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Jeff Meade

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Having a Hot Time, Wish You Were Here

Not as long as we're around it doesn't.

Not as long as we're around it doesn't.

The unofficial theme of the annual Cape May AOH Irish Fall Festival in North Wildwood was global warming.

Well, actually, it was Wildwood warming.

It was so hot on Saturday, September 21, a crowd gathered and enviously watched a trainer give the Annheuser Busch Clydesdale horses their daily shower. “I wish he’d shoot some my way,” said one woman, sweat making rivulets from her hairline to her cheeks.

But that didn’t stop thousands of people from strolling up and down Old New Jersey Avenue in this small seaside town last weekend, looking for the best t-shirt slogan and bargain, buying curlicue mountains of butterfly fries (ruined with squirts of processed orange cheese liquid), green plastic glasses of Bud (a sponsor of the event), and ducking inside the music tent (which at least was opened on one side to entertain any wandering sea breezes) to hear some of the best Celtic bands on the east coast, including Paddy’s Well, the Bogside Rogues, Searson, Scythian, and Derek Warfield.

Local Celtic rockers Blackthorn hold a complementary event in Wildwood, the next town over and just a shuttle bus ride away, that kept the music rocking with electrifying fiddler Eileen Ivers, Albany, NY’s Jimmy Kelly Band, Black 47, Timlin and Kane, Raymond McGroary, 5 Quid, and Random Blond.

So what if all the performers left the stage looking like they’d just gotten out of the shower. So it was hot. No one really seemed to mind. It sure didn’t keep anybody home in the air conditioning, including the pipe and drum bands–one which came down from Binghamton, NY–to show their stuff (in those really warm costumes, hugging those bags of hot air) to honor the late piper Brian Riley, who died of a massive heart attack several years ago. On Saturday, his family donated a defibrillator in his name to the Wildwood Recreation Center.

Though one T-shirt promised, “What happens here, stays here,” www.irishphiladelphia.com  was there for the entire weekend. Since a picture is worth 1,000 words, check out the photographic evidence of what happened there, right here.

September 25, 2007 by
News

Was It Fun in Wildwood? Shore ‘Nuff!

Paul Moore pours it on.

Paul Moore pours it on.

Exactly how Irish are you?

In North Wildwood, it came down to a true test of loyalty.

On stage in the main music tent at the annual Cape May County AOH Irish Fall Festival, Paul Moore and Paddy’s Well were pounding out all the standards. As usual, they sounded pretty wonderful.

At the same time, the Eagles game  was playing on a big screen off in a corner. You know, the thrilling blowout in which the Birds smacked the Lions around and sent them mewling like cowed little kittens back to Detroit?

Paddy’s Well or the Eagles? Irish music or football? Hmmmmmmmmm ….

Seriously? It was no contest. I won’t pretend that some people weren’t paying attention to the on-field heroics of Donovan McNabb and company. (And what was with those nightmarish uniforms? They looked like Mr. Blackwell’s LSD nightmare.) But it was way too hard to resist Moore’s bunch. So hardly anyone bothered. Instead, they crowded ‘round the stage, slurped their beers, sang along, and danced. I seem to remember a lot of unrestrained smiling, too.

Sunday was also the day of the big festival parade, this year with young singer Timmy Kelly as the grand marshal, along with a visit by those imposing feathery-hooved Budweiser Clydesales. With temps in the mid-80s, a cool offshore breeze and a brilliant blue sky, it was pretty much perfect parade-watching weather. So Surf Avenue was lined with kids and grannies, all decked out in their neon green fuzzy hats and shamrock-shaped sunglasses, and all of them obviously enjoying the pipe bands, the multiple leprechauns, and one of the last, best days at the shore.

Weren’t there? (Watching the game??? What kind of Mick are you?)

Check out our photos.

  • Saturday action
  • Sunday’s finale
    • September 25, 2007 by
    Dance, Music

    It Was a Grand Party

    Lunasa's Kevin Crawford gets crazy with his bodhran.

    Lunasa's Kevin Crawford gets crazy with his bodhran.

    At one point on Saturday night, Dennis Gormley, fiddling with the mike on the Fireside Stage at Philly’s Irish Center, leaned over and expressed his thanks to the Philadelphia Ceili Group and its Irish Music Festival director Frank Malley  for “throwing this great party.”

    “And inviting all our friends,” added his wife, Kathy DeAngelo, from behind her harp.

    The duo, who have been performing as McDermott’s Handy for nearly three decades, could look out at the audience and see rows of familiar faces. But even if you didn’t know a soul, you would have thought you were among your closest friends at an intimate little party for hundreds. That’s the atmosphere of the Philadelphia Ceili Group’s annual Irish Festival, which ran for five days from September5-9.

    You could have mingled with legends.

    If you had stayed late on Friday night, for example, after the performance by the incredible Irish group, Lunasa, you could have shared a pizza with the band and piper Tim Britton, a former Delaware Valley resident, who opened for them.

