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CD Review: The Immigrant and the Orphan

The John Byrne Band/ Photo by Lisa Chosed

A few years ago, not too long after the release of his first, critically acclaimed CD, “After the Wake, “ singer-songwriter John Byrne was assembling a playlist of new songs for a second when something happened that altered both his professional and personal path. It’s happened to all of us. Life intervened, in this case like a series of violent microbursts.

“I don’t think there was anything wrong with the songs,” he said not long ago, sitting in the livingroom of the Fishtown row home the Dublin native shares with his wife, Dorothy, and rescue dog, Frankie. “But then life took a few twists and turns and I suddenly realized I had more important things to write about.”

Over the past three years, he turned those more important things into the songs that make The John Byrne Band’s soon-to-be-released third CD, “The Immigrant and the Orphan,” such an emotional feast.

He runs through the litany of misfortunes, not all of which have been converted to lyrics: “I had an accident [playing indoor soccer] and broke my hip. I had a business setback. My Dad got sick. Dorothy and I were trying to have a baby—we were going through procedures every month which was like having another mortgage—and we went through a miscarriage which I now know is something that happens to a lot of people.”

It was author Anais Nin who said, “We write to taste life twice, once in the moment and once in retrospection.” John Byrne had a couple of years that he might not have wanted to taste again even in retrospection, but he did for this new release.

For his ailing father, whom he often calls “the original John Byrne,” he wrote “Sing on Johnny,” a modern day folk ballad with lyrics that find echoes in Dylan Thomas’s poem to his own father, “Do not go gentle into that good night.”

“Sing on, Johnny there’s a war ahead, sing on Johnny, there’s a battle ahead, when the wind blows ill just take a deep breath. Sing on Johnny in the salty wind, ‘cause you can’t get to heaven in a sinking ship.”

And he wrote two songs about a subject rarely explored in popular music, the complicated grief and heartache of infertility and miscarriage. “I thought it was something that needed to be written—for me,” said Byrne. While the lyrics may open a barely closed wound for those who’ve gone through it, the songs proved to be healing for him. “I’m a very private person in general, but as a writer the only way you can be really, really good and touch people is to get at the very raw nerve of some things.”

What he didn’t want to do is upset his wife. “I talked to Dorothy and said if I record these songs I’m going to play them live, and if I play them live I’m going to tell the story, at least initially, are you okay with that? Are you able to do it? If not, I’m going to have to rethink it.’”

Dorothy, who is usually found handling the band’s merchandise at concerts, was okay with it. Byrne has already played the songs at his ballad session at Fergie’s Pub and at the band’s sold-out CD preview concert at the Tin Angel.

“When we were at Fergie’s, I sang “Betsy Ross Bridge,” which we went over many times when we were getting fertility treatments in Camden. [Bandmate]Maura [Dwyer] said to me, how can you sing that song? The thing is, once you write it and use it to get through, rather than having an emotional response you step back from it. Then once you record it and play it enough times, it becomes a song that’s not just for you anymore. The more you play it, the more people start to hear it, the song gains another meaning, the one other people put into it. It becomes a shared experience, not a single experience, but one that many people have had.

That is not to say that every song on the new CD comes from personal experience. “Diamond and 4th,” a catchy melody and “a warped ass story I had in my head” is about a man who meets up with an old flame and thinks the fire might be rekindling—until she asks him for money. “There’s plenty of autobiography in that song, but no, my ex is not a hooker,” he says, laughing.

While Byrne is a fine musician and singer and has surrounded himself with a group of top musicians (multi-instrumentalist Andrew Jay Keenan, who also performs and records with Philly’s Amos Lee; fiddler-cellist Maura Dwyer; multi-instrumentalist Rob Shaffer; Dorie Byrne, who is no relation and who sings and plays everything from accordion to trombone; drummer Walt Epting; and Vince Tampio, who plays bass and trumpet), he is first and foremost a writer. “A lyricist looking for a tune, but I think I’ve gotten much better at the tunes,” he says.

