Ceili Drive: The Music of Irish Philadelphia

Tommy Joyner of Milkboy Recording, chatting with uilleann piper Tim Hill.

A funny thing happened on the way to the public sale of our exciting new compilation of Philly Irish music, “Ceili Drive.”

It was a little thing called St. Patrick’s Month, which does tend to distract us a bit, what with all the parties, parades, pub crawls, pomp, and such.

Happily, the craziness is (mostly) behind us now, and we can devote our full attention to introducing “Ceili Drive” to the world. And by “the world,” we mean you.

We created “Ceili Drive” for a couple of reasons:

• The first and most important: Philadelphia is a total hotbed of great Irish music. A lot of people know that, but trust us, it’s a revelation to some people. So we really wanted to shine a spotlight on some superb local talent—which was hard because there’s so much talent, and we couldn’t possibly capture it all. To do that might take 10 or 20 CDs. Alas, we had bucks for just one.
• The second and more pragmatic reason: To fill our coffers with filthy lucre. A lot of you already know this—except for the occasional heckler who seems to think we have a staff of 100 and a budget to match—but it’s we happy few cranking out irishphiladelphia.com. We pull in a bit of ad revenue, for which we are deeply grateful, but trust us when we say that no one on the staff of this international media conglomerate is about to retire to the south of France. Not even to the south of Upper Darby. So we hope “Ceili Drive” will help us meet some of our expenses, and set us up with a bit of “mad money” to help make irishphiladelphia.com better. And reimburse us for gas and parking. Luxuries and frivolities like that.

So get ready to exercise your clicker finger because we’re about to direct you to our secure online store. You’ll see all the track listings there.

And even though we’ve said this before, we really can’t say it enough. We owe a lot of you a deep debt of gratitude. So thank you, and thank you yet again. You know who you are.

• Here’s where to go to buy “Ceili Drive.”

Tommy Joyner of Milkboy Recording, chatting with uilleann piper Tim Hill.

A funny thing happened on the way to the public sale of our exciting new compilation of Philly Irish music, “Ceili Drive.”

It was a little thing called St. Patrick’s Month, which does tend to distract us a bit, what with all the parties, parades, pub crawls, pomp, and such.

Happily, the craziness is (mostly) behind us now, and we can devote our full attention to introducing “Ceili Drive” to the world. And by “the world,” we mean you.

We created “Ceili Drive” for a couple of reasons:

• The first and most important: Philadelphia is a total hotbed of great Irish music. A lot of people know that, but trust us, it’s a revelation to some people. So we really wanted to shine a spotlight on some superb local talent—which was hard because there’s so much talent, and we couldn’t possibly capture it all. To do that might take 10 or 20 CDs. Alas, we had bucks for just one.
• The second and more pragmatic reason: To fill our coffers with filthy lucre. A lot of you already know this—except for the occasional heckler who seems to think we have a staff of 100 and a budget to match—but it’s we happy few cranking out irishphiladelphia.com. We pull in a bit of ad revenue, for which we are deeply grateful, but trust us when we say that no one on the staff of this international media conglomerate is about to retire to the south of France. Not even to the south of Upper Darby. So we hope “Ceili Drive” will help us meet some of our expenses, and set us up with a bit of “mad money” to help make irishphiladelphia.com better. And reimburse us for gas and parking. Luxuries and frivolities like that.

So get ready to exercise your clicker finger because we’re about to direct you to our secure online store. You’ll see all the track listings there.

And even though we’ve said this before, we really can’t say it enough. We owe a lot of you a deep debt of gratitude. So thank you, and thank you yet again. You know who you are.

• Here’s where to go to buy “Ceili Drive.”

Conal O'Kane and Tim Hill

Who knew we had so many friends?

Last Saturday morning, we launched a website to raise funds for our CD project, “Ceili Drive: The Music of Irish Philadelphia.” The goal: $3,000. We figured it might take a few weeks to hit the $3,000 mark, and even then, we might not hit our goal.

How wrong we were–in a really good way.

As of midday Tuesday, we were just $830 short of our target, which was, all by itself, pretty amazing. We never thought we’d get so far, so fast. But we weren’t prepared for the incredible surprise that greeted us the morning of Independence Day, by which time we had officially crossed the $3,200 mark. All that was thanks to amazing generosity from many people, with a big assist—$500—from the great Delaware Valley band Blackthorn.

All told, 55 people or organizations contributed to our fund. Even more surprising: More money continued to flow in, even after we had ripped past the $3,000 mark. As of Friday midday, we’d raised $3,420.

With that, we can now very comfortably move on to production of our CD, which showcases Irish traditional music from many of the area’s finest players and singers, moving them to center stage—right where they belong. Our plan was to share the talents of mature veterans and young upstarts alike, and to draw attention to the role families play in upholding the tradition, and moving it forward. (Kudos to the the Boyces, Brennans, and McGillians, all of whom contribute tunes to the effort.) Of course, Irish music in Philadelphia probably wouldn’t be as rich and as vibrant as it is without the contributions of Irish natives who now make the Delaware valley their home. Their influence on the making of “Ceili Drive” is also significant.

That we are where we are now is actually pretty remarkable, given that we’d never done anything like a recording project before, and often had no idea what we were doing. (Thanks to our musicians for their patience, and for setting us straight when we needed it.)

Clearly, we had a lot to learn. Then again, maybe recording a CD really is just that challenging. Harper Ellen Tepper, in an email a few weeks ago, helped us put it all in perspective: “Recording projects, like home improvements and divorces, take longer than you think, cost more than estimated, make a big mess and are SO nice when they are over.”

Ain’t it the truth.

So, here is where we are.

We recorded six original tracks in Milkboy Studios. We have six additional tracks donated by musicians who have previously recorded on their own. Now we move on to final production. All of that is what the $3,000 is for.

There are some loose ends we need to tie up, but we expect to release “Ceili Drive” toward the end of the summer. (And, though we’ve mentioned it before, it bears mentioning again: Our gratitude to Facebook fan Pete McDermott for suggesting the clever name.)

Thank-you gifts should be mailed out to all of our donors at about the same time.

The ultimate thank-you, we hope, will be “Ceili Drive” itself. We’re onto something special here, and we can’t wait for you to hear it.