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Marching To a Different Drummer

Kevin Hughes, lower right, with fellow seminarians.

There was a time when it seemed like every Irish family sent a boy into the seminary. It was a point of pride within families and within the Irish-American community, which once sent more of its sons into the Catholic priesthood than any other nationality.

That was then. Now, people perhaps are more mystified than proud when a young man they know wants to take that momentous step. Why would anyone commit to such a life?

I’m thinking now of Kevin Hughes, my friend. I first came to know Kevin when he joined the Philadelphia Emerald Society Pipe Band. I was a drummer. Kevin was a student at LaSalle and a piper with lungs of steel and fingers that moved in a blur. No one could keep up with him.

When you belong to a competition pipe band, you get to know people pretty well. Competitions usually are not close, so you have to share long rides out to Long Island, Southern Maryland and the like, and back again. (It’s an even longer ride home if you’ve lost.)

That’s how I got to know Kevin. I can still remember him sacking out in the passenger seat of my car on our way back from a competition venue, maybe the Long Island Scottish Games at Old Westbury Gardens. He snored.

It’s been clear for years that Kevin was bound for the priesthood—the Jesuits in particular, thanks to four years of exposure at St. Joe’s Prep. A lot of us probably have a fixed idea of what a young man with his sights set on the priesthood is supposed to be like. You might picture the holy card poster boy, eyes permanently fixed on the heavens. You might not picture the husky dude with lungs of steel, sitting on the Irish Center bar stool next to you, trading wise cracks after band practice.

That’s our Kevin—bright, hugely talented, and, in my estimation, a pretty good match for an order known for intellectual rigor and spiritual integrity.

St. Ignatius of Loyola, the founder, was a knight before he became a priest. Today, I’d like to think he might have been a piper.

We tracked Kevin down by e-mail at the Novitiate of St. Andrew Hall in Syracuse, N.Y. Here’s what he had to say.

Q. How old are you? What was your degree at LaSalle?

A. I am 23 years old and my degree from La Salle University is in biology, Bachelors of Arts. I am the third youngest man in the novitiate.

Q. I want to go back to a question I asked you before: Why? Why the priesthood? Why the Jesuits?

A. Why does anyone fall in love? You just know, it’s like being called to something. That is how I feel, like I am being called by God to something larger than myself. I feel like the Jesuit charism is compatible with my own desires to serve the people of God, specifically to see God in all things and to be a man for others.

Q. I’ll also note that no one asks incredulous-sounding questions when someone says they’re going to med school or law school. I wonder what goes through your head when someone asks that question, as if you’ve just announced that you’re planning to be the first astronaut to walk on the surface of Mercury or you’re hoping to open a chain of cat-waxing facilities.

A. I certainly realize that a lot fewer people, especially young people, are desiring to enter religious life, so I don’t mind at all when people ask me what I am thinking. In fact, I welcome the questions because it gives me a chance to tell people that someone can be happy with a life devoted to the love and service of God and His people.

Another thing I tell people, when they ask about why I have to take vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, is that I don’t have to take them, I don’t have to be a member of a religious order, no one is forcing me: I could go to med or grad school, but I am choosing to take these vows and to live a life in a religious order to study for the priesthood.

Q. Tell us a bit about your everyday life. How has the reality of the novitiate compared to your expectations?

A. Well, getting up at 5:30 a.m. has taken some getting used to, as well as going to bed around 9:30 p.m.

My day begins with an hour of private prayer, followed by communal Morning Prayer, and then some classes about church and Jesuit history, then about the Gospel. We have Mass every day and communal dinner and night prayer.

On Tuesdays and Thursdays I work at an Apostolate volunteer job from 8:30 to 2:30. I work in Cathedral Emergency Services, a local Syracuse food pantry. IT IS GREAT, I love it. The other novices there are really good guys and they are easy to get along with.

Q. What’s the career path beyond the novitiate? How long before you’re ordained? Tell me again what you hope to do as a Jesuit?

A. The career path beyond the novitiate is still unknown. God willing, after taking vows we are sent to first studies. This can be one of four places: Toronto, St. Louis, Chicago or Manhattan. We really don’t know where we will be sent until right before we go; they like to keep us in suspense.

Again, God willing, I will be ordained after the 11-year program—two years novitiate, three years first studies, three years Regency, three years theology studies.

As a Jesuit I don’t really want to limit myself to any “career” within the Society, but at some point I would certainly like to do some teaching.

Q. Do you think you’ll get the chance to play pipes any time soon? Or is your schedule and your training just that demanding?

A. I do still have a chance to play the pipes, however not nearly as much time as I had before joining. My playing is limited to practicing and occasionally playing the pipes for the guys.

I had the opportunity to go to McQuaid Jesuit High School in Rochester, N.Y., and played my pipes there, while the superior of the Jesuit community did some Irish step dancing. He’s very good, he used to teach Irish Step.

December 16, 2008 by Jeff Meade

Music

Still Roving After All These Years

By the time you read this, the Irish Rovers will be doing what they have done, for over 40 years: Roving.

You’ll have a chance to hear and see them yourself Friday, December 5, at the Keswick Theatre in Glenside, as the Rovers present their Christmas show. (The show starts at 8.)

Just before the tour began, we caught up with the Rovers’ George Millar by phone from his home on Vancouver Island, a scenic outpost off Canada’s Pacific coast, about 75 north of Seattle. Millar had lived there for over 15 years.

It’s a short tour, thankfully. After 40-plus years in the business, touring is an exhausting business.

