Today we have our first guest! Joy Cassidy O’Keeffe is a bit of a celebrity around Galway. She is a Jazz singer, busker, and has a past life in interior decorating.

We begin our conversation with Joy’s inspiration of the alternative folk she met in her early travels, her journey into becoming “alternative” and how she wound up with a bald head.

We discuss walking the line between creative expression and being a professional, which leads us into tattoos.

Joy talks about the worst pain for a woman, how she commemorated it with her first tattoo and how knowing that pain gave her the courage to step into the world of busking.

I’ve known Joy a long time, and conversations like these can really remind you how there’s still so much you don’t know, even about your closest friends.

We lament together about the pain of calf tattoos. Spud shares his calf tattoo experience and its various meanings.

Joy talks about how her tattoos, while very meaningful to her, they are also very obvious. There’s not a lot of hidden meanings in her tattoos.

We take the opportunity to give a PSA about tattoo etiquette. The fundamentals of it are, DO NOT TOUCH people without their consent.

Joy shares about one of her best friends, Cat, who was in a coma for months, and how staying at Cat’s hospital beside for months ultimately brought her back to Galway after leaving for Waterford in 2020.

We discuss our chosen family bonds and Joy talks about resilience and her tipping point with her mental health and how she “bounces back” from negative circumstances and is able to reinvent herself through accountability and the radical ownership of her sh!t.

We discuss discernment, what it means to be a good friend, and what it means to have thick skin and be yourself unapologetically.