Fullset, fully booked

It started on February 25. The Philadelphia Ceili Group needed a tidy pile of cash in order to book the Irish music supergroup FullSet for the organization’s big September festival. The goal: $4,000. The deadline: April 11.

The deadline passed a week ago, but the Ceili Group exceeded its goal on the crowd-funding site indiegogo.com long before that. The final tally: $5,690—fully 142 percent of the goal.

We chatted with the Ceili Group’s Rosie McGill about the successful fund drive, and how much it means for one of the region’s preeminent Irish cultural organizations.

Q. How many days did it take you, exactly, until you hit your goal?

A. Thirty-five. We had a date of April 1st for the $4,000 goal, because we had to get back to FullSet by then to lock them in for September 13th, but we set the Indiegogo campaign to last 45 days, so we had until April 11th to surpass our goal.

Q. It feels to me like it took a few days to gain momentum, but then, once it did, it really did start to take off. Is that a pretty fair assessment?

A. It seemed like funds trickled in at first, and then we got a steady momentum of a few a day once we got about 2 weeks from the April 1st date.

Q. When you start a fundraising drive like this, you’re really going on something like hope and a prayer. Did it ever cross your mind—did it ever cross the minds of anyone on the PCG board—that you might not make it? That you were biting off more than you could chew?

A. When I originally came to the board with the idea, there was some dissent concerning the campaign, that it would be more work than our volunteer board could handle. There were also people who were unsure of how it would work, being unfamiliar with that form of fundraising, and people who were concerned it wouldn’t work because so many people are asking for money that way these days. Even my own father was concerned about using a crowd-funding site to get donations, because we lose a percentage of the funds to use the platform.

I am really glad we took the chance to bring in the additional band and fund it through the crowd-funding, because we never would have been able to book the band otherwise, and now we have already gotten so much support for the festival, as well as the added benefit of everyone talking about us and the event, I really can’t wait to see how it shapes this year’s 40th Festival.

Q. And you’ve exceed your goal by a lot. Did you have any reason at the beginning to expect that kind of generosity? And what, if anything, do you think that means about the Ceili Group, and what people think of it?

A. I was hoping for it. I grew up in the Ceili Group, these people are like family to me. I didn’t doubt they would come through and support that community that has been going strong for 40+ years.

Q. So I assume you’re excited at the prospect of being able to bring FullSet to the Irish Center in September?

A. YEP! I can’t wait to see them perform! As you know, I run the workshops at the Festival, and I am most excited to have them teach workshops during the day on Saturday. Here’s a link to their teaching bios: http://www.rgmbooking.com/artists/fullset/fullset-teaching-bios/view Stay tuned to the event page on Facebook for the festival, or www.philadelphiaceiligroup.org

Q. Given that you’ve raised more than you needed to hire FullSet and Sean Keane, what else can you do—are you planning to do—with the extra?

A. Extra publicity for sure! It takes a lot to run a festival, including Sound men and equipment, accommodation costs, radio and newspaper ads, to name a few.

Q. What does it actually cost to put the festival on? How much of a dent does the $5,690 make in the overall cost? Does it give you a bit of breathing room that you wouldn’t have had otherwise?

A. Every year, our budget is based off what we brought in the door from the previous year. The main reason we did this campaign is to bring in FullSet in an attempt to bring more people to the festival and expand more from year to year. The bit of extra money we fund-raised over what we already spent on FullSet will be giving us more money to advertise, a rare opportunity to get the word out to as many potential audience members in an effort to rebuild the audience for our festival.

Q. Given the success, is crowd funding something you’re likely to try again, maybe next year?

A. I have been wondering the same thing. I set up a survey for people to give me feedback on that very subject, and also on the festival. I guess we will see what everyone says!

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/YC7HBVL

Not soccer, Gaelic football!

If you’ve given up on the Phillies already, why not try some Gaelic sports? The University Gaelic Football and Hurling Tournament is in Philadelphia on Saturday. Hosted by St. Joseph’s University Gaelic Football Club, the match between a dozen or so college-level Gaelic footballers and hurlers will take place at Monsignor Bonner High School, 403 N. Lansdowne Avenue in Drexel Hill, starting at 1 PM and going till sundown.

