THE FORMER Kinks singer-songwriter Ray Davies is to play a concert on Friday night to raise funds for a small national school in Co Cork which his daughter attends.
Davies, one of the most influential recording artists in history, agreed at short notice to the one-off concert in The White Lady Hotel in Kinsale. The hotel is hosting the event free of charge.
Davies’s daughter Eva is in sixth class in Ballinadee National School which is between Kinsale and Bandon.
She appeared in public with him when he accepted a CBE from Queen Elizabeth II for his services to music in March 2004 just months after he was shot in the leg by a mugger in New Orleans.
The school has 116 pupils and five teachers and is desperately short of space. The remedial teacher is based in a converted cupboard.
It has received €178,000 from the Department of Education for two new classrooms which have been built. However, the school needs to raise €45,000 to pay the builder for a new remedial/ resource room which has also been completed.
Principal Alice Kingston said she was “gobsmacked” when Davies agreed to do the concert just a fortnight ago.
“He visits the school every time he comes over and he told me that if he could do anything to help, he would,” she said. “I filed it away in the back of my mind. We really needed to build this room and money is tight in a recession, so I rang him in desperation.
“He asked me to leave it with him. Then he rang me back and told me he could do it.”
Yesterday, Davies released an album of choral versions of his most famous songs including Days, Waterloo Sunset and All Day and All of the Night, but did not request any publicity for the event in Kinsale and it is not listed on his website.
“He told us that he did not want a big fuss and he’d prefer to do it quietly and we took him at his word,” Mrs Kingston said. “But then, when we found the tickets weren’t selling, we realised that nobody knew about it. It is a great coup for us and we want Kinks fans to know about it.”
Davies will play with local guitarist Bill Shanley. Tickets are €40 and can be purchased by ringing the hotel on 021 4772737.
Capacity for the event is being kept at 400 and the school is hoping to raise €16,000 from it.
