Celtic Thunder fans: Are you ready for an encore?
CT’s young tenor, 25-uear-old Emmet Cahill, is returning to The Commodore Barry Club (The Irish Center) in Philadelphia on Monday, February 8, with pianist Seamus Brett for part two of his solo tour before rejoining the world’s most famous Irish boy group. He’s looking forward to it, and not just because of the warm welcome he got when he was there in May 2015.
“When I stop in a place like the Irish Center I genuinely feel at home,” says Cahill, speaking on the phone from his home in Westmeath. “A lot of the people have Irish accents and they’re sitting at the bar drinking Guinness. There’s a great community at the Commodore Barry Club. A lot of people hung around after the show at the bar and it was great craic.”
He hasn’t been sitting with his feet up since his summer tour of the US. He came back for gigs in October and December, including one in New York with CT’s other Emmett but with two Ts, Emmett O’Hanlon with tw. In January, he took part in the opening ceremonies at Dublin Castle for Ireland’s year-long commemoration of The Easter Rising of 1916, an armed rebellion against British rule. While the Irish, outnumbered and outgunned, surrendered and many the rebellion’s leaders were executed, those who survived helped lay the groundwork for an independent Irish state in 1922.
He sang a solo of the song, “Cavan Girl,” as a tribute to Irish arts, heritage and Gaeltacht minister Heather Humphreys , who was elected to the Dail, the lower house of Ireland’s legislature, representing Cavan and Monaghan .
He was also in the studio recording a new solo album, the songs from which he’ll be debuting during his tour this spring. Among the treasures – his rendition of “The West’s Awake,” a song linked to the Easter Rising that contains these lyrics:
“But, hark! a voice like thunder spake,
The West’s awake! the West’s awake!
Sing, Oh! hurrah! let England quake,
We’ll watch till death for Erin’s sake.”
“It’s a beautiful old folk song everyone in Ireland loves, but it’s not really performed much, “ said Cahill. “It’s my dad’s song, one he always used to sing . Of course, I’ll be doing it with a 60-piece orchestra behind me [on the CD].”
You may also have caught Cahill in “The Bloody Irish,” a play about 1916, on PBS. It aired in October on WHYY in the Philadelphia area and is likely to be in reruns over the course of the year. View Emmet’s TV interview about the show.
He promises some revelations of new projects in the works when he comes to Philadelphia. And he also promises that, like his last show, this one will be “a sing-along.”
“You won’t get away with it—you have to sing along when you turn up!” he laughs.
Tickets for the show, which starts at 7:30 PM, are $30 and available here. For $45, you can participate in the meet-and-greet at 6 PM. The Irish Center is located at 6815 Emlen Street, Philadelphia. It’s directly across the street from the Carpenter Lane SEPTA train station.