He does share credit for one song on the new CD, a provocative break-up song called “Lie to You.” The tune came from his brother, Damien, “my favorite person in the world,” who had written different lyrics. Byrne tinkered with them, relying on the memory of a trip he took with an ex during which he realized that it just wasn’t going to work out.

While you may pick out parts of John Byrne’s life in his new songs, what you won’t be hearing are Irish tunes. The John Byrne Band got its start as a Celtic folk ensemble and even produced an Irish folk CD a year ago, thanks to fans across the country who were clamoring to take home some of the songs they’d heard during the band’s concerts.

“That helped us get a lot of Irish festival things, but what’s good about those songs is that people have heard us playing them and have followed us into our original stuff,” says Byrne. And it is clearly important to him as a songwriter to have fans hungering for his creative endeavors, and not just a novel arrangement of a favorite Irish trad or folk tune. “I’m not complaining,” he insists. “It’s gotten us on stage at the TLA and other great stages to open up for the big Irish bands [The Saw Doctors, The Young Dubliners, Gaelic Storm, Finbar Furey, Lunasa, Dervish, Luka Bloom, The Irish Tenors, to name a few]. It’s always, hey, let’s get the Irish guy.” He laughs.

Another departure for Byrne: For this new CD, he’s doing something he vowed never to do, which is use crowd-sourcing. He set up a Kickstarter campaign to pay for last half of the production costs. “I thought long and hard about it because we’ve generally paid for it ourselves, through CD sales, but it takes a while,” he explains. “I’ve never been afraid to put it all in myself because I believe in the album. . . But I was talking to Dorothy, who works for the Philadelphia Orchestra, and so much of her job is working with the patrons who give money to the orchestra. A large percentage of their money comes from these gifts. It’s how the arts have to run.”

He had also learned from an industry insider that there are people who use Kickstarter as a way to spot new talent and worthy projects “to get behind.” It seemed like a smart move. It still has a week to go and needs only a little more than $1,000 to hit its goal. You can donate here and get your preview CD.

Byrne is certainly no stranger to taking chances. A year after the band’s first CD, “After the Wake” debuted and started to get airplay locally at WXPN and around the country, he quit his teaching job to pursue music fulltime. Of course, he held on to his part-time bartending gig at Kelliann’s Bar and Grill in Spring Garden. The arts don’t pay that well.

“The money hasn’t changed for gig in a long time,” he says wistfully. “After the recession, luxury items went by the wayside a little bit and music is a luxury. Still, there are ways of making a living at it. You definitely have to hit the road.”

The Band has crisscrossed the country, picking up fans in the Midwest and New England, and in the pubs and venues in Ireland they hit when conducting tours for American music lovers.

But no matter what happens, Byrne says, he’ll have achieved his goal. “The only thing I’m really, really afraid of is regret,” he says. “I have some regrets of the things I’ve done and not done. I wish now that I’d pursued soccer a little harder. I regret taking defeats and letdowns too hard. I know I couldn’t be a happier person in later years if I didn’t give this a shot, a 100% shot. I can handle failure. I can totally handle failure. Not everything I’ve done has gone well. But if I can walk away and say I gave it the best I’ve got, that will be my success.”

“The Immigrant and the Orphan,” which is due for release September 19, is unlikely to fall into the “not gone well” column. John Byrne may be raising the bar on what he considers success.
You can hear The John Byrne Band on Sunday, August 16, during the Celtic Afternoon at the Philadelphia Folk Festival in Schwenksville. The CD release party for The Immigrant and the Orphan is on September 19 at the World Café Live, featuring Citizens Band Radio. Tickets are available on the WCL website and from the band.

