album and that's what you do with your craft, isn't it? Where can people get the album? You can find us on Spotify, you can find us on iTunes, all the major streaming platforms and if you come to the gigs you can get the CD. But that's a come over to Italy now to see us. I think so. I think you're based on... Yeah, we're based initially. I know you've come here already, but do you go far from here? Yeah, we get kind of calls sometimes from Germany and other places. I suppose more this year, we've kind of been travelling more abroad. Things seem to be getting back to normal again. So we're actually managing to get it abroad a bit. How did you manage during the pandemic? Music-wise it just stopped? We did the video calls and stuff just to keep chatting. We were very good friends as well. We were good friends. So just to keep the friendship alive we kept calling each other and then we did some videos online and stuff like that to keep it going on YouTube. And we got through that and that was great. I think it's a band that we kept it going. Well, it's great to see. I'm just delighted that you're able to get out and even come over here. It's good for yourselves too, isn't it? Get away and just spread the wings. What's the plans? We're going back to Italy this week. We've got a gig in Italy on Sunday. So we're right back into Italy and then we've got a good few gigs now in August over there. Hopefully, please, I'll be back over here again next summer. Please, God. Is there a big music scene in Italy? It's like I was saying before. It's very spread out. To play the gigs that we're wanting to play, we have to drive around a lot. People like Irish music over there and they do love it. There's a big demand for it in some places. They're always looking out for people to sing and play it. We would love another couple of tracks. We'd love to hear the next piece of music you're going to do first. So Thomas is going to play a set of tunes. The first one is the Manchester set of reels. The Manchester, the old bush and the banks of the island. I got that. Set of reels. From the 70s. Not very old, but still. No, no, no, no. It's been built from close to Venice. It's a totally Italian fiddle, but it's not in the tradition. Although, I have a grand-grandfather whose name was Tomaso Thomas as well who did play the fiddle at the time. That was long ago. We never got to use the fiddle. Thank you. Have you been playing the boron long? 15 years. I'm a teacher in Italy. Very good. Some people have different skins. What type of skin is on that? I don't know.  It was made in Boston or somewhere. He said to me, I'll get you one. I'll get you one, but I never got around to it. I was always curious about the skin. I know it's goat skin and stuff like that. Listen, we've got a lot of people on here saying hello to you. Paul gets the glasses on here. Ann Simmons is listening here from Tipperary. Who else? Hello from Sheffield from Olivia. Brilliant music. Very, very good. The album is available on all the platforms. Where did you launch it? We had a couple of gigs to launch it now. We're waiting for the official launch but we're going to have the official launch now when we go back to Italy. How have you been finding it since the album has spread your music? A lot of people stream it from countries all over the world especially because they're kind of tunes as well. People might be looking up a set of tunes and they'll find us. And growing up, who inspired you? I suppose the local musicians are on Castle Bar. I used to play a lot of sessions and a lot of pubs. A lot of great local musicians I won't start naming names but all the local musicians who just gave their time, I used to be a young fella going in the corner trying to play along with them and they're just so I owe it to them really. And at what age did you sort of start? 14, 14. And just people in the sessions around Castle Bar who just talks to me. It's a good way of picking things up. Tell us about Coffee Time. Ah, Graspost. The greatest gig there in Saudi now is just they opened up the reopened the restaurant part so the pizza there and wine and everything and just a great crowd and people, we finished playing and then other people started singing and it was just lovely. I loved that as well as when other people joined in it's great. It's a great feeling, a great feedback. It's a really warm and people are so glad to see it back open again because they're open the whole time now but they just reopened this part of it once they've been closed.  