When you have travelled the world as lead singer of a popular band and the time comes to hang up your travelling boots, what do you do for your next chapter? In Dave Farrell’s case, when family commitments meant that the rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle had to make way for a more settled, home-based life, he decided to open not one but two businesses in Cork.
The first, a restaurant in Douglas, opened nine years ago and is thriving, while the new endeavour, an indoor padel tennis business, has just opened its doors and is already flying.
Dave grew up in a musical family in Bishopstown, and he was mad about music from an early age. His band Rubyhorse formed in Colaiste an Spioraid Naoimh secondary school in 1988, and they put out their first album when they were 22 and toured it around Ireland.
The band went international when they signed to the Island Def Jam label, and Dave was 25 when they moved to America, originally basing themselves in Boston.
“We got to travel around the world, play music and have a laugh, and we had the best life experience you can imagine,” says Dave. “We didn’t get to Hawaii but we played in every other state, and had an incredible odyssey through North America over a 10-year period. It was a super experience.”
Highlights included a single that went top 20, and appearing on shows like the Late Show with David Letterman, Conan O’Brien and Good Morning America. “We got to do it with the guys we grew up with, so that’s what was so special about it,” Dave recalls. “We’d been playing together for so long, and to get to experience all of that as a kid was very special.”
As the band grew older, they began meeting partners and starting families, which as Dave realised, wasn’t conducive to the touring lifestyle. In his case, he met and fell in love with his wife Cat while he was on the road.
“My fantastic wife is an American girl from Chicago,” he says. “We met when we were doing an event for MTV and she was doing hair and makeup for the same event.”
After dating for a few years, Dave and Cat got married and then decided to move to Cork. This was partly because they were starting a family, and weren’t comfortable with the idea of there being security guards at their children’s future schools or metal detectors at the gates.
Luckily, it wasn’t too hard for Dave to persuade Cat to move across the ocean as they had come home to Cork for a few years at Christmas, and Cat had loved it here. “You know the way everyone’s having the time of their lives the week before Christmas?” Dave laughs. “Cat was like, ‘Geez, Ireland is the best country’.”
Dave and Cat now have two daughters, Luca (13) and Lola (10), and he also has a son, Jacob (24), from a previous relationship, whom he describes as “my rock”. Clearly a chip off the old block, Luca is currently appearing in The Everyman in Cinderella.
When Dave and Cat moved to Cork, he decided to do something with food as this was his passion after music. The thought of sitting behind a desk and being answerable to someone else didn’t appeal to him, so he knew he wanted to have his own business.
“I didn’t have any specialised qualifications, but I always loved making food, cooking food and eating it,” he says. “I figured I had to do something that I was passionate about because it wouldn’t feel like a job, so I got involved in the restaurant business. We opened a restaurant called 12 tables in Douglas Village, and have had a great old time with that.”
12 Tables opened nine years ago, and was designed to encapsulate the best qualities of Dave and Cat’s favourite haunts around the world.
“When I was travelling, I loved the neighbourhood bistros where you could sit at the bar and order a steak, a burger, or a really good bowl of pasta,” he says. “ A nice little casual, friendly neighbourhood hang-out, where there might be only one fish dish on, one burger, one really good steak dish, a pasta dish, and a nice vegetarian dish, with a nice little boutique wine list. That’s the place that I would want to go to, so that’s what we wanted to create and that’s what we built.”
Dave’s interest in the restaurant business was inspired by Todd English, a famous Boston restaurateur, who took a shine to the band and used to come to a lot of their gigs.
“I always gravitated towards him, because he had a very similar passion, just in a different field, and I wanted to know more about that world,” says Dave. “He invited me to the restaurant to see what kitchen life was like, and if I was in town and they had a big service on, I’d go in and stand in the corner and see what was going on.
“There were a lot of similar traits, let’s say, to a gig day, as in a band, you get there, you do your sound check, have a break and then the performance begins. In kitchens, they’re doing all the prep, there’s that hour break before service, and then the adrenaline’s pumping, and service starts and it’s like a performance. When the buzzer goes for the start of a service, you’re just on and there’s no room for error, and there’s intense pressure to get everything right.”
As if running a restaurant, doing gigs with Rubyhorse three or four times a year, and being a husband and dad isn’t enough to keep him busy, Dave has just opened a new padel indoor tennis business. It all began when his best friend from Bishopstown, Rory Dennis, was living in Portugal and came across the phenomenon of padel there.
“We travelled around and everywhere we went, there was just this incredible energy and sense of fun and enjoyment and interaction around padel,” he says. “We were instantly hooked, but we said if we were going to do it in Cork, we were going to do it really well.”
It took three years to get everything in place, but The Hive opened just before Christmas on Monahan Road and Dave is thrilled with it. He and Rory have transformed a 19,000 square foot warehouse into a state-of-the-art five-court indoor padel club, featuring wellness spaces, recovery rooms, social areas, a café and retail space.
“It’s an incredible facility,” he says. “I think that if you saw it in London, it wouldn’t look out of place and we’re so proud of it.”
For further information on 12 Tables, see www.12tables.ie, and follow The Hive on Instagram www.instagram.com/thehivepadel/