    On Saturday, you might have been in the food line behind the towering form of Breanndan Begley, the Kerryman who had just mesmerized the crowd with his emotional singing. Or struck up a conversation with Sligo-born Kevin Henry, a venerable flutist and piper, now of Chicago, who wasn’t going to have a bite until he found “herself”–his wife, who was somewhere in the crowd.

    If you hadn’t brought your own dance partner for Irish radio personality Marianne MacDonald’s House Party on Saturday night, you didn’t have to worry about being a wallflower. Someone could be convinced to dance a set or two with you–or even teach you the steps in the hall. It might have been Ed Reavy, son of the legendary fiddler, who, with his wife, Mary, are the Fred and Ginger of Irish set dancing.

    And you could have seen four-time all Ireland fiddler Brendan Callahan perform superhumanly, fiddling for the Irish dancers, playing with a trio, sitting in on sessions. . .admitting only once on Saturday night that he might be “a little tired.”

    The 31st festival opened on Wednesday night with an evening of poetry and prose, read by local Irish literary lights including Father John McNamee, pastor of St. Malachy’s Parish in North Philadelphia and the author of four books, and his friend, Father Michael Doyle of Sacred Heart Parish in Camden, NJ, author of the book, “It’s a Terrible Day, Thanks Be to God.” On Thursday, local singers including Terry Kane, Rosaleen McGill, Eugenia Brennan, Sharon Sachs, and John Winward, joined Canadian sean nos singer Catherine Crow and, from the Midwest, Brian Hart, the 28-year-old singer and dancer who is the only American ever to win an All-Ireland title for singing at the Irish Fleadh Cheoil for the Circle of Song.

    The festival ended with a set dance event on Sunday.

    We were there for mostly everything, as these photos will prove. If you couldn’t make it this year, mark it on your calendar for next year. It’s a party, and everyone is invited.

    Relive the festivities here:

    September 10, 2007 by
    News

    Green Lane Scottish – Irish Festival 2007

    Genna Gillespie of Burning Bridget Cleary

    Genna Gillespie of Burning Bridget Cleary

    There was Nessie, or an apparently benign and far less camera-shy version of the legendary Loch Ness Monster, afloat on the appropriately greenish Green Lane Reservoir. In a grove just off the lake, Highland dancers and Irish dancers took turns on a makeshift stage. In a nearby field, kilt-clad athletes risked sunstroke and hernias as they attempted to toss the caber—something like a telephone pole. And from across the reservoir rose the sound of the pipes and, farther off, fiddles. (Oh yes, and the heavy, oily tang of frying fish and chips.)

    This was the last day of the Green Lane Scottish-Irish Festival, a perfect sun-drenched finish to three days of Celtic merry-making in Upper Montgomery County. It’s hard to imagine a better end to the annual gathering of the area’s many clans.

    If you missed it, no worries. We’ve got the photos:

    September 9, 2007 by
    Sports

    Irish Heritage Day at the Phillies

    Vince Gallagher gets a Phanatic smooch.

    Vince Gallagher gets a Phanatic smooch.

    There were no wardrobe malfunctions. No American Idol-esque vocal calisthenics. No tortured operatics.

    What there was, was Vince Gallagher, the well-known Philadelphia Irish musician, radio host and president of the Philadelphia Irish Center, standing at home plate at Citizens Bank Park and belting out the National Anthem in his Donegal lilt, singing it straight out, and doing it nearly flawlessly. (There was one little flub early on, but who doesn’t mix up the lines of the National Anthem?)

    And with that, as the saying goes: Play ball!

    Vince’s performance capped off the pregame activities at Irish Heritage Day at the Phillies, a Saturday promotion that included performances by the Bogside Rogues, along with the Cummins and Lynn Irish dance schools. Brian Morris, former pitcher for the Irish National Baseball Team, tossed the first pitch, and John Fitzgerald, the film-maker who documented the team’s rocky road to success in “The Emerald Diamond,” caught it. (With the Philly Phanatic serving as umpire.)

    And, amazingly, the Phillies won. (Gallagher friend Jim McGill later suggested that the Phils adopt Vince as their Kate Smith.) Anyway, maybe there really is something to this hokey “luck of the Irish” business.

    It was all great fun. See for yourself.

    September 8, 2007 by
    Music

    How Lúnasa Makes Music

    There’s an old saying attributed to that funny old German dude Otto Von Bismarck which he used as a way of explaining the often ugly process of governing: “Laws are like sausages. It’s better not to see them being made.” (The “Iron Chancellor” was always coming out with knee-slappers like that.)

    Unless you are unnaturally patient (or musically masochistic), you might say much the same thing about how the top Irish band Lúnasa makes music. It’s a painstaking process indeed, according to Lúnasa flutist Kevin Crawford.

    Speaking by phone from his home outside the town of Ennis in County Clare, Crawford says that, before the band began recording their most recent CD, Sé, they began with what he calls a “short list” of tunes. By “short,” Crawford means about 90 or so.

