If you were a band and you had planned a tour, and that tour was scheduled to start in New England roughly at about the time the entire region was slammed by record amounts of snow, you might curse your luck.
Not FullSet, the incredibly hot, award-winning band that rocked the Philadelphia Irish Center at last September’s Philadelphia Ceili Group Concert. They sold out their first gig at The Burren in Somerville, Mass., playing to a packed house. A few nights later at the Barre Opera House in Barre, Vt., it was another big night.
“We sold it out, 800 seats,” says fiddler Michael Harrison. “We were delighted to be coming to a place we’d never come before, and we appreciate the effort people had to go through to get to the venue.”
When you find a band that exciting, evidently you’ll go through almost anything to hear them.
FullSet is that exciting. The band’s tour began just days after winning the Irish Music Awards top traditional group. Awards aren’t new to the six-member group. In 2012, the band won the Best New Group Award from Irish American News, and Best Newcomer in Bill Margeson’s Live Ireland Awards. The year before, they recorded another win: the RTÉ/RAAP Breakthrough Annual Music Bursary Award.
All of the members are steeped in traditional music: Harrison, together with: Janine Redmond, button accordion; Eamonn Moloney, bodhran; Teresa Horgan, flute and vocals; Martino Vacca, uillean pipes; and Andrew Meeney, guitar. They’re all quite young, and they absolutely put their own unique spin on things—jigs and reels played at terrifying speeds—but still, but they try to remember where the music came from.
“We all bring our influences from our own musical backgrounds, and we come together and see how we can all mix it together,” says Harrison. “It’s quite traditional in that we try to remember our roots that all we came from. It’s good to kind of honor that. We do have the foundation there, really, but we try to bring something different to it. I suppose there’s a bit of a spark on stage when we all come together. It keeps us fresh. It makes every performance special for the audience.”
FullSet does its best to keep the customers satisfied, certainly not in any manipulative commercial way. The good vibes all flow just as naturally as the good music. “We develop a relationship with the audience onstage. We play the music we like and we hope it’s the music our audience likes. We try to bring an element of surprise with the dancing and the odd bit of storytelling. We like to make sure they can close their eyes and think they’re in Ireland.”
A week from now, local audiences will get a chance to appreciate both the music and the vibes when FullSet returns to town in a Philadelphia Ceili Group-sponsored concert Friday night at the Philadelphia Irish Center. The show starts at 8. (Follow info on the Ceili Group Facebook page.)
Harrison says the band is looking forward to the trip. “It’s great to be returning. We’re really looking forward to it. We were so well taken care of by the people at the Irish Center. It’s gonna be great to come back and meet all those lovely people again.”
Harrison can only wish for one more thing. He says with a laugh, “We hope we will be getting better weather when we get to Philadelphia.”