Well, I'm a bit biased. My sister, Miro, she's run the place where her husband Brandon Curran and they've been there a couple of years now and can they crown him. And great coffee, great crack. Ah, there you go. Great pizza as well. Pizza. And Barbara says hello. Barbara's from Italy. There you go. The music scene in Italy, as you say you have to travel far to get good gigs. Yeah, for this type of music because select is a thing. So you have to be prepared to travel and stuff and the musicians that play this type of music are like I said we're scattered up and down the country and initially as we all know it's a big place like so. But we're up for it, we're up for gigging and we love doing it. You can tell. Because we're just very good friends at the same time so it's enjoyment. Half the battle. So many tracks from the album in total? There's just ten, just ten tracks. There's ten tracks on the album and it's a mix of songs and tunes. And it's available, it will be available in all the platforms. Yeah, cuckoo sings in May. What's it called? Cuckoo sings in May. Right, we would love to get another piece of music and this time you're going to do for us. Yeah, I'm going to, this is a traditional song written by Ewan McCall called Come My Little Sun and I played this over the weekend and it got a great response from people. It's an emotional song, I mean I get emotional sometimes singing this and people really seem to like it over the weekend. Well, if you want to crown them, you just crown them. Yeah, I will. Thomas will take over the singing. Oh, brilliant. And your own tenement, everybody. Come My Little Sun and I will tell you what to do and dress yourself. The lyrics are just something else, aren't they? There are so many songs I would learn. I know, just absolutely brilliant and your delivery of that and the harmonies was just tight and lovely. Really, really enjoyed that. So, listen, tree, we thank you very much for coming in to see us and I think we could squeeze another tune in if you don't mind. You might be contracted for three but we'll squeeze four of them. We'll get our money's worth. And it's just a pity you're not around a bit longer because you absolutely... I was thinking, Jim, next time we'll come over this day for two weeks. Definitely, you know, there's no bother getting bookings in around here. My God. But it's lovely, it's just the breath of fresh air and it's additional, it's just lovely. I hope we love it, it's the music we love. You can tell that, you know, you can't hide that, you know. Thanks very much for having us on. Oh, the delight for us. Thank you very much indeed for coming in and if people want to get in touch you're on social media. We're on Facebook, so if you just look us up on Facebook, we're on YouTube as well and if you look up the name of the album, you'll find us, just Google that and you'll find us then, one word or the other. I'm really looking forward to that. And the final, final question is... As I said, a tune is called The Rolling Waves so two gigs both called The Rolling Waves. Absolutely, thank you very much. Listen, Lorenzo, is that right? Yeah. I'm glad he got that. I don't like not getting people's names because it's not very nice. Liam's pretty straightforward and Thomas, listen, the band Tree, the pleasure's been ours, thank you so much for joining us. Thanks so much for having us. Have a safe journey back and continue success.


I've seen people cook a Pad Siu on the street and then throw it to the guy across the street just throwing it in the air and then somebody has to catch it on the plate across the street and that's how you get there. Yo, imagine if you're just walking by and he's got a whole Pad Siu just I wouldn't even be mad. This is a Thai episode of our Beyond series. Just like our Vietnamese episodes we're encouraging people just to delve deeper into the cuisines they already love so we're here with Richie and Tan to eat, debate and share our love of Thai food. This is Beyond Pad Thai. Alright you guys it's going down. Wow. We've got round after round after round it's been organized, categorized. This is a spread. This is a spread. A Thai battle. We want to help people avoid the just going back to the three basics.  Tan you just said yo I worked at a Thai restaurant for three days. It was hectic Thai restaurant. Gabe worked at a Thai restaurant too? Yeah. Oh shoot. Worked at Bond Thai. It's actually Seattle's oldest Thai restaurant. I have a Thai iced tea and a Thai iced coffee. That tastes like that coffee candy. Gekopi? Yeah. The first dish I ever had when I came to Thai food was Pad Thai. Right. You know but then I thought I was fired until I enter a whole new world. These spots are all considered like serving a mainstream audience but this is still pushing the envelope within their menu. Round one the first battle which is going to be the shrimp battle. These are just shrimp appetizers. It looks like a rocket. So let's pick one up. Rocket shrimp. That's not just shrimp in there. Yeah I was going to say it almost is like a shrimp egg roll. From what I read it's more inspired from the Vietnamese shrimp roll. This is a really filling appetizer so all right this is a shrimp roll. This one the shrimp shined more. It almost tastes a little bit more like a dim sum dude. All right we got the coconut shrimp. You know but I always like it though. Don't know how I can tell you eat it. Man it was good. We got a lot of rounds to get through. Who's your winner from round one? For me I might have to go with the rocket shrimp for me. I'm gonna go opposite and go with the smaller one. Okay. I'm gonna have to go with the shrimp roll the smaller one. I'm gonna have to go with the rocket ship as well. If this is going to be an appetizer I would like it to ease into my meal you know what I mean. This the small one had a little bit too much flavor. Whatever this one is this is good. All right because Gabe was the tiebreaker he has decided that the smaller shrimp roll is the winner of the first round but so the second round out of seven we have the chicken appetizers. Here we go guys this is chicken satay.  