“It’s 12 cities in all,” he says, “starting with three in Canada, ending up in Florida on the 14th of December.” You wouldn’t think there’d be much call for winter holiday songs in Florida, but, Millar says, you’d think wrong. “Isn’t it crazy?” he says. “And yet we do it every year and they all show up with their red and their green on and it’s about 130 degrees out.”

The Christmas tour has proved a popular way for fans to get their annual dose of Irish Rover music. And, Millar says, the boys aim to please.

The Christmas show was the brainchild of the band’s agent, Millar says, perhaps in part due to the popularity of their version of “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer,” originally recorded by an obscure duo, Elmo and Patsy. Of course, the Rovers are about so much more than holiday ditties, so fans will be treated to a crowd-pleasing mix of Christmas and traditional Irish music.

“The trouble with us and doing a Christmas show is we really can’t do the traditional Rudolph and things like that,” says Millar. “So we have to look for the more obscure English-y, Irish-y songs, or we wrote similar type songs. We always have to do “The Unicorn,” “The Black Velvet Band,” and of course “Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer.” That’s a must—you have to do that whether you like it or not.

“To keep the tours fresh, we have to keep changing songs. You have to keep so many of them (standards) in, of course. We’ll do the songs they expect to hear, that’s what they pay for. But we keep coming up with new songs to keep ourselves fresh and keep ourselves interested. We just keep it fast paced, and before you know it the two hours is up and we’re off having a Guinness somewhere.”

For the Rovers, there seems to be no slowing down. If it all seems a bit formulaic, well, maybe it is. But it’s a good formula, and one that fans truly appreciate, as they have done since the beginning.

Millar recalls how the Rovers started, by accident, at a weekend show in Toronto.

“It was like a charity show,” he says “At least twice a month in Toronto, where we had immigrated (from Ballymena, near Belfast) there was a big Scottish-English-Irish community, and they would put on these shows about twice a month. They were just like an amateur show. People would come and pay their two dollars and they would drink their rye and ginger ale, and their beer. My sister was quite the singer, and I was playing guitar behind her. I was about 14 or 15 when this all started.

“Well, one night, this fellow (Jimmy Ferguson) gets up and starts singing Lonnie Donegan songs. In those days, Lonnie Donegan was a huge British star. He was as big as the Beatles in his day. He used to sing folks songs, but to electric guitar. So Jimmy was playing this kind of song. Well, one time I went into the toilet to tune the guitar. We were just about to go on and it was so noisy in the place. And I’m sitting on the floor tuning my guitar and humming to my self the song, “The Irish Rover.” And this fella Jimmy comes into the bathroom and he starts singing it along with me. And we sort of looked at each other and I said, ‘Oh, I didn’t know you knew that song.’ He said, ‘Well I’m from Belfast, so of course I do. I learned it in school.’ Just then, the fella who was running the show comes in and overheard us singing “The Irish Rover,” and he says, “Somebody didn’t show up tonight. Can you do it in the show?”

At that point, the two weren’t sure they knew all the words but they tried it out—still in the bathroom. And, Millar recalls, the concert promoter said to them, “It’s perfect.”

“After I sang with my sister and Jimmy did his little bit, we did this one song together, we got up and sang it and the audience loved it. That’s all there was to it.” That’s how they got together, started learning songs and formed the core of what would grow to become the Irish Rovers.

Making a living in music as opposed to any old factory job seemed like a wise choice. In time, they found themselves touring, and they turned up with a gig at the legendary Purple Onion in San Francisco in the late ‘60s. They rubbed shoulders with some young performers, like Linda Ronstadt and Steve Martin, who would themselves go on to fame and fortune. For the Rovers, though, fame came in the form of a Shel Silverstein tune called “The Unicorn,” in 1968.

Two more hits—recorded under the shortened name, ”The Rovers,”—came in later years, including the Tom Paxton tune, “Wasn’t That a Party.” By all accounts, the Rovers’ parties were memorable indeed, and this was Paxton’s paean. A little while later came “Grandma,” a tune that reinvigorated the Rovers’ career, even as it rubbed some audiences the wrong way.

The Rovers acquired the Elmo and Patsy tune, which had been a regional hit, when they were looking for songs to fill a Christmas album.

“We re-recorded it about 30 years after they did it, and it became an underground hit,” says Millar. “You either like the song or you hate it. There’s no happy in between on that one. It’s just a comical, funny song. Even my own mother, before she passed on, said to me: ‘Shave your beard, cut your hair and don’t ever sing that horrible Grandma song again.’”

Of course, sons often do go their own way—and many fans are grateful that the Rovers have.

The fact is, Rovers fans are diehards. Long after “The Unicorn,” they keep on coming. Millar isn’t sure they’re about to stop.

“We’re never going to get retired at this point,” he says. “We’re blessed that we still have a built-in audience of people that wants to see us. When people ask us about retirement, I say, well … why? I can now see why George Burns kept going until he was almost 100 years old. It’s not like rock and roll. We don’t have to weigh 105 pounds and wear Spandex … luckily. With Celtic music, the hair can recede and the stomach can come out a wee bit, and it seems to fit the image.”

November 28, 2008 by Jeff Meade

Music, People

An (Irish) Traditional Marriage

Kathy, Emma and Dennis harmonize at a recent Christmas Wren party.

You’ll have a hard time finding two busier traditional Irish musicians than Kathy DeAngelo and Dennis Gormley.

Together, they perform as the trad duo McDermott’s Handy (named after the County Leitrim, and later Monmouth County, N.J., fiddler Ed McDermott). And they preside over a popular traditional Irish music session Thursday nights at Three Beans Coffeehouse in Haddonfield, N.J. With Mermaid Inn session leader Chris Brennan Hagy, they also moderate the Next Generation youth Irish music group.