If you’ve never been up close and personal with Gaelic football and hurling, we can promise you an action-packed day.

Then on Sunday, head over to Bishop McDevitt High School in Wyncote for an open house with the Glenside Gaelic Athletic Association, the latest club for youngsters interested in football, hurling, and camogie (the ladies’ version of hurling). It’s a way for kids to have fun, get exercise, and help carry on Irish culture in America.

On Saturday night, Jamison provides the music for the AOH Black Jack Kehoe Div. 4’s annual fundraiser at the Regal Banquet Hall in Prospect Park. All proceeds benefit AOH charities, such as the Hibernian Hunger Project, which provides food to the needy.

On Sunday, the Derry Society is holding its annual spring social at the Irish Center. There will be music (The Shantys and the Derry Brigade), a DJ playing music for the kids—the social is always very kid-centric. Of course, there’s food and Irish dancers.

On Monday, the Teetotallers—the extraordinary fiddler Martin Hayes, multi-instrumentalist Kevin Crawford (Lunasa) and guitarist John Doyle—will be performing at Ware Recital Hall in the Swope Building on the West Chester University campus. These are world-class Irish musicians (and Kevin Crawford is really funny).

On Wednesday, the individuals and groups that won awards in the Philadelphia St. Patrick’s Day Parade will be honored at an event at Finnigan’s Wake, 3rd and Spring Garden Streets in Philadelphia. The $25 price includes a buffet dinner, beverages and entertainment. And you don’t have to be an award winner to attend. The CBS3 parade team often shows up.

On Thursday, the Irish Pub at 20th and Walnut Streets in Philadephia is holding its annual Gathering of Heroes to benefit the Marine Corps-Law Enforcement Foundation, founded in 1995 to provide support for children of Marines and federal law enforcement officers killed in the line of duty or under exceptional circumstances. This year, four Medal of Honor recipients will be in attendance, all veterans of the Vietnam War. There will be opportunities to meet and talk to these men—two Navy Seal veterans, one Army vet, and a Marine—who will also sign autographs and pose for photos.

Also on Thursday night, there will be a free screening of the documentary “Embrace the Brutality: A Continental Divide Adventure,” by local film maker Shane O’Donnell at the McSwiney Club in Jenkintown. The film, about a group of hikers who hit the trail from Mexico to Monday, features the music of local group RUNA, the John Byrne Band, Rorey Carroll, and others.

And a real treat for you Saw Doctors and Water Boys lovers—you know who you are. Leo Moran of the Saw Doctors and Anthony Thistlethwaite of The Water Boys will be performing together on stage at the Tin Angel on Second Street in Philadelphia on Friday night. Opening for them, half of the John Byrne Band: John Byrne and Maura Dwyer. (We don’t know where Rob Shaffer is, but Andy Keenan is touring with Amos Lee.) To get reserved seating at the concert at this tiny venue, you need to make a reservation for dinner at Serrano, the restaurant downstairs. And you have to eat there—they only honor reservations for actual diners. (You folks who made reservations and didn’t show up for dinner—shame on you!)

It’s not too late to get tickets for the annual Charlie Dunlop Memorial Fundraiser, slated for next Saturday, April 19. Named for a beloved Delaware County man with roots in Tyrone, the Charlie Dunlop Memorial Fund carries on the work of the man who died too young—offering a helping hand to those in crisis. Look for more information on this event and others on our calendar.

The descendants of Patrick Murphy look at special photos at the Irish Center.

Constructing an Irish family tree poses particular challenges. First, there’s the dearth of written records. Not only were the most fruitful life events—birth, marriage, death—not recorded until 1864, many of those records were lost to fire during Ireland’s 1922 Civil War and to other calamities (including being pulped to support war effort in World War I).