August 6, 2015 by Denise Foley

News, People

RIP Jim McLaughlin, 1948-2015

Jim McLaughlin

When Bob McLaughlin was signing the visitor book at St. Ignatius Nursing Home in Havertown one day not long ago, he said he couldn’t help paging through the list of the people who had come to visit his brother, Jim, who was dying of a malignant brain tumor.

“There were hundreds and hundreds of names,” he told the more than 100 people who gathered in the St. Joseph University Chapel on Tuesday morning to say goodbye to Jim McLaughlin, who died on July 24, just 8 months after his diagnosis.

“There were so many, the man sitting behind the desk said to me, ‘Is he an important guy?’ “ Bob McLaughlin paused. “I said, ‘Yes he is.’”

Over the next 20 minutes, Bob McLaughlin made it clear that he wasn’t referring to anything on his brother’s resume, though it was impressive. Despite his diminutive size, Jim McLaughlin was a wide receiver for Drexel Hill’s Msgr. Bonner High School team. He remained a Bonner booster all his life, becoming part of the Bonner “Mafia” that helped another Bonner grad, Bill McLaughlin (no relation), start the Irish American Business Chamber and Network in 1999. “He really helped me enormously in those early days,” recalled Bill McLaughlin. “He joined the board early on and started recruiting all the Bonner guys he knew to join. That’s how we started.”

He also stayed true to his college. Jim McLaughlin graduated in 1970 from St. Joseph’s University, where he was class president his first two years. A clue to his character: He abandoned the try at a third term after his mother died, leaving four of her seven children still at home, including the youngest, Mary, who was a toddler. When his family called, he dropped everything to be there for them, often, as many learned at his funeral, in exceptional ways.

He remained an avid Hawk supporter all his life— his AOL email address was Jimsju70 —at one point becoming co-chair (or, as Father Feeney described him, “communicator-in-chief”) of the Class of ’70 group. In April this year, he received the Hogan Award, which is given annually to recognize outstanding loyalty and service to the university.

He attended St. Joe’s on an Air Force ROTC scholarship, and after graduation became a second lieutenant in the Air Force stationed in Washington State, where he married and started a family. After his discharge, he got his masters of social work and worked in that field for a decade before translating those skills into a new career in healthcare recruitment and marketing.

He was an entrepreneur, opening his own consulting firm, Trinity Health Partners which provided recruiting and business development services to companies. He served as president of the Irish American Business Chamber and Network which fosters business relationships between Ireland and the US, and between Irish-Americans in Philadelphia. In fact, he had just returned home from a trip to Ireland with a group of hospital execs interested in expanding their virtual pediatric medical services to Irish medical centers when he was diagnosed.

But what his brother Bob was alluding to was not the typical accomplishments of a smart and successful businessman. People did not remember Jim for his “resume virtues,” said his college friend Kyran Connor, quoting an essay by New York Times columnist David Brooks on what it means to live a meaningful life. What made Jim McLaughlin an important man were his “eulogy virtues,” said Connor, again quoting Brooks, the ones “talked about at your funeral.” Those are the values and characteristics that allow some people to “radiate an inner light,” Brooks has written.

To those who knew him, Jim McLaughlin radiated a bonfire, often signaled by the twinkling light in his eye. He had such a zest for life and people, Father Joseph Feeney, SJ, the St. Joe’s professor who said the funeral Mass, started off the service addressing his old friend. “Jim,” he said, “you can’t not be alive. You’re too merry, too vital, too loveable to stop living. . . .He was the most open, loveable and kind people I have ever met, “ he told the mourners.

Many friends, like Connor, recalled a man who “could make you laugh so hard your sides would hurt.” Bill McLaughlin, who was a good foot or more taller than his friend, recalled Jim’s standard answer when people inevitably asked them if they were related. “ He used to say we were both from the same DNA pool but he was from the shallow end. He used to joke that he and I should have given a networking workshop to the chamber—and call ourselves the McLaughlin twins.”