With bodhran in hand, I’ve accompanied them in a few performances and a few more sessions. Turnabout being fair play, Dennis accompanied me on flute when I took a shot at Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann’s Mid-Atlantic Fleadh Cheoil a couple of years back. I also took whistle lessons from Dennis—none of which quite “took,” through no fault of Dennis’s. (Apparently, you have to practice.)

Both talented multi-instrumentalists, Kathy and Dennis have been part of the Delaware Valley Irish music scene for decades. They’re as generous with their time and knowledge as they are talented.

As well as I think I know them, there’s still lots more I don’t know, So I posed a few questions.

Q. How did you two get together, personally and musically? And how big a role did the music play?

Kathy: We met at the Rutgers Saturday Folk Festival in July 1973 when Dennis was playing bass with Saul Broudy, and practically every other performer. I managed to “persuade,” in my own charming fashion, the festival organizer to let me perform with my band in a brief slot that afternoon using the argument that he didn’t have one single woman performing that day. Trouble was, the bass player in my band hadn’t lugged his bass to the student center, whereas all the guys had brought their guitars. So I very boldly approached Dennis and asked if we could borrow his bass. He was too nice, and I was too cute, for him to tell me to buzz off—and I’ll let him get a word in edgewise here.

Dennis: “Cute” is an understatement. I was stunned by her heart-stopping beauty and amazing talent. She could have asked me sign over all my worldly assets and I would would have used my own pen.

Anyway, I was up playing bass for Philadelphia folk music icon Saul Broudy. Saul was working in D.C. at the Smithsonian
Folk Life Festival and traveling up to New Brunswick by train. I drove up early to catch the music at the festival. Little did I know …

Kathy: So we started off playing everything but Irish music at the beginning. We played country music, bluegrass, swing, old-time and good old American folk songs. I was playing Irish music with Ed McDermott, my mentor, but that was a separate world.

Q. You both play multiple instruments First of all, thanks for making me realize just how much I have to learn, but, second, can you tell me how and when you learned those instruments, and how gravitated toward Irish traditional music?

Kathy: I started playing guitar in the 7th grade after being allowed to give up the accordion. My father thought every Italian girl should learn the accordion but in 1965 no right-minded teenager wanted to play the accordion. Everybody in my family played or sang. I just played chords and followed charts on pop music sheet music my brother bought. I got into folk music and by the time I got to college I opened the Mine Street coffeehouse in New Brunswick and got in with a whole crowd of people who played all kinds of music and went to folk festivals. The guys in my band thought I would look good playing a banjo so they gave me one for my birthday. My dad gave me his old mandolin. Other instruments followed and I had the time to learn them.

Two of the instruments I’m most associated with now, harp and fiddle, I didn’t take up till relatively late in life. I started teaching myself fiddle after Ed McDermott died in 1977—and I regret I didn’t take it up while he was living. I played guitar with him for years and he was the one that got me started down the path of the Irish dance music. Besides backing him up, I was flat-picking the tunes. When I moved to this area after Ed died I only knew two people down here and Dennis was one of them. I had a few Irish gigs and I asked him to play with me. He said “I don’t know anything about Irish music.” He insisted on coming over to learn a few tunes before this gig and I was amazed that he’d sit there and write the tunes down while I played them. Well, you know how one thing leads to another. Skip ahead to 1979 and Dennis and I get married. In 1984 I came home from work and Dennis had bought me a harp, which were hard to come by in those days. He had already worked out how to play “If I Only Had a Brain” so I figured I had to get to work to put some Irish music on it!

Dennis: The writing tunes down bit was always a way for me to learn and memorize the tunes.To this day, I’ll write down a tune I’m want to learn (see http://www.hslc.org/~gormley/tunes/giftunes.html), then very rarely refer back to the manuscript.

I started the obligitory piano lessons at about age 6 or 7. My father had rescued a piano from a bar; I remember it had the cartoon character Snuffy Smith on it. But once we learned to read, it got a new coat of paint; apparently, Snuffy was saying some rude things! One day, my parents heard mepicking out the melody for the “William Tell Overture” (you would know it as the theme from the Lone Ranger), and decided to send me for lessons. I never got as good as I probably could have, because I always wanted to learn by ear, and the teachers had this annoying habit of wanting me to read the music.

Anyway, my father Joe Gormley played the guitar as well, in a Freddie Green Big Band style of guitar. Apparently in his younger days he was a touring musician for a short while, which probably led to his advice, “Music is the best part-time job in the world.” My mother told a story of having to wire him money one time so he could get home, but I was never able to get any other details out of them. Up until the time he passed away, he was performing on a regular basis.

So when 1964 came around, there was already an electric guitar around the house. Of course, when I started playing it, I got a nylon-string classical guitar as a birthday present. I think there were thoughts of a classical guitarist in the family, but I immediately recognized it as the same sound heard on the Beatles “And I Love Her.”

I took up string bass in high school, coupling that with bass guitar in high school rock groups. Again, my father counseled, “There are thousands of guitar players, but not many good bass players.” Inspired by my high school band and orchestra director, James Maxwell, I went to Glassboro State College as a music education major and was exposed to all the instruments typically found in a school music program; for the purposes of this narrative, this is pretty much where I first picked up a violin and flute.

Fast forward to the early ‘70s and the folk music of the social activists. I missed the Kingston Trio folk music boom, but Peter Paul and Mary, Buffy St. Marie, Arlo Guthrie, and others were heard in my home. I was playing acoustic guitar and string bass, and working teaching folk music at the now-defunct Haddonfield Music House, giving lessons on guitar, bass, dulcimer, mandolin; they pretty much pushed any student wanting to learn folk music to me, whether I knew the instrument or not!

