Second Cup Cafe: Rubyhorse

Rubyhorse hails from Cork City, Ireland, but currently call Boston their home. They have just released their album (Island Records) "Rise" and play selections for The Saturday Early Show's Second Cup Café.

For Rubyhorse, a band of five, leaving Cork City for Boston, Mass. was an enormous gamble.

The rock quintet arrived in Boston with a combined total of $1,000. They soon played their first gig in the back room of an Irish pub named Burren and became their Thursday night show for 60 weeks.

"The first week," says Gordon Ashe (drums), "we had four or five people there. By the end of it, people were arriving in the afternoon to get in."

The band released a CD (the now sold-out How Far Have You Come?), picked up three Boston Music Awards ("Best Live Band", "Best New Act "and "Best Male Vocalist") and embarked on three nationwide tours, which led to a record deal. Their gamble paid off.

In 1997, they were crafting their songs in a meat factory on the outskirts of Cork City. Five nights a week, the band would gather in a small, damp room while meat, chiefly bacon, was flavored in adjacent rooms. Now they are touring the country, and played on the radio all over the U.S. and making national television appearances.

The late George Harrison made contributions to their music. In the song "Punchdrunk," which is considered Rubyhorse's anthem, Joe Philpott (guitar) says, "We had recorded a demo version and it just felt there was something missing… some part. We tried various instruments and it just wasn't right. We sent him a copy of the song through a mutual friend and we got a call back to say that he loved the song and that he'd love to play on it, so we sent the reels over to a studio in England and he put his part down. We were mixing in Miami when we received the tapes and it just blew us all away. He finished off the song. It was just a beautiful, beautiful part. It was the biggest honor that we've ever received and probably will ever receive."