Music

Philly’s next big Irish event.

Ask Frank Daly how the plans are going for the Philadelphia Fleadh—many acts on 4 stages in bucolic Pennypack Park on Saturday, June 22—and he’ll boil it down to one word. “Insane.”

“I’m not even kidding,” said Daly, front man for the popular Celtic rock group Jamison, when I caught up with him on the phone this week. “I didn’t realize how fragile all the pieces of this thing are.”

Can you say, Murphy’s Law, kids? First, the primo sound guy—he does Celtic Fest in Bethlehem and major rock shows—called to say he wasn’t sure he could pull this one off. (Crisis averted—turned out to be hard, but not impossible.) Then one of the sponsors backed out. (Crisis averted: the owner of Maggie’s on the Waterfront and Goodchild Repair Center stepped in—without being asked.) Final straw: The company providing the tents and the port-a-potties had the wrong date. (Crisis averted: They can do it on the 22nd.) “I thought, man, are you trying to give me a heart attack,” Daly said, laughing.

That’s right. He’s still laughing. Because in the end, he says, it will all work out. “If I thought about all the possible things that could go wrong that day I would never sleep at all. CJ (American Paddy and Jamison partner CJ Mills) and I keep each other sane and positive. We were sitting there the other night, all stressed out, and we suddenly said, do you realize what we’re doing here? This is really cool. So we cracked open a couple of beers, said ‘cheers’ and now let’s get back to it.”

Cool is the word for it. On the Celtic Rock stage, the Young Dubliners are headliners, though it’s likely the crowd will also be packed with fans of the local talent that includes Jamison, Blackthorn, Bogside Rogues, Galway Guild and Clancy’s Pistol. Hosting will be Dan Cronin of Chorus Communications, who is also a Celtic DJ and runs the Hair O’ The Dog gala, a event that has raised thousands of dollars for local nonprofits.

Over at the Sugarhouse Casino Trad Acoustic Stage, the John Byrne Band will be doing their Pogue’s Tribute Show, with the Ladeens, Seamus Kelleher and the Raymond Coleman Band performing. At noon, the Jameson Sister’s Terry Kane will be hosting a new tunes workshop at noon and hosting a session at 1 PM open to all local musicians. Marianne MacDonald, host of the WTMR 800AM radio show, “Come West Along the Road,” will be the trad stage emcee,

The Celtic Club Tent is for those whose taste veers to other musical genres—it’s a full day of DJs, including DJ Daily, DJ April, DJ AJ, DJ Ernesto, and Joey Catz.

On the Goodchild Repair Center American Ceili Stage you’ll be treated to performances by the Celtic Flame School of Irish Dance, the Cummins School of Irish Dance, the Pride of Erin, and, for a little American flare, demonstrations by teams from Action Karate. At 3 PM, you can also attend a workshop on Irish step dancing so you can do a little jigging yourself.

There are vendors, food, and bounce activities and face painting for the kiddies in the Leprechaun Green Kids Zone (“I let my 10-year-old girl name that,” explains Daly).

Daly expects a good sized crowd. “We’re already getting a lot of buzz,” he says. And he’s checked out the weather report. “Back in January I predicted it was going to be 83 degrees and partly cloudy and I looked at the extended weather report this week. It’s going to be 83 degrees and partly cloudy.”

Frank Daly is already better than the local stations at predicting the weather, so if he says it’s going to be a great time—and he does—you’d better believe him.

For more details or to buy tickets, go to the Philadelphia Fleadh website.

Gerry Timlin

In the Delaware Valley, his name is synonymous with Irish music, but what’s got Gerry Timlin really excited right now is an Italian guy who plays jazz. Not just any old guy—Vince Giordano and his 11-piece orchestra the Nighthawks, Grammy winners for their soundtrack for HBO’s hit series, Boardwalk Empire.

“He is fabulous, just fabulous,” says Timlin, who until about two years ago was owner of The Shanachie Restaurant and Pub in Ambler and is one of the movers and shakers behind the Ambler Arts and Music Festival, scheduled for June 14-15, on the borough’s main drag, Butler Avenue.

Giordano is the headliner for the two-day festival and he is quite a get. Giordano and the Nighthawks play twice a week at Sofia’s Restaurant, near the Edison Hotel in New York’s Times Square, but they headline away gigs like the Newport Jazz Festival, and Jazz at Lincoln Center. Giordano and the band have also played on more than half a dozen Woody Allen soundtracks, in Francis Ford Coppola’s film, “The Cotton Club,” Martin Scorsese’s “The Aviator,” and Sam Mendes’ film, “Revolutionary Road, as well as two other HBO presentations, “Grey Gardens” and “Mildred Pierce.”