    “We brought that list to the table a good six to eight months before we even went in to record the tunes,” Crawford says. “We offered the list to (guitarist) Paul (Meehan) and to (bass player) Trevor (Hutchinson). Generally, Paul and Trevor troll through the tunes we give them, keeping the ones that work and throwing out the rest. They come back with at least half of them. From there we just start whittling it down. We get that list down to about 30 tunes and before you know it you have an album.”

    If you’ve heard Sé—pronounced “shay,” it’s Irish for “six”—or any of the five other Lúnasa recordings, you’d have to agree that all the fuss is worth it. The music of Lúnasa is brilliantly melodic, but what really sets it apart is its boundless rhythmic adventurousness. Crawford and colleagues have an affinity for mind-bending time signatures. They have a rare talent for bending and blending tunes together in ways that they really weren’t meant to go.

    Developing that unique sound was always the plan, says Crawford: “It was always the case that we wanted it to be slightly different. We had all done different things. We decided that, when we came together, we wanted to try out a new approach. It was to give an equal share to both melody and rhythm.”

    Maintaining that balance translates into an awful lot of work.

    “We do spend an awful lot of time sourcing tunes and trying to figure out whether they’re going to fit the jigsaw,” Crawford says. “A lot gets discarded. We do actually drive ourselves crazy looking for the correct tunes. We’ve gotten more skilled at it over the last 10 years we’ve been working.”

    “Skilled” doesn’t half describe Lúnasa’s virtuosity.

    Find out yourself at the 33rd Annual Philadelphia Ceili Group Festival Friday, Sept. 7, starting at 7:30 p.m., at the Philadelphia Irish Center, Carpenter and Emlen Streets, in the Mount Airy neighborhood of Philadelphia. Tim Britton will open. Tickets are $25 ($27 at the door).

    September 6, 2007 by
    News

    Top 10 Things NOT to Do at an Irish Music Event

    As we approach the beginning of the 33rd Annual Philadelphia Ceili Group Irish Festival, we thought it might be helpful to explain some of the basic rules of Irish music etiquette for the uninitiated (with a tip of the hat to David Letterman).

    From the home office in Horseleap, County Offaly, the official Irish Philadelphia Top 10 Things Not to Do at an Irish Music Event:

    1. Flick your lighter and yell “Free Bird!”
    2. Sing “di-dee-di-dee-di-dee-di” just like the guys on “Whose Line Is It, Anyway?”
    3. Ask, “Is that a tin whistle in your pocket, or are you just glad to see me?
    4. Yodel along to everything
    5. The wave
    6. To everyone you run into, say, “Top o’ the marnin’ to ye” just like Barry Fitzgerald
    7. After every verse of “Si Bheag Si Mhor,” sigh loudly, look at your watch and ask: Is it over yet?”
    8. The Electric Slide
    9. When singing “She Moved through the Fair,” croon “ohhhhh, baby, baby” in a Barry White voice
    10. Play the bodhran

    August 29, 2007 by
    Music

    “Michael Black” (Compass)

    To start with, Michael Black’s eponymous first CD is produced by the supremely gifted Celtic guitarist John Doyle. Doyle also plays on several tracks.

    Add to Doyle, this supporting cast: Seamus Egan of Solas, Philadelphia bassist and veteran setman Chico Huff, fiddle master Liz Carroll, Kentucky Celtic fiddler Liz Knowles, Solas alum and accordion virtuoso John Williams, and Appalachian fiddler (think “Cold Mountain”) Dirk Powell. Oh, yes, and throw in a few members of the unnaturally gifted Black family, with backing vocals by Mary, Frances, Shay and Martin. Additional backing vocals are by Eoghan Scott, and Danny and Roisin O’Reilly.

    So how is the album? Ummmm, OK, I guess … you know, if you like genius and an overabundance of talent and things of that sort.

    At the center of it all, of course, is Michael Black. During a week in which we noted the passing of Tom Makem, I found myself listening to this CD and thinking that the tradition truly lives on in the form of so many younger traditional artists—but it is clearly alive and well on Black’s work on this album.

    Black’s vocal style compares favorably to that of Makem and the Clancys. (There are times, too, when he sounds vaguely like Harry Chapin.) In any event, Black’s story-songs, a couple with anti-war undercurrents— “The Deserter,” and “When the Boys Are on Parade”—would have fit right in at the old Newport Folk Festival.

    It’s not all serious, though. Take, for example, the loopy “My Father Loves Nikita Kruschev,” a tune performed by Makem himself on an old Polydor album, “In the Dark Green Woods.” “Billy O’Shea” is a great sing-along song—and I guarantee that you will sing along to this one in the car.

    “Michael Black” might be the best ‘60s Irish folk album released in the early part of the 21st century. Tommy Makem can rest easy. The tradition is in able hands.

    August 10, 2007 by