I like how they left the skin on. Yeah I like how it's brushed with curry watching a Crazier as Asians man one of the lines that I remember was when Henry Golding was like best satay on the island. Best satay on the island for sure. Pané, leaf and chicken. Wow guys. It's like another appetizer that tastes and feels like an entree.  Flavors really in there. Can you guys taste the pandan or you would say tough to say? I would say tough to say. Did you guys taste the leaf though? That actually kind of has like some slight like burn bitterness a little bit to it adding that to the the flavor of the chicken. Yeah man I've never had that dish before. That was good. That was good. Guys the zesty tie wings. Zesty tie wings. The garnishes kind of overpower the actual wing. You know what kind of threw me off was you know I'm I'm big on the funk but just a little too funky smelling wise when I smelled it. With the zesty wing a little too zesty. I'm gonna say this plate is worthy of the last seed. Angel wings stuffed chicken wing. It does it tastes like a chicken egg roll just no no skin though. You know what I'm not a fan of this batter this kind of bread crumb. It reminds you of the coconut shrimp man. Exactly. It just tastes too much like a frozen vegetable egg roll.  I think it's between the guy whore by toi which is the pandan leaf chicken. Yeah. In the chicken satay. I'm still giving it to the satay man. Okay. It takes a lot to take that down and I think this one definitely what did you call it?  Pandan wrap chicken. Pandan wrap chicken. You know I try sometimes I wonder if I try to make those unique picks just for the sake of it but this time I can't do it. For sure. The satay one. Satay all-time classic. Going on to round three. Thai fish cake famous Thai street food right here. Wow. It's like a fish sausage. Mmm. That's good. You can taste the herbs. It has some of that lemongrass mixed in. Still has a fishy taste too. Yep. Crispy pork. How do you guys compare to that Mexican chichurron? I mean it tastes pretty similar. Fried pork at the end of the day. Spare ribs. That's the authentic sriracha sauce right there.  I like that. I did. I did. I actually was expecting the texture to be a lot rougher but mine tore apart really nicely. I think I feel pretty confident. I don't need to marinate on it. What's your call? I'm picking the Thai spare ribs. Wow. The tangy sauce too is really really nice too. I would say the Thai spare ribs was my favorite out of these three but I gotta shout out to the fish cakes. I was gonna say the fish cakes taste it for me. I appreciate it. Nice lemongrass flavor. This is round four of the protein section for crispy garlic chicken. David you made a good comparison earlier. It does kind of remind me of a general South chicken. Crying tiger steak. Never mad at it. I know what that tiger feeling. Never mad at crying tiger man. Thin. You still get rare. You know you still get the rareness, tender and then the char. The sauce has this like tamarin hint to it that I was not expecting. Good. Yo that was good. That was good. Thai grilled pork. How's the good flavor? I know my winner. And it's uh shocking to me a little bit. Out of all the meats I thought pork was gonna be dead last but uh I got that first place. The flavor was good. I'm going with this one man. Remember I said flip the ratio? Look at this meat. For me I'm actually going with the cry tiger man. I would like to see Gabe in about 10 seconds try all of them. I'm gonna have to give it to the pork. Whoa crazy. Okay so the next round's for five six seven.  You got rice and then ending off with soup. I feel like this the noodle round really polarizing. This is probably the one round out of any like section of Thai food that people have strong opinions about. It's named after Thailand itself so this is Pad Thai. I haven't had Pad Thai in a very long time. I'm gonna say you know I might miss it. I've not had this probably in the last 20 times I've eaten at a Thai restaurant. And it brought me like I will might start getting this again. Yeah for sure. And I like how oily the noodles are. Feels nice on the lips. All right guys this is Pad Siu. We're gonna find out which is the best Thai mainstream meal. It's good. Just like the sauté. Okay I've yet to have a bad Pad Siu. You're right. It's hard to find a bad Pad Siu. A very simple dish hard to mess up. All right I gotta say one thing you guys I've seen in Thailand you know how they're big into uh entertainment. Yeah like shows and stuff. I've seen people cook a Pad Siu on the street and then throw it to the guy across the street just throwing it in the air and then somebody has to catch it on a plate across the street and that's how you get fire.  I wouldn't even be mad. Thai people like to have fun with their food. Same with the Thai iced tea where they pour it in high. For sure. Really high. Yeah. Cup to cup. All right guys. Gotta get some air in it you know. All right guys this is Pad Ki Mau. The story of Pad Ki Mau is called Drunken Noodle because there was a chef who came home drunk and just grabbed whatever he could out of the fridge and then threw this noodle and created it. Wow. That's packed with flavor. That is packed with flavor.  