I started attending meetings of the Philadelphia Folk Song Society, where I met up with several musicians whom I performed with over the years, including Caryl P. Weiss and Saul Broudy. Through Saul, I got the opportunity to perform with many revivalist performers such as Winnie Winston, Steve Goodman, Vasser Clements, and John Prine.

So, toward the mid- and late ‘70s I was playing and performing folk music and traveling to venues throughout the Northeast and up into Canada. Attending and performing at folk festivals, I heard a great deal of Irish music, notably at the Philadelphia Folk Festival, where Kenny Goldstein regularly programmed and hosted a “Celtic Ceilidh” (Sunday afternoon at the Tank Stage). It was “hip” in the circles I traveled and performed in to deride the “diddly diddly,” but I was always drawn to it. Even though there was no Irish music played in my house, perhaps it was a sort of racial memory calling to me.

When I first started performing with Kathy, a short time after the death of Ed McDermott, I figured the mandolin, tuned like a fiddle, would be the most appropriate instrument I had to play the dance tunes. But I never really had the technical expertise to play tunes up to speed. Casting around, I picked up a tin whistle and worked on that, then much later (after a single but memorable lesson with Seamus Egan when he told me he was moving to New York to work with this new group), got a simple system wooden flute and started working on it. Still can’t get the notes for “Nights in White Satin” on it, though.

Like Kathy, I often wonder what it would have been like to be playing flute when Ed McDermott was still alive.

Q. How long have you been anchoring Three Beans?

Kathy: We started doing the session at the Three Beans not long after it opened in 1995, but the session actually started in a back room at the former Katie O’Brien’s, a restaurant in Haddon Township in 1992, I think. When the Three Beans expanded into the shop next door, there was room for us.

Dennis: My sister Lorraine Gormley had met a guitarist and singer from Kerry named Richard Browne, who told her of a session he was running at Katie O’Brien’s. With (daughter) Emma being an infant, it was easy to put her to bed and then get out to the session. (Oh, did I mention my mother was living with us then? Get of my back, DYFSS!) So we started going out. Eventually, having the session at Katie’s became untenable, with a trad session being low on their list of priorities. Harp and Dulcimer maker Dave Field was living in Haddonfield at the time, and he found the Three Bean location.

Q. How did McDermott’s Handy develop?

Kathy: I was the first music director at the New Jersey Folk Festival and Ed McDermott was one of our featured performers at the first festival in 1975, and then again in 1976. Everybody loved him. Here was this 80-year old fiddler who played with incredible energy with the college students who came to learn from him.

He died on New Years Day, 1977, and the festival asked me to put together a tribute to him for the 1977 festival. I asked a whole bunch of players from around the state who had learned tunes from Ed for years to come and play. It was a great night. I used the name McDermott’s Handy, after a track from Gordon Bok’s record of tunes he learned from Ed. So I just decided to keep it going. After that, it was mostly Dennis and me with an ever-changing roster of other musicians until 1984, when it was just the two of us. Now our daughter Emma, who plays fiddle and also sings, sits in with us occasionally.

Dennis: Aside from recordings and touring groups, Ed McDermott was the first practitioner of Irish music that I had met. His dedication to the music and patience in teaching what he had to a gaggle of young musicians with scant background in the music, was an inspiration. The opportunity to commemorate his contribution to Irish music is a continuation honor.

Q. I understand some fella named Seamus Egan once opened for McDermott’s Handy. When and where was that, about how old was he, and did you have an inkling of what a dynamic musical force he was going to turn out to be?

Kathy: Actually, it was the Egan family that opened for us at the old Perimeter coffeehouse in Collingswood, maybe that was in 1985 or so—Seamus and his sisters Siobhan and Rory. They were pretty young—not old enough to drive themselves there, I don’t think. There was lots of talent in them and passion for the music. They were awesome players even then. In fact, I arranged for them to play at the New Brunswick coffeehouse and have photos of all three of them on that stage.

Q. Your daughter Emma plays fiddle with you. Lots of kids might go off in a different direction–say, sports, or, musically, playing anything but the same music mom and dad play. How did that happen, and how did she get to be so good? (And to be such a sweet kid?)

Kathy: Emma has been listening to this music since before she was born. She was only 6 weeks old in the carriage parked stage left when we played at Bethlehem Musikfest in 1987. I’d practice the harp with this little baby laying on the floor at the foot of the harp so I could keep an eye on her. She loves it. She was about 2 years old when she started sing-songing melodies, in pitch. When it was feasible, we brought her to a lot of our concerts so it was not surprising to us that, when she was offered a chance to learn a musical instrument at school, she chose the violin. She’s got an encyclopedic knowledge of tunes. And she’s a big part of the reason why Dennis and I wanted to get those young musician sessions going.

Dennis: During one performance St. Patrick’s Day in 1987, Kathy was playing the bodhran; in utero, Emma started kicking back. So you could say she’s been PLAYING before she was born. Even today, when she goes up to her room, you can hear Irish songs and tunes wafting down from her CD player.

Q. What is there about this music that keeps you coming? You’re obviously both very passionate about what you do.

Kathy: I just love the infinite variety of this music, it’s simple and yet complex at the same time. There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t think of the influence of that one man, Ed McDermott, and how knowing him shaped the course of my life. It’s a good part of what motivates me as a teacher to help pass this music along. I’m blessed to be able to sit down with wonderful players, like Dennis, all the time who keep that fire lit for me.