They also remembered a man with myriad interests, one being Zydeco or Cajun folk dancing. “Jim was a genius at finding a Zydeco dance in Philadelphia and of the 7,000 Zydeco dancers in Philadelphia, I think there were only three who didn’t get to St. Ignatius to see him,” joked his brother Bob. “They loved my brother.”

They were far from alone. Jim McLaughlin collected people like some people collect matchbooks. He nurtured those relationships with unexpected phone calls, emails, and hugs. It was like him to “buy you drinks or dinner,” said Father Feeney. In business, it’s called networking, but for Jim McLaughlin, it was more like a genetic trait.

When his brother Bob, a flute player, became friends with virtuoso Irish flute player Kevin Crawford of the top traditional band, Lunasa, Crawford became Jim McLaughlin’s friend too. Crawford and Lunasa bandmate, noted piper Cillian Vallely, played at the service on Tuesday, opening with the poignant tune, “The Dear Irish Boy.” Afterwards, they remembered their friend whom they, like Bob, called “The Mayor.”

“Jim was an extremely special kind of guy. He would just call you out of the blue and say hello, how are you, when are you coming down, is there anything I can do for you,” recalled Crawford.

In fact, Crawford said, Jim McLaughlin would contact the venues where they were appearing to make sure the band was taken care of. “He knew everyone and had established such good will that they all owed him big time,” added Vallely. “If he asked you for something, you would have done it.”

Bethanne Killian got to know Jim McLaughlin better when she became more involved in the city’s Irish community. She’s chair of Irish Network-Philadelphia, a networking group. But she met him originally in 1995 when an Irish friend, Rose Shields, told her she wanted to introduce her to “this man she met on an airplane, coming into Philadelphia.” It was Jim. Shields and her husband Will chatted with him all the way from Shannon to Philly, then Jim offered them a ride home. “Of course, they became fast friends,” said Killian, laughing.

Along with collecting people, he connected them. Dublin-born Siobhan Lyons, executive director of the Irish Immigration Center of Greater Philadelphia, met Jim McLaughlin at a meeting of the Irish Chamber when she was looking for a job that would qualify her for a visa to allow her to stay in the US. She’d fallen in love with the city.

“Jim started introducing me to people. He told me to come to Judge Jimmy Lynn’s annual breakfast at the Plough and the Stars on St. Patrick’s Day where he introduced me to John O’Malley [on the Immigration Center’s Board of Directors]. He told John I was looking for a job and I saw John start to glaze over. Then I told him my background, that I had worked for the Irish government, and he said, ‘I think you’re the person we’ve been looking for.’ So it was thanks to Jim that I got my job and got to stay in the US.”

Frank Reynolds, CEO of PixarBio Corporation, had just learned how to walk again after a surgical error left him paralyzed for seven years when he met Jim McLaughlin. “I joined the Irish Chamber in 1999 after I was back to walking because I needed to network and make friends. I met Jim and we hit it off. We were both St. Joe’s grads and St. Joe’s had really helped saved my life. The research they gave me helped me literally get back on my feet. Jim introduced me to a lot of people, especially people in the neuroscience industry in Dublin, and I developed some important relationships that helped me develop a cure for paralysis.”

Reynolds’ invention, the NeuroScaffold, is an experimental polymer implant that provides support to injured spinal tissue and encourages healing. It has shown promise in clinical trials.

Though many recalled Jim McLaughlin’s “unbounded friendliness”—as Father Feeney put it—the truth is that the greatest of his “eulogy virtues” echoed the Jesuit principle that guides his beloved St. Joe’s: “In all things to love and to serve.”

After his mother died, his father also became ill, dying just a few years later, leaving little Mary an orphan at 10. But before his father passed away, Jim flew him and Mary out to Seattle then drove them in a VW bus for 1,000 miles to take them to Disneyland “which we now know to be the plot of the movie, ‘Little Miss Sunshine,’” said Mary, laughing. “We saw everything, the Pacific Coast Highway, Bug Sur, Napa. . . “

Then, when her father finally died, it was McLaughlin and his wife, Celeste, who took her into their home and raised her with their own two children, Suzanne and Kieran.

