The gang at the Bean.
Since April 1995, if you wanted to hear or play Irish music in South Jersey, the Three Beans coffeehouse in Haddonfield was your cup o’ Joe.
That’s about to change. The Three Beans is losing its lease and, on May 21, one of the longest-running sessions in the Delaware Valley is moving to new digs—the Coffee Garden, at 57 East Kings Highway in nearby Audubon.
Kathy DeAngelo, who with husband Dennis Gormley has been moderating the musical get-together at Three Beans since April 1995, notes that it’s not the first time the session has had to move. The session has been filling all the available seats of the cozy lounge of the “the Bean” for so long, it’s hard to remember that it was ever anywhere else. But it was. “We were doing the session at other places before that—for 3 or 4 years,” she says. (One of those places was Katie O`Brien`s in Haddonfield.) “We’re undoubtedly the longest continuously running session in New Jersey, and probably the Delaware Valley.”
The new place, like the Three Beans, is unlike most other traditional music session in that the strongest brew on tap might be Columbian supremo. Gormley sees this as an advantage over noisy bars. “Because this place is another coffee house,” he says, “we don’t have to worry about being in a place where there are four TV sets on the wall.”
So the good news is: The music will go on. The sad news is: It just won’t be in the comfy confines of the Three Beans, home to a harp case full of cheering memories and good times. Gormley recalls with fondness all the great musicians who have passed through, including the legendary Eugene O’Donnell, tenor banjo phenom Angelina Carberry and button accordion wizard Martin Quinn, and world-class harpers Grainne Hambly and Billy Jackson.
Marie Ely, who has played whistle and flute in the South Jersey session since Katie O’Brien’s (including a stint when the session took refuge in a church basement), says the Three Beans session started small, and grew. “The first session at the Bean consisted of Dave Field and me. Kathy and Dennis had a gig,” she says. “We maybe had four pieces in common and were comfortable enough playing two of them.”
Compared to the bar, Ely says, “The Bean was a homier atmosphere. They were very accepting of our session as compared to Katie’s, where, toward the end, we had to compete with karaoke night.”
May 14 will be mark the last session at Three Beans. But to help you preserve the memories, we offer a photo essay and two videos.
Watch videos of music sessions.