Dennis: I see all of us who play this wonderful music as links in a chain, that stretch back a long way. I was explaining to ZB Cummins, a 13-year-old whistle student: Kathy and I learned our first tunes from Ed McDermott, who came to this country in 1915, and was born at the end of the 19th century. He first got his music from his father, who would have been born in the mid-1800s. Now, there are people who get their first tunes from me or Kathy, and who will hopefully will pass them on as well.

November 20, 2008 by Jeff Meade

Music

Bristol AOH Is Alive to the Sound of Music

Jim Fowler grew up with Irish music. As a kid, he used to listen to the Wolfe Tones, and the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem, along with his grandparents James S. Fowler and Margaret (nee Hagerty).

Not surprisingly, all his life Fowler wanted to do more than just listen to the music—he wanted to play it, too. Although he only recently started picking up on tin whistle, bodhran and a bit of banjo, that part of his life never turned out quite the way he had hoped.

So Fowler, the entertainment chairman at Bristol Borough’s Division of the Ancient Order of Hibernians, came up with the next best thing—a project that would blend his love of the music with his love for the nation’s oldest continuing AOH clubhouse, founded in 1883.

It’s a benefit CD called “Hibernian Sessions No. 1,” and it featured live music recorded at the AOH hall and performed by some of the region’s top Irish bands: The Birmingham Six, Bogside Rogues, Jamison and the Shantys.

You can pick up a copy and listen to still more live performances by the very same hot bands on Saturday, starting at 1 p.m. at the AOH Hall on Corson Street in the borough.

“The CD is something I raised with the division about a year ago,” Fowler says. “It does a couple of things. It promotes our heritage and culture through music, and it makes some coin for Irish charities, such as the Hibernian Hunger Project, Project Children, Project St. Patrick and the division itself. It’s something I always wanted to do. Once I become involved with Division 1 in Bristol, this was the way to go, and we’re really proud of it.”

The CD also tied in with the division’s interest in boosting the level of entertainment at the hall. “Friday nights, it’s rockin’ there,” says Fowler. What the CD tries to do is capture the ambience of those rockin’ Friday nights.

The sessions were recorded throughout 2007 and 2008. All of the bands agreed to have their performances recorded, and Fowler, with recording engineer Chad Palmer chose the three performances they liked the best for the CD. “The bands had the final say on the mix,” he adds.

Fowler, who knows members of all the bands, can’t say enough about them: “The bands basically did this for free. They’re getting 20 CDs to sell at their shows. They dedicated their time and gave us the approval to do it.”

Of course, the CD is called “Hibernian Sessions No. 1,” which begs the question … will there be a Hibernian Sessions No. 2?”

In Fowler’s mind, there’s no question. “I want to keep this going,” he says. “In the end, once we get all the CDs sold, the division’s going to have to make the decision whether to do it again. If they don’t, I’ll put up my own money.”

Learn more at: http://hiberniansessions.com/Home.html

October 3, 2008 by Jeff Meade

Music

An Irish Music Legend Coming to Ambler

The way Finbar Furey tells the story, the accident last April in Portugal could have been a career-ender, a sad coda for Irish musical legend. And the way Finbar Furey tells the story—as he did to me a week ago, via phone from Ireland—it can also make you laugh.

“Well,” he says, “we were coming back from a gig and there were a lot of goats on the road and, of course, Finbar wasn’t strapped in so he went flyin’.”

No one in the van was seriously hurt, but Furey’s shoulder took the brunt of the impact. When he next played the uillean pipes—his signature instrument since he began performing in bars with his father and brothers as a child in Dublin—even friends noticed he was in pain. “I was in total agony,” he admits. “I kept playing, but I don’t even know where the music came from.” He consulted an orthopedic expert—“the one who does all the operations on players in the GAA [Gaelic Athletic Association],” he says—and underwent surgery to repair the mess the accident had made of his shoulder. Surgery that was followed by eight weeks of physical therapy during which he couldn’t pick up a musical instrument, let alone play it. It was like a jail sentence to the man trad icon Willie Clancy once called “the prince of pipes.”

“I was goin’ out of me tiny mind,” Furey confesses. “Then as a gift our children sent us to Cairo, Egypt. I thought it would be like any other sort of town. You go out at night to the pubs and listen to music, but there’s no such thing. I nearly died! I’m looking out at the desert, at the pyramids, and I’m thinking, ‘No wonder they built those things, they were bored out of their minds.’”

And he’ll be getting even with his children. “I’m sending them to Iceland,” he vows, laughing. “In the winter.”

Fortunately, Furey picked up the pipes a few weeks ago and played, to his relief, pain-free. . .and well. “I’ve been able to play music, and I can’t even remember learning it, since I was a tiny tot,” he says. “I can leave the pipes alone for a year and just pick them up, close me eyes, and it just is there. I can play the same tune six different ways. I throw it into the air, and out comes this tune. I just gather it within me heart and let it flow.”

He’ll be letting it flow on Monday night, October 13, at The Shanachie Irish Pub and Restaurant in Ambler, as part of a US tour to promote his new album, “No Farewells, No Goodbyes,” an eclectic mix of traditional music like “She Moves Through the Fair,” Furey’s own tunes, and even an unusual rendition of “Smile.” Furey performs the old standard as though it was being sung by a gypsy busker, which is not a stretch for the 62-year-old performer: His parents, Ted and Nora, were traveling people (called tinkers in Ireland, or Pave among themselves) who settled in the Ballyfermot section of Dublin’s inner city when Finbar was only four. Ted Furey, a professional musician, played the fiddle and pipes; his wife was a singer and storyteller who also played the banjo and melodeon (button accordian). One of Furey’s earliest memories is listening to his father singing in the empty rooms of their first real home.