“Jim and Celeste were just 25, just married, and they raised me, an independent little girl who listened to her brother’s Allman Brothers albums, went bowling until midnight, and did whatever I wanted it,” Mary McLaughlin told the mourners about the man she called “my brother, my father, my friend.”

Her brother “changed the course of my life,” she said, by filling out her application for the University of Washington and submitting it, though she admitted she had other plans.

She echoed her brother, Bob, who credited “everything good about my life” to an afternoon he spent with Jim when he was living in Washington. That day, his nature-loving brother—Jim loved the outdoors was an avid member of the Appalachian Mountain Club– blew off his Air Force duties to take him to Mt. Rainier, the iconic snow-capped volcano in the Cascade range that dominates the horizon in Seattle and Tacoma.

“There we were, looking up at that 14,000 foot peak and over the Cascades and I thought, ‘I’m going to live here someday,” recalled Bob McLaughlin. “And in 1978 I quit my crazy sales job in Philly and moved to Tacoma to be near the mountains—and truthfully to be near my brother.”

Bob McLaughlin found a job in the textbook industry, which he remains in today, got married and started a family. “All of this came to me because of the gift my brother gave me in that trip to Mt. Rainier. That afternoon and the time and attention he gave me was life-changing. Everything good about my life was my brother’s gift.”

Jim McLaughlin leaves behind a daughter, Suzanne, and son, Keiran (Michelle) and a grandson, KJ. He is also survived by his siblings, Kathy, Tom (Fran), Bob (Nancy), Jerry, and Mary, and his fomer wife, Celeste. He was buried in Holy Cross Cemetery in Yeadon.

In lieu of flowers donations in his memory may be made to St Ignatius Nursing and Rehab, 4401 Haverford Avenue, Philadelphia, PA 19104 or to Visiting Nurses Association of Philadelphia, 3300 Henry Ave, Philadelphia, PA 19129.

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July 30, 2015 by Denise Foley

History, News

Catherine Burns is Laid To Rest In Tyrone

Catherine Burns' remains are carried by women named Catherine from Clonoe, County Tyrone. Photo by Jim McArdle

Catherine Burns’ remains are carried by women named Catherine from Clonoe, County Tyrone. The Watson brothers are at right, playing the pipes. Photo by Jim McArdle

On Sunday, July 19, Catherine Burns’s small casket, holding what little remained of the 29-year-old widow who died in the railroad work camp known as Duffy’s Cut in 1832, was carried from St. Patrick’s Church in Clonoe, County Tyrone, to her final resting place by three local women also named Catherine.

For 180 years, Burns lay under the ground in an unmarked grave along with 56 other Irish immigrants hired to build a rail line near Malvern in Chester County, now part of Amtrak’s northeast corridor. She had traveled with her father-in-law on the barque ship, the John Stamp, whose log noted that neither had any luggage. Six weeks after the immigrants arrived from Tyrone, Derry, and Donegal, they were dead, either of cholera or of violence.

Her burial in her home county was the fulfillment of the goal of the men who unearthed these long-forgotten immigrants, both literally and figuratively. “It was something that we had always hoped to do,” says Dr. William Watson, a history professor at Immaculata University who, with his brother Frank, a Lutheran minister, set in motion the search for the Duffy’s Cut victims after discovering a secret railroad file about the incident in their grandfather’s papers. “Once we found them, if we were able to identify them, we wanted to repatriate them,” he said.

In 2013, the Watson brothers and colleague Earl Schandlemeier were able to return the remains of the youngest of the workers, John Ruddy—identified through a forensic examination of his bones—to Donegal, where he was born. He is now buried in the family plot of Vincent Gallagher, president of the Philadelphia Irish Center.