It’s part of an eclectic mix of performers who will occupy two stages among vendors beer gardens, and art exhibits, including local favorites, rocker Tommy Conwell, the country-western band, 309 Express, singer-songwriter Craig Bickhardt, the McKendry Brothers, the King Brothers, party band Doc Freeman, cover band BKWG, and Jersey Shore favorites, Secret Service Band. The Trammps (“Disco Inferno”) will close out Saturday night with some R & B.

If you’re a former Shanachie denizen, you know Bickhardt, the McKendrys and the King Brothers as regulars at Timlin’s musical pub and you’re likely to hear at least some Irish music. “But the idea was to make it all-inclusive,” says Timlin, who still performs regularly solo and with partner of 40 years, Tom Kane, at Irish music venues on the East Coast.

Though Ambler has had an arts festival, this is the first year that music will be side-by-side with fine art, pottery, and jewelry makers. Timlin volunteered to help add the musical notes. “I thought this was something that could really help Ambler and I kept looking as my blueprint Bethlehem at what Musikfest and Celtic Fest have done for the Lehigh Valley.”

Most of the festival is free. Only the Giordano concert, which is being held at the Ambler Theater, is ticketed ($45). Parking is cheap ($5 no matter how long you stay). And some of Ambler’s best restaurants—and there are many—will be selling food street-fair style along with outdoor table service.

For more information, check out the festival website.

Philly’s next big Irish event.

Like many Irish-American musicians, Frank Daly, a Mayfair boy, grew up listening to Irish music. “My grandmother used to play the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem all the time,” recalls the lead vocalist for the popular Celtic rock group, Jamison. “I hated it.”

You didn’t see that coming, did you? Yet Daly’s story probably resonates with many Irish-Americans who were force-fed music—from interminable slow airs to diddly-die tunes—that couldn’t hold a candle to the rock (or, in Daly’s case, punk) they were hearing on the radio or watching on MTV.

Then, something happened to change his thinking. “I’ll tell you the moment when I said, ‘Wow, this is awesome.’ It was seeing the Pogues [the ‘80s Celtic band from London] play ‘White City.’ I remember watching and going, Oh. My. God. I bought the Pogue’s cassette and played it until it snapped and then I bought it again. It was like, Irish songs can be fun! And then, as I got older, I began to appreciate the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem, the Bothy Band, and Solas.”

That was, in part, the impetus for Daly and Jamison fiddler C.J. Mills, to launch American Paddy’s LLC—to lure those Irish Americans who had lost or never connected with their culture by setting it to a different beat.

Their first show was the very successful An American Celtic Christmas, featuring a Mrs. Murphy’s chowder of performers, from traditional and Celtic rock to hip-hop with some Irish step-dancing sprinkled in, held last December at Bensalem High School.

Their second production is on an even grander scale. The Young Dubliners are headlining The Philadelphia Fleadh (fleadh is an Irish word meaning festival) at the Ed Kelly Amphitheater in Pennypack Park in Philadelphia on June 22. There will be five different stages, each highlighting a different aspect of Irish culture, including Celtic rock, traditional music, and dance, as well as an international bagpipe event, sheepdog demonstrations (“yes, they’ll be bringing sheep,” Daly laughs) and traditional sessions and workshops. Right now, the bill also includes Jamison, Blackthorn, the Bogside Rogues, Galway Guild, The John Byrne Band, Raymond Coleman, and Seamus Kelleher, and seven DJs spinning all kinds of music. More is being added every day.

“The idea is that people who aren’t regularly exposed to the Irish culture and who are coming to see DJ Freezie because she’s great will see the ceili stage and think, hey, that’s awesome too and it becomes a cool segue into the Irish culture,” says Daly, who left his job as marketing director of the Kildare’s Pub chain in October last year to become a fulltime musician and entrepreneur.

He was inspired last year by visiting the Dublin, Ohio, Irish festival  which sprawls over 29 acres and draws 100,000 people from all over the country, and Bethlehem’s Celtic Classic, a three-day event in September. “There’s no reason why Philly can’t have the same thing,” says Daly. “Philadelphia is a great Irish American city, with the third or fourth largest Irish population in the country. I can foresee in four or five years this becoming a destination festival like those, where people are coming from out of town to attend.”

Big dreams? Maybe. But when three people started Bethlehem’s Celtic Classic in 1988, it drew 30,000 people, even though the temperatures dipped down into the 30s. Last year, more than a quarter of a million people showed up—many of them people who have kept the festival’s dates permanently on their calendars for decades.

Daly is hopeful, largely because of what he’s seen on the Irish music scene in Philadelphia. “CJ and I did [St. Patrick’s Day] parade benefits all throughout the city in March and we met a lot of people who want desperately to be part of the Irish community,” says Daly. “For some of them, this may be how they start.”

Tickets, which cost $18-$20, are on sale now and you can find out more at the Philadelphia Fleadh website.