He included “Smile” on the CD, which took him two years to make, to honor the late actor Charlie Chaplin, father of Furey’s close friends, Josephine and Geraldine Chaplin, the actress (“Dr. Zhivago”). Charlie Chaplin composed the melody for his movie, “Modern Times.” (The Fureys once did an album of Chaplin’s songs.)

“Charlie Chaplin made me laugh so many times in movies, even when we were struggling at home and maybe hadn’t had much to eat,” Furey recalls. “I wanted to do it like a busker on the street, someone who is starving, like Charlie was. He never had anything as The Tramp, but he was still proud.”

When he was barely in his teens, Furey started appearing with this brother, Eddie, and their father at the now famous O’Donoghue’s Bar in Dublin, with Ronnie Drew who later went on to found The Dubliners. Finbar and Eddie eventually began touring folk clubs and other venues throughout Ireland, the UK, and Europe, audiences growing larger and larger until they numbered in the thousands. The Furey brothers were instrumental in establishing the first Irish folk festival tour in Germany, where there’s still a great love for traditional music today. Soon, they were joined by younger brothers Paul and George, headlining concerts and selling them out in Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and America. Some of their recordings, such as “When You Were Sweet 16,” “Leaving Nancy” and “I Will Love You Every Time When We Are One,” became not only hits, but standards. Along with the Dubliners, the Fureys are credited with establishing Irish folk music as a genre at a time when Irish music was limited to “tooralooraloora” tunes usually sung by Bing Crosby.

In 1993, Finbar left The Fureys to go out on his own, and his life has taken some interesting turns. If you saw the Martin Scorcese film, “Gangs of New York,” starring Daniel Day-Lewis and Leonardo DiCaprio, you might have seen and heard Finbar singing, “New York Girls.” “This was my first introduction to film—with Martin Scorsese,” he says. “When I finished my part, which took 10 days, I left a message that I was leaving, catching a flight the next morning. When I was walking to my limo, Martin Scorsese came running out and asked me, ‘Did you ever think of taking up acting? You’re a deadringer for Anthony Quinn and you have a marvelous voice.’”

Furey laughs. It’s always been the music so, even with the encouragement from one of the world’s most acclaimed film directors, he didn’t pursue a second act in the movie business until it came calling on him. Cork-born screenwriter and director Mark Mahon contacted him after seeing his face on a poster for a Legends tour Furey was doing with Liam Clancy of the Clancy Brothers (little known fact: Finbar and Eddie Furey were “Clancy Brothers” for a time after Tommy Makem left the group) and Paddy Reilly of The Dubliners, now owner of the eponymous New York pub where Furey will be playing October 15.

Mark Mahon asked Furey to do a screen test for his new movie, “Strength and Honor,” a modern-day fight movie set in Cork. “I told him I didn’t have the time,” Furey says. “He said, ‘Look, come in a read a couple of lines,” so I did.”

Mahon hired him, and in the film, which stars American tough-guy actor Michael Madsen (“Reservoir Dogs,” “Kill Bill”) and won top honors at the Boston Film Festival, Furey plays a fight referee, a part that turned out to be grueling, and not a little dangerous. “In the last fight, we must have shot it 20 or 30 times, and I was absolutely nackered,” he recalls, chuckling. “I had bruises on me body because I couldn’t get out of the way. I said, ‘If this is acting, I don’t want any more of it!’ So I got the two fighters together (Madsen and his British counterpart Vinnie Jones) and I says, ‘Now lads, I’ll only warn you once. If you touch one hair of this head, I’ll find out where you live and I’ll burn your houses down.”

He roars with laughter.

When the movie wrapped for Furey, it was literally the pipes that called him. “I was in the middle of making my latest album when the movie came along and I had been on tour with the Legends. I finally got around to finishing the album—geeze, it took me the best part of the year to put it together. I picked musicians I love working with, like Francie Conway (Furey has been part of The Works, the incredible collection of musicians who work with Conway, a singer-songwriter and guitarist) and Jimmy Faulkner, who died this year. Jimmy was one of the greatest guitar players. On the track, ‘The Piper Sleeps,’ he plays his Les Paul with the pipes at the end and it’s absolutely incredible. And he would have been very ill at the time.”

You can hear clips from the album here. But before you listen to the music, read some of the lyrics. They reveal not simply a gifted lyricist, but a poet. For instance, Furey’s song, “Connemara,” which is as spare and evocative as Japanese haiku:

“Dancing streams woo Connemara, tranquil Burren, unquiet, still
Mystic shapes, inventing moments, loughs enhancing flowering hills
Connemara

“Luring landscape rising forward, infill rain clouds masking dawn
Ghostly shadows chasing moonlight, softly breezes whisper morn
Connemara”

In fact, Furey does write poetry, some of which he read to me in his rich, raw baritone voice, making the spoken word sound like music. It was mesmerizing. I didn’t want him to stop. (He shares some of his poems with us here.) While in the United States, he’ll be talking with publishers about a book of poetry, and a three-volume memoir of The Fureys, starting with their hardscrabble boyhood in Dublin (where they were friends and neighbors with another famous gypsy piper, Paddy Keenan) and ending with the breakup of the band in 1993.

There are more Fureys carrying on the music tradition. Furey’s son, Martin, performs with the High Kings of Dublin, who recently appeared in Philadelphia. His daughter, Aine, is also a singer who is putting the finishing touches on a new album.

