Tim MacGabhann’s Rory Gallagher – Live! From the Hotel of the Dead is a poetic, psychedelic bar – crawl of the soul a multi – faceted conjuring with the seminal pan – Atlantic Ireland – to – the – Americas cultural criss – crossing. Sections spoken by the titular musician, riffing on the heroes and figures of America’s blues tradition, also talk back to the ‘folk process’ of loanings and stealings that link Europe’s folk music to that of the Americas, while other voices seem to slip in and out of the poem, altering our loci in place and time and consciousness – just who’s heartbreak is it we’re dealing with here, we ask, the poet’s remarkable scope and ambition held in supreme control even as we descend, hungover, once again.