Like Ruddy, forensic scientists determined that Catherine Burns had died of blunt force trauma, likely at the hands of a group of vigilantes determined to stop the spread of cholera that had ravaged the small encampment.

That story, as well known now in Ireland as in the US, is likely what filled St. Patrick’s Church the Sunday of Catherine Burns’ funeral mass, which was said by the church’s pastor, Father Benny Fee. “The story resonates with a lot of Irish people who have little black holes in their family history, family members who came here and just vanished,” said Watson. ‘They have sympathy for anyone that young who experienced such hardship so senselessly. Catherine Burns died just like John Ruddy died, of violence.”

It was Father Fee’s idea to have Catherine Burns’ casket carried by other women of the parish who shared her first name, said Watson. “His sermon was fantastic,” he said.

“It is our solemn privilege to welcome home to her native Tyrone Catherine’s mortal remains and to lay them to rest with the prayers and rites of the church and with the dignity and respect they deserve,” Father Fee told the congregation, according to published accounts. “Catherine is one of our own. She’s no stranger—she has Tyrone blood in her veins.”

From his pulpit, Father Fee thanked the Watsons and Schandlemeier for bringing “Catherine back from her exile to her native pastures. Now there’s no fear, no terror for Catherine any more.”

There are still 50 other victims of Duffy’s Cut whose bodies have not been recovered. Radar imaging has found what Watson calls “an anomaly,” a large apparently empty space that may have been left when bodies buried underground decomposed and collapsed. Core samples of that area are scheduled to be taken in mid-August, he said.

The cores will be taken about five feet from where the anomaly is seen on the scan so as not to disturb anything buried below. Forensic scientists will then sift through the circular samples, which will be encased in canisters about a foot long and four feet wide, to determine if there are any human remains before a dig gets underway.

“If what we find what we expect to find,” said Watson, “this maybe the worst mass murder in Pennsylvania history.”

The photos below were taken by Jim McArdle, who was one of several representatives from the Philadelphia area who attended the funeral service. The others included Irish Center President Vincent Gallagher, Donegal Association President Frank McDonnell and his wife, Kathleen, and Donegal Association members Nora and Liam Campbell and John Durnin.

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July 30, 2015 by Denise Foley

News

Hurlers on Fire

It only felt like hell on earth, but it sure was hot at the Limerick GAA field on Sunday when Allentown squared off against Philadelphia in a hurling match.

The Weather Service says the temperature hit a high of 93 degrees in the Pottstown area, but on the field, the athletes say, it gets a lot hotter. All that running back and forth doesn’t help much, either.

Fortunately, at the end of the game, officials turned the sprinklers on. Some of us couldn’t pass up a chance to add least stroll through the spray. (Including me.)

Final score: Allentown 3-19, Philly 4-4.

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July 24, 2015 by Jeff Meade

News, People, Photo Essays

Painting Wine Glasses: The Latest Fun-raiser

Instructor Collin Hennessey guides a fledgling painter.

Turns out you don’t need artistic talent to enjoy a wine glass painting fundraiser. In fact, it helps if you don’t have any. The laughs are bigger.

The Philadelphia Irish Center held its first-ever painting party as part of this year’s fundraising campaign. The event was organized by Lisa Maloney who also included a kids-only craft party as part of the festivities. The kids didn’t paint wine glasses, but went home with canvas shoulder bags they decorated.

Entertainment was provided by the Cummins School of Irish Dance, which sent a dancer and instructor who taught the mother-daughter teams who attended the fundraiser how to do the Gay Gordon.

You can see all the fun in the photos below. Too bad you can’t hear the laughing.

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July 17, 2015 by Denise Foley

Food & Drink, News

McKenna’s Kitchen and Market Opens

Mmmmm. . .shepherd’s pie.

If you’re a fan of the Food Network, you’re going to love McKenna’s Kitchen and Market, the new endeavor of Pat and Nancy Durnin in Havertown.

