The Eskies never get the credit they deserve. They sell out venues like Whelan's and The Button Factory with ease compared to many more fashionable contempotary Irish acts with promotional budgets and major label support. Yet, outside their hard-core fan base, they are veritable unknowns.

Having had to embrace and rely upon the DIY word of mouth culture to survive, The Eskies have entrenched themselves much further into the Irish music scene than most bands go. They believe in the community of artists that embraced them - a community that they now help to foster and maintain is worthy of being heard, and that if given a chance many Irish mainstream music fans would agree.

That spirit of wanting to be heard and appreciated stretches beyond their own music, so much so that they have set up the Trevor Beckway Cup, a project which invites Irish acts to video themselves recording their favourite song by an Irish artist in a bid to spread each artist to a wider audience.

The Eskies themselves fired the starting gun on The Trevor Beckway Cup by recording a version of Alozaina by the sadly defunct Cujo Family, after which they invited other Irish bands to follow suit.

"Trevor Beckway was the first person to ever do a cover of an Eskies song and upload it to YouTube, obviously when we seen it we were all buzzing and very flattered altogether" says lead singer Ian Bermingham. "We came up with the idea of having a cup as an excuse for us to do covers of songs by bands we love and to encourage people to do the same. It's very, very flattering when someone does a cover of a song you wrote.

The cup is meant to be a chance for people to share their version of a song they love and for bands and artists to see the effect their music has, how it resonates with people. The only rule is that the song has to be by an Irish band or artist.

It's just about appreciating people's songs - we've a lot of great songs in Ireland and they resonate with different people for different reasons. It's always interesting to see another person's interpretation of a song."

The winner will be presented with the Trevor Beckway Cup at the Button Factory on June 3rd and join The Eskies on stage to play the song too.

"We're going to pick our favourite one," says Bermingham, "it's already a tough one because there's a few beauts in there."

The Trevor Beckway Cup

Here's a selection of some of the videos and recordings entered into the Trevor Beckway Cup

Rob Kent covers Pretty Beast

Half of Bray covers The Cujo Family

Gav McCabe of The Cujo Family covers The Eskies

Jimmy Deface covers King Modo

Oki's Wagon covers The Hot Sprockets

The Trevor Beckway Cup will be presented to the winner live on stage when The Eskies play The Button Factory on June 3rd.