And in many Irish-American families, roots run deep and wide. Siblings were separated, by oceans or land, as they sought new opportunities. For some, contact became sporadic and eventually faded to black. The prejudice the new immigrants encountered in America propelled them to quickly shed their Irishness and with their self-imposed rapid Americanization, family histories were lost in the silence. For modern family historians, those roots remain hidden from view, sometimes forever, sometimes until some fate intervenes.

In the 21st century, fate uses social media: You suddenly come across photos of your great grandparents on flickr.com or read familiar names in a post on a genealogy page on Facebook that you stumbled upon.

It was social media that finally brought the roots of Marianne MacDonald’s mother’s family, the Murphys of Tuosist, Collorus Point, County Kerry, to the surface, and a couple of weeks ago, she gathered about a dozen long-lost cousins from Florida, Tennessee, New York, and North Jersey at the Commodore Barry Club (The Irish Center) in Philadelphia where they shared their separate “bits and pieces” of family history.

Including letters from the girls their Great-Aunt Peggie met when she lived for a time in Ireland with an aunt, after the death of her mother. And photos of the Murphy headstones in Tuosist, some barely legible, that cousin Ellen Dyal of Jacksonville, Florida, took when she was in Ireland last year.

It was when Dyal was preparing for her trip, her second, that she came across a Facebook page dedicated to Tuosist, the parish on the scenic Beara Peninsula where the Murphy clan lived. There, she saw Marianne MacDonald’s post seeking information about her grandmother, Julia, Peggie Murphy’s sister. And the sister of Dyal’s grandfather, Patrick.

“I read it and thought, oh my God, my sister had just given me a piece of paper with a lot of the family names and Julia’s name was on it,” says Dyal. “I realized that she was the sister of my grandfather, Patrick Murphy. I tried to message Marianne and Facebook told me it would cost me $1 to send a message to her since I didn’t know her and I decided to pay the dollar. Five minutes later I heard from her. ‘Oh my God, we’re cousins!’”

The two got on the phone and talked for an hour and a half. MacDonald, a special education teacher from Mantua, NJ, who hosts the “Come West Along the Road” Irish radio hour every Sunday on WTMR, 80 FM, was able to hook Dyal up with people in Tuosist she met during her many trips back who knew the Murphy family. That included the postmistress, Maureen O’ Sullivan, who helped Dyal find the family home, a large, rambling house on secluded wooded point that had been vacant for many years before being turned into a holiday home. “She even remembered my grandfather going back every year,” says Dyal.

During her last trip, MacDonald says, she spent two hours talking to O’Sullivan whose prodigious memory turned up another cousin, Ed Murphy of Monmouth County, NJ, who attended the Philadelphia reunion. “She said to me, there was another Murphy here a couple of years ago and she pulled out a big ledger, and there was his address and phone number, so I called him.”

It turned out that their paths had likely crossed before. “We started talking and realized that we had been at the same Irish events at the same time,” says MacDonald, laughing. They just don’t remember meeting.

That wasn’t the only coincidence these Murphy descendants uncovered. When MacDonald was looking for her grandmother on the 1930 US Census, she discovered that Dyal’s grandfather, Patrick Murphy, was rooming with her grandparents in New York. And Ellen found a letter from her grandfather, written after MacDonald’s grandmother’s death, saying, Julia, had been his “favorite sister.”

The family lost touch for many reasons. For one, there were 10 children scattered all over, some across the country, others in Ireland and England. There’s no information on two of the siblings at all. Dyal’s mother married a man named Shapiro and was, for a time, ostracized by the family for marrying out of the Catholic faith. Her grandfather, Patrick Murphy, had only daughters, so their Murphy line was subsumed by other family names.

Not all the Murphys could make the Philadelphia reunion, including Kevin, whom MacDonald met via email several years ago after he saw her photos from Collarus Point on flickr.com, a photo storage site.

But they’re planning another one. “We were all so thrilled to meet each other—it was the best thing eve,” says MacDonald, “so we’re thinking of going to Ireland next spring. Ellen is in touch with the cousins in England, so they may come.”

In Irish genealogy circles, that’s what’s known as a sublimely happy ending.

See our photos of the Murphy Family Reunion.