Furey is looking forward to his American tour, which will take him to Washington, New York, and Massachusetts, along with his Shanachie gig. “Oh, I love going to the States. It’s just a bigger Ireland, Ireland stretched,” he says, with characteristic wryness. “I can’t understand why you didn’t make us your 51st state. We’re closer to you than Hawaii.”

October 3, 2008 by Denise Foley

People

Nurturing the Sound of Traditional Music

John Anthony in his studio.

Here’s what soul crooner Gerald Levert, indie singer-songwriter Jim Boggia, jazz bass virtuoso Gerald Veasley and the inventive young Irish ensemble Solas have in common: John Anthony.

All are brilliant artists in their own right. But it is Anthony—audio engineer, producer and owner of Maja Audio Group in Society Hill—who helps give them their voice.

Anthony’s career path in music began one Sunday night in February, 1964, when a new band from England debuted on the Ed Sullivan Show. The drummer—a mop-haired guy with a memorable nose—made quite an impression on the kid from Newtown Square.

“It was Ringo,” says Anthony, a talented percussionist who lends a hand on many Solas recordings. “My dad had a big custom stereo that he built, and it had big speakers. The TV came through the stereo, which was revolutionary in those days. But I just watched that show with my head between the speakers. After that, that was pretty much it.”

Anthony went on to pound away in his fair share of bands, but his interest in just playing music always took a back seat to recording it. His early knack for extracting crisp, true sounds out of a performance eventually blossomed into a successful career.

How successful? In addition to the above, consider this eclectic artists’ roster: Grover Washington Jr., Omar Hakim, Karan Kasey, Dru Hill, Sara Hickman, Phil Lee, the Hangdogs, John Doyle, Liz Carroll, Sue Foley, Niall Vallely, Cathy Ryan, Susan McKeown, Jim Boggia, Eileen Ivers, Michael Manring, and the Dixie Hummingbirds. He has also worked on a number of films, including “The Brothers McMullen,” “Philadelphia,” “Beloved,” “Two Bits,” “The Siege,” “Barnyard,” “The Illusionist” and “Meteor Man.”

Anthony’s musical tastes are pretty clearly catholic, but his passion for Irish traditional music also is well-known. His skills have gained the attention of many Irish and Celtic recording artists, including piper Cillian Vallely, who is scheduled to begin recording at Maja in September.

We visited Anthony’s studios recently for a wide-ranging conversation about Irish music, and his long association with Solas, most recently on the new CD, “For Love and Laughter.”

Oh, yeah … and a bit about John Coltrane.

Q. How did you become so popular with Irish artists?

A. It’s all because of Seamus (Egan). I first worked with Seamus on a solo album of his, “When Juniper Sleeps.” I think that was in 1994.

Seamus had done his first solo record with my former partner Michael Aharon, who’s a producer and arranger. He (Aharon) was renting space at Sigma Sound Studios, and I was a staff engineer at Sigma. Michael was going to see if he could do the next record at Sigma, with me engineering. Seamus and I just kind of hit it off.

“Juniper” was really a great musical experience. To me, that’s always the best part of the project. The technical stuff, I either take for granted or I learn what I have to learn. But the music part of it is what has always interested me. I mean, I’m a musician, so the band dynamic and the music are what motivate me.

That project was just a total gas. It was the beginnings of the Solas organization. I mean, it was (guitarist) John Doyle, (accordion player) John Williams and (fiddler) Win Horan and Seamus and some other people like (drummer) Steve Holloway, who all went on to play with Solas. It was just a ton of fun. Seamus and I have stayed connected ever since.

Q. You’ve worked with other Irish artists since then. What do you think appeals to them?

A. I worked with Cillian and Niall (Vallely) on a record of theirs, I think, and also with Niall on Karan Casey’s next-to-last record. It just seemed a natural thing. I have a lot of enthusiasm for the music. I’m pretty good at editing, and I know where I am in the tunes. That’s of value to people. They’re not dealing with someone who doesn’t understand the structure of the tunes. Or if they say, “That bit there, it isn’t very good,” I know why. If it’s an ornament that didn’t quite happen … it just makes it much easier to communicate.

Q. What appeals to you about Irish music? It’s probably unavoidable that you approach it from a percussionist’s perspective. You play bodhran on many of the Solas recordings, including the 10th anniversary performance.

A. It occurred to me, after a couple of years, that I was doing records where the acoustic guitar took the place of the drums. The tracks were really big-sounding. They weren’t necessarily big-sounding from a rhythmic point of view. But it just kind of developed that way. It’s a really great sound, particularly when you’re working with John Doyle or Éamon McElholm. They have a great sound and a lot of the rhythmic underpinnings of a song are in their part. I just have a fascination with percussion in that music.

Q. I think I’ve noticed.

A. (Laughs.) Seamus is a really great bodhran player. He has a natural “feel.” The first time he played on a track, way back when, I thought … wow, what a great sound. And we sat down and he played me maybe five things where the bodhran was a really cool part of the arrangement, like some Donal Lunny stuff where he was playing with his hand … all different approaches to playing the instrument.

It can have so many different functions—tonally, rhythmically. It can be this big pillowy, low-end sort of thing, or it can be really cracking, like the first set of tunes on the new record.

Q. It can be more melodic, too.

A. Seamus really does that. He’s really sensitive to the notes and tones that the drum is playing, and bending the notes and crafting a part to the melody.

