Irish in Philly – Page 52 – Where every day is St. Patrick's Day

How to Be Irish in Philly This Week

The first of several local St. Patrick’s Day parades happens Saturday in Mt. Holly, NJ, with a tent full of music afterward featuring Jamison, the Shantys, Galway Guild, Broken Shillelaghs, the Mulligans and Clancy’s Pistol. The annual Burlington County parade starts at 1 pm. The grand marshal is Bob Tippin, president and co-founder of the AOH Mike Doyle Division of Cinnaminson, NJ and a Philly natve )a grad of Northeast Catholic High School).

This weekend we also welcome a new parade to the tradition. On Sunday, March 6, for the first time ever in one of the biggest Irish enclaves in the region, Gloucester City, NJ, there will be pipers and marching bands celebrating the great and glorious St. Patrick, starting on Monmouth Street. The Gloucester County AOH will also be celebrating the evening before at Richard Rossiter Memorial Hall with its annual Irish Night featuring the Broken Shillelaghs, a buffet, draft beer, wine, dessert and coffee.

There are so many events this week that we’re just going to list them in chronological order.

March 4, 2016 by Denise Foley

Audio, Music, News

Podcast: Here’s How to Celebrate St. Patrick’s Day Without the Booze

It’s almost time for the Philadelphia St. Patrick’s Day parade. Sunday, March 13, will be here before you know it. It will also be time to celebrate at the 2nd Sober St. Patrick’s Day at WHYY studios at 6th and Race, immediately following the parade.

St. Patrick’s Day—which would include parade day—can sometimes serve as an excuse for people to drink till they fall down or get sick in the street. Some of them, including a fair number of Irish-Americans no doubt, believe boozing and carousing is what day is all about.

Really? Not necessarily. OK, party—but your party can still be lots of fun without the hooch. And if you want to drink in anything, drink in some of the fun, food, dance and some of the best Irish music you’ll hear anywhere at the Sober St. Patrick’s Day party—and we hasten to add, this is all G-rated family fun. By all means, bring the kiddies.

We spoke with Katherine Ball-Weir of the Irish cultural organization Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann, Delaware Valley Branch, who together with Frank Daly of American Paddy’s Productions and the great local Irish band Jamison, is working hard to get this party started.

March 4, 2016 by Jeff Meade

Music, News

Good News RUNA Lovers–They’re Playing at Home!

These days, it’s not unusual for Shannon Lambert-Ryan and her RUNA band members to get recognized in the airport. “We’ll hear, ‘hey, aren’t you from RUNA,” says Lambert-Ryan a Philadelphia native. “We’ve had a lot of fun moments like that and they’ve been steadily increasing.”

One reason is that RUNA spends a lot of time in airports and on the road. They’ve criss-crossed the country, taking their unique brand of Celtic roots music from Canada to Florida, from New England to the Pacific Northwest, picking up fans all over whom they fondly call “RUNAtics.”

“In January we left two and a half feet of snow to head to Florida where it was 80 degrees,. It was bizarre,” says the singer, who founded the band with her Dublin-born husband, Fionan de Barra.

March 4, 2016 by Denise Foley

News, People, Photos, Videos

Irish American Business Chamber Honors Northern Irish Company

For the first time in its 16-year history, the Philadelphia-based Irish American Business Chamber and Network gave its top award—the Ambassador’s Award—to a company founded in Northern Ireland. The ceremony took place on Friday, February 26, at The Union League in Philadelphia with more than 400 people in attendance

The IABCN honored Almac, a pharmaceutical and health care development company with North American headquarters in Souderton, where it employs more than 1,000 people. The company was founded by Sr. Alan McClay in Craigevon, Northern Ireland.

Also honored were IACBN founder, Bill McLaughlin and his wife, Natalie, who run McLaughlin & Morgan, a business and development firm in Philadelphia (the Taoiseach Award) and Msgr. Michael Doyle, pastor of Sacred Heart Parish in Camden whose work has led to many improvements in the city’s waterfront area.

March 3, 2016 by Denise Foley

News, Photos

Philly Parade Fundraiser Draws Record Crowd

When you can fill a place where you could hold two wedding receptions simultaneously, you know you’re doing something right. The FOP Hall in Northeast Philadelphia–where the bar is big enough to accommodate a police car and does–was jam-packed on Sunday, February 28, for the biggest ever fundraiser for the Philadelphia St. Patrick’s Day Parade. The parade marches down the Parkway on Sunday, March 13.

Fundraiser organizer Mary Frances Fogg, vice president of the St. Patrick’s Day Observance Committee, was a green streak on Sunday as she dashed from raffle tables to the stage for the nonstop prize giving. Fox29 personalities Kathy Orr, Bob Kelly (with his wife, Carrie and son, Austin) and Mike Jerrick were on hand to conduct a pep rally for foils who had plenty of pep to start with. This is Fox29’s first year broadcasting the parade, though it will be Orr’s thirteenth year as parade host. She previously announced the parade when she was chief meteorologist at CBS3, where Kelly was traffic reporter.

March 3, 2016 by Denise Foley

Audio, News

Audio Podcast: Interview with Diarmuid Johnson

Diarmuid Johnson, noted scholar and musician, is in town to present “The Crooked Road: A Ramble through Irish History in Words and Music,” Saturday, February 27th, at 8 p.m. at the Commodore Barry Club/Philadelphia Irish Center.

Johnson takes “a musical and poetic journey through Irish history leading up to the Easter Rebellion of 1916.”

The event is sponsored by the Philadelphia Ceili Group.

We chatted with him a few days ago. Here’s what he had to say.

February 26, 2016 by Jeff Meade

How to Be Irish in Philly

How to Be Irish in Philly This Week

Here’s something that will make you happy: Blackthorn is doing happy hour at Tom & Jerry’s Sports Bar in Folsom on Saturday night. And you can catch their old bandmate, Seamus Kelleher, the same evening at The Dubliner on the Delaware in New Hope, a whole different part of the Delaware Valley.

It’s a week filled with Celtic delights, often overlapping. Saturday night you can also see and hear poet, musician, and Gaelic scholar Diarmuid Johnson who is presenting his one-man show, The Crooked Road: A Ramble Through History History in Words and Music at The Irish Center, a program sponsored by the Philadelphia Ceili Group. It’s one of many historical performances you’ll have the opportunity to see in March and April as the region celebrates the centenary of the Irish 1916 Easter Rising, which represented a major step forward in Ireland’s fight to become a nation independent from Britain.

February 26, 2016 by Denise Foley

Dance, Photos

“Mary and Bert” Win “Dancing Like a Star”

Mary Poppins and Bert the Chimney Sweep took top honors in the Delco Gaels’ “Dancing Like a Star” fundraiser last week.

In their real lives, the winners are really Letterkenny, County Donegal, native Brendan Bradley (as Bert), a Gaels’ coach and brother of last year’s winner Louie Bradley, Gaels’ chairman, and his dance partner, Miriam Gallagher, a pre-school teacher from Glenties, also in County Donegal. The two did a rollicking dance number to a song from the Disney movie, “Mary Poppins” that took them into the audience and, in the case of Gallagher, into the lap of someone in the audience.

More than 700 people crowded into the spacious Springfield Country Club Ballroom to watch four couples—many of whom didn’t know each other until January, when rehearsals began—perform three ballroom dances for a panel of judges and, like the TV show on which it’s based, for audience votes.

February 26, 2016 by Denise Foley

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