I got mine man I'm gonna go with the Ki Mau noodles man. You got a little heat, a little kick. The bamboo shoots are actually underrated. It makes the Pad Thai flavor seem a little boring. Me now I'm rolling with the Pad Ki Mau. I gotta go with the Pad Ki Mau too. What? All right there's a reason why Pad Thai is Pad Thai. The OG. You know I'm not gonna be different just to be different. Okay. Okay. Fair. Okay so here we have the three fried rice. Which one do you guys want to start off with? All right guys this is the crab fried rice. Wow. I definitely do taste the crab meat. Yeah I do. Shout out to the to this spot because they put a hell of a lot of crab in there. Rice is soft. You know what's kind of throwing me off? The peas. Yeah okay. I'm not filling the peas. I think the peas and carrots when you see those in fried rice um it doesn't mean it can't be good but it does mean it's a little bit more Americanized. Yeah. Pineapple fried rice. I think the more western versions have walnuts, the walnuts and raisins. Yeah. Yeah cashews. Indian food. Probably top five favorite cuisines to eat and that's why I feel like I love the pineapple fried rice because it has like that curry, turmeric vibe that I just love. Pak ring curry fried rice. Oh. Tastes more traditional than the other two. The rice itself has a good flavor. Tastes earthy. I would describe that as pleasant. All right guys what's the verdict on the fried rice? I'm gonna go with the third one, the pek ring. I just feel like that one compliments uh more of the dishes that we ate so far. Hey don't forget. Hey when you pronounce something wrong you're like hey I was only there a few days. We were pronouncing good. I work you know what I'll give it to the newcomer. Why not? Um I liked this one right here. I need the 10 second breakdown bro. Andy Johnson got a game coming up. Hands down. Pak ring. Pak clean. Oh. All right man. At a Thai restaurant. Come on man we used to book a Thai restaurant everywhere. Okay last but not least for the final and seventh round we got soups. Okay okay Tom Yung Goon. Let's get it. That is delicious. That was really good. Yeah wasn't too sweet. Some of them can be like too sweet. This is a tom ca. Tom ca. This came strong in a direction bro. Oh my god. This is too milky. It's too left and right for me man. It's not going straight for my palate so I'm gonna. Whoa this is weird. It's weird. Too creamy. Tom Yung Moo. Tom Yung Moo. Well after that I appreciate the little little meatballs of ground pork. Really? I'm going with the Tom Yung Moo. I agree. I've come to appreciate the OG Tom Yung Goon. Yep I would have to agree as well. That was really good. Often come down to these Thai uh the Thai battles. The Thai battles. As often come down we have Thai Randy Johnson. Thai Randy Johnson. Come on Gabe. Okay. Come on with the Tom Yung Moo. Yeah man. Okay. What was your guys' overall takeaways? You know obviously Thai food is probably one of my favorite cuisines to eat. There's so much more than Pad Thai but I can see why people love Pad Thai because even I missed it. After having all this Thai food and even some of these dishes were kind of Americanized but I think it just goes to show you the depth of Thai cuisine. I would say for myself uh you know there's been videos that we've done in the past where if you don't pick the right thing you might go wrong. Like you might go wrong but with this one I feel like you could get anything that we ate and you're still in a good space. Everything is within this Thai lane and pretty like similar to each other so and then also like Tan said man uh my love reignited for Pad Thai. I'm going back to the essence. I like Pad Thai. My favorite thing. Favorite. The rice but without anything else. Just the rice. That's how good the flavor of the rice. You know I'm gonna go with the uh the the the crispy garlic chicken man because uh thank you so much for watching that video and I think the goal of that was just to kind of inspire people and encourage people to go out and try dishes beyond what they're just comfortable with. Every time you go out try some and also to uh support your local businesses because that's really important during this time. Yes sir. Make sure to hit that like button click subscribe turn on your notifications and in the comments down below let us know what your favorite Thai dish is because I'm sure everybody out there has one even if it's Pad Thai it's all good and name one other cuisine that we got to make a crazy battle out of. I want to give a shout out to Richie, Tan, beyond butter chicken. Okay Richie threw it out there. All right guys leave it in the comments below uh thank you Richie for letting us use your set in your office uh Dave and Andrew from Fungro's and until next time we out. Peace. Distributing the sticky rice. Hey instead of breaking red it's breaking sticky rice. Oh man. Sticky rice. Do your Thai food supposed to be eating with your fingers? Uh it can be. Not the noodles but yeah like this this we could. And actually Thai people they don't use uh that many chopsticks.