When you walk in, just pull up a stool at the counter, which is made from a piece of wood from an old Norfolk, VA, shipwreck that the designer found abandoned in a barn.

From there you can watch Chef Lee McCarron from Derry City piping mashed potatoes laced with spinach on top of a shepherd’s pie before sliding it into the oven to brown, plating bangers and mash with a drizzle of carmelized onion gravy, and arranging the Irish fry like a fine artist.

But the real reason you’re going to love McKenna’s is because of the food, not the show going on in the open kitchen where it’s prepared.

McCarron, who was the chef at the late, lamented St. Declan’s Well in Philadelphia, has taken some old familiar Irish recipes of the stick-to-your-ribs variety and added a delicate touch. The shepherd’s pie ($11), for example, is filled with ground lamb whose taste is enhanced rather than muffled by a rich oniony gravy. For those who prefer the Americanized version, there’s also a beef-based cottage pie ($10) on the McKenna’s menu.

And the Irish fry ($10), a plate loaded with rashers (Irish bacon), bangers (Irish sausage), eggs, baked beans, grilled tomato, black and white pudding (also sausages, one made with blood, the other without), hand-cut fries, and brown bread, isn’t just a breakfast meal. It’s all your daily requirements for calories, fat, and many vitamins and minerals all on one plate. You won’t eat again until the next day, even if you do have it for breakfast.

The extensive menu also has burgers, sandwiches (including Irish toasties, $7), salads, soups, appetizers and kids’ meals.

All the food, except for the Irish imports, is locally sourced, says co-owner Pat “”Squee” Durnin. “It’s all from within 200 miles of here. Lee says that fresh isn’t necessarily more expensive. It takes more work and more organizing, but sometimes it can save money.”

If the name McKenna’s sounds familiar, it’s because it’s a reflection of his mother-in-law’s decades old endeavor, McKenna’s Irish Shop, which he and Nancy operated in the same location on Darby Road until it closed late last year.

Nancy’s mother, Anne Gallagher McKenna, a Donegal immigrant (Ardara) started selling her knitted mittens, scarves, and sweaters out of her living room and eventually built it into a network of Irish artisans whose woolen goods she sold out of her store, which carried everything from gold and silver jewelry to Barry’s Tea to crates of turf. McKenna’s Irish Shop had a good 35-year run before a changing market made gold too expensive and a 12-piece set of Beleek china something your mother handed down to you, but you didn’t buy for yourself.

When McKenna’s Irish Shop wrapped up its last Claddagh necklace right after Christmas last year, plans were already in the works for the BYOB restaurant and market–where you can still get your Barry’s and more. It’s a joint venture of the Durnins and a local couple, Brian and Jennifer Cleary. Many other Irish hands played a part too.

“A lot of the people here tonight are local Irish trades people and craftsmen who worked on the building,” said Durnin last Friday night during the restaurant’s invitation-only soft opening. (It opened officially last Saturday for breakfast and lunch, then all-day starting on Monday.)

The Durnins and Clearys hired a designer from Virginia to turn the shop into an upscale restaurant space and many of the unusual touches—the handmade wooden tables, tin ceiling, and counter—came from the south. “The tables are handmade from tobacco wood,” explained Brian Cleary. “The tin ceiling date from 1863 and comes from a plantation in Virginia.”

The chairs, however, are local. “They were a find,” he says, clearly delighted. “They were from the Crystal Tearoom at Wanamaker’s in Philadelphia.”

A double door that looks out onto the glassed-in porch room harkens back to old Ireland, when they were designed to keep the animals out and the breezes drifting through the house, explains Durnin. A red “armoire” in the main dining area does provide cabinet space for dishes, glasses and cups, but some of the drawers are shallow because “it’s actually hiding a set of stairs” that leads to an upstairs apartment, Durnin reveals.

And Mrs. McKenna is there too. Reconstructing the shop involved freeing a fireplace that was once in the parlor of the building, which started life as someone’s home. Nancy Durnin had an old platter that had been handed down to her from her mother who got it from her mother. She wanted it to be in the restaurant, but couldn’t find a place for it.

“We were struggling over what to put up over the mantle of the fireplace,” explains Cleary, “then my wife said, “Let’s put it over the fireplace.’ It was like it belonged there.”

Just like McKenna’s Kitchen and Market itself.

McKenna’s is at 1901 Darby Road, Havertown. It’s open from 7 AM to 10 PM. Tea and coffee–the meals as well as the drinks–are served all day. Bread is made daily by a local Irish baker. There’s on-street parking and parking available at the school next door when school isn’t in session. For weekend reservations, call 610-853-2202. BYOB

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July 10, 2015 by Denise Foley

News

Raising Funds for Victims of the Berkeley Balcony Collapse

It was early in the morning of June 16. Thirteen students attending a birthday party at an apartment building near the campus of the University of California Berkeley were standing out on a fourth-floor balcony when the balcony suddenly gave way, plunging to the ground. Six died, including five from Ireland. The fifth held joint U.S.-Irish citizenship. Seven were injured.

Many had traveled to the Berkeley area on J-1 visas, allowing them to work in the United States temporarily.

The incident hit Ireland hard, but had no less an effect on local residents who came here from Ireland, and Irish-Americans as well.

On Sunday, local Irish emigrants and Irish-Americans gathered at Tir na Nog in Center City for a fund-raiser to help out the families of the students involved, with food and drink donated by Tir na Nog.

“We just felt that it was something nice to do,” said Máirtín O’Brádaigh, one of the event organizers. Speaking of his own journey and those of other Irish citizens who came to America in recent decades, he said, “We were all in that position 20 years ago.”

As if to reinforce the connection between the Tir na Nog event and the Berkeley tragedy, most of those who attended were young people, many of them Gaelic Athletic Association players, decked out in team jerseys.

Proceeds from the event will also be made to the Kevin Bell Repatriation Trust, which raises money to help families in these tragic circumstances.

You can donate via a special gofundme.com site.

Here are some photos from the event.

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July 3, 2015 by Jeff Meade

News, People

First Irish Center Fundraiser Down! More to Come

Bill Whitman was having a great time.

The palm-tree dotted patio at McGillicuddy’s in Upper Darby resembled a rainforest during monsoon season on Saturday night, but that didn’t keep party-goers—that’s the way they were acting—from the first of several fundraisers aimed at keeping Philadelphia’s Irish Center going strong.

Despite the torrent, there was music and dancing from 4 PM on and it was still rocking when I left around 8:45 PM, after giving out more than 30 raffle baskets to happy winners. Best part of the evening: Telling one of McGillucuddy’s bartenders that he won the basket of cheer donated by Comhaltas Ceoltoiri Eireann (Coal-tus) of the Delaware Valley.

Among the other top prizes: four Phillies tickets, passes to a concert by Celtic Thunder’s Emmett O’Hanlon at Hard Rock Café Philadelphia in August; two huge baskets overflowing with food favorites from home donated by the Irish Coffee shop; and a gift certificate to the new McKenna’s Kitchen and Market in Havertown.

Music was provided by No Irish Need Apply, Vince Gallagher, and a ceili band made up of Kevin McGillian, his son, Jimmy, and nephew, Michael Boyce.

The next fundraiser is July 11 at the Irish Center—an afternoon with the artists from dish & dabble in Havertown where you’ll paint two wine glasses, enjoy munchies, and drinks from the bar. Bring some friends and have a blast. Reerve your spots by contacting Lisa Maloney at lisamaloney29@yahoo.com

Check out the photos below for a look at the fun.

[flickr_set id=”72157653022219644″]

July 3, 2015 by Denise Foley

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