Even “Juniper,” going back, has really great percussion arrangements on it. As far back as that first project, there’s a slow piece—”Mick O’Connor’s,” I think—and that’s got at least four percussion parts on it. There’s Daryl Burgee, Ron Crawford and me, and we’re all playing percussion parts. The first set of slip jigs has a really great percussion arrangement. It’s a really crazy arrangement that John Doyle came up with on guitar that people think is in a completely odd time. The pattern of accents is really long—it’s like a four-bar pattern. And it doesn’t repeat again. So if you just pick it up somewhere in the middle, you have no idea what’s going on.”

Q. So you never played bodhran before working with Seamus?

A. No, I hadn’t. I had a fascination with Irish music, but I didn’t understand it well. But back in the early ’90s, I went to Ireland for the first time and I stayed out on the Aran Islands. There’s a little pub in the harbor where they have music all the time. I was sitting next to a guy who was playing bodhran, and it totally blew me away. I thought—I really want to learn how to do that! I’m still learning.

I’m pretty much a journeyman drummer-percussionist. I feel pretty lucky to have gotten to play with these people and not embarrass myself.

Q. When you were a kid in garage bands, what did you play?

A. We played all the early Cream and Jimi Hendrix, all the ’60s music. The first bands I was in played covers of “In My Room”—Beach Boy songs and all that crazy stuff.

Toward the end of high school I got into jazz. I was listening to blues music, and someone said to me, “If you like that you should listen to some John Coltrane. I had no idea what they were talking about. So I went to the record store and bought a John Coltrane record. I think it was “Ascension.” (1965) If you listen to it, it sounds like the band is tuning up for the whole first side. It’s pretty free. They play this one figure over and over again. They pass it all around, everybody plays it, and it just builds to this craziness.

I kept moving the needle, waiting for them to start playing something. And eventually I put the needle down on Freddy Hubbard’s trumpet solo. And it was like: Oh, my.

I waited a little while and went back and listened to it from the beginning. And all of a sudden, I just got what they were doing. So then I was totally into every jazz record I could get my hands on—Miles and Monk, Newport ’58.

Q. And here you are today recording Irish music.

A. You might think this is a digression, but the thing that totally blows me away about Irish music is the nuance and power of the ensemble playing. It’s the same as a really great Blue Note front line.

When Solas is playing live and you’re in the audience, it’s like a freight train. When they’re all just on, it’s just unbelievable. It doesn’t matter if they have a drummer or not. It’s the strength of the melody and the way that they phrase. Great Irish players are like that and they always have been. Irish music has that sensitivity. It’s not completely freely improvised the way jazz is, but there is definitely an element of interplay. It’s subtle and you have to be tuned into it. But it’s there for sure, and it really keeps the music alive.”

August 28, 2008 by Jeff Meade

Arts

“Stones in His Pockets” Coming to Ambler’s Act II Playhouse

Tony Braithwaite and Chris Faith, during rehearsals at Act II.

Marie Jones’ award-winning comedy, “Stones in His Pockets,” is classified as a two-hander. In theatre jargon, that means there are two main characters.

Maybe they call it that because to call it a 30-hander would seem physically impossible. And yet, here you have two veteran local actors, Chris Faith and Tony Braithwaite, intrepidly embodying 15 characters, with all of the action compressed into one tight, fast-moving little show.

(Editor’s note: There’s been a recent change in the cast. See below.)

“Stones in His Pockets” is about what happens when a Hollywood movie company descends upon a tiny town in County Kerry. The show, directed by William Roudebush, starts September 2 (press opening on the 5th) and runs through September 27 at the cozy Act II Playhouse in Ambler.

(And for those of you who just can’t wait to see this multiple award-winning comedy, stay tuned for news about a sneak preview that is also a benefit for the Hibernian Hunger Project.)

Braithwaite and Faith have worked together before, including their 2005 performance of “Good Evening,” by Peter Cook and Dudley Moore. That’s right—a two-hander. And, technically, yes, they’re two characters in “Stones”— Charlie Conlon and Jake Quinn, who hired on as extras for the film, a hyper-romantic view of the Emerald Isle. But the play also requires that they fill a whole lot of other shoes.

“Good Evening” posed a challenge, Braithwaite recalls. There were two characters on stage from beginning to end, and they assumed other characters. But, says Faith, “in this play there can be three or four characters on stage at the same time … or more, even.”

So as bad as it is to step on another actor’s lines in a play, Braithwaite and Faith have the potential to step on their own. Or worse, adds Braithwaite: “Showing up as the wrong character for a split second, and then realizing that you have to turn the hat around a little bit, or whatever that character’s little flair is.”

In rehearsals, Faith is wrestling wth similar issues: “I can hear when a voice from another character creeps into the voice I’m doing, and I pull back. For now, it’s fine-tuning all that stuff.”

Juggling the multiple personalities also poses a challenge for the director.

“Oftentimes when characters play multiple roles they go off and they come back on as another character, which makes immense sense,” says William Roudebush. “But sometimes the changes are instantaneous, right in front of your eyes. Part of what I’m trying to do as a director is to make that change very magical, to take advantage of the moment.”

Another challenge: Playing Irish, which Braithwaite has done before. He played the character Paddy O’Gratin in “The Big Bang,” described as a “madcap tour of history.”

“He sang to his potato, the last potato in Ireland,” he recalls. “It was a love song. That was the last and the only time I ever had to do Irish.”

For Faith, putting on an accent—something that sounds something other than “stage Irish”—is a new experience. “It’s challenging,” he says, “but I think there are three major sounds we’ve got to hit all the time. I think that, if we’re in the ballpark, we’ll be OK.”

Though “Stones” is a comedy, Roudebush says it’s his goal to treat all 15 of those characters, especially the Irish, with respect. “The soul of the play is Irish,” he says. “It’s a great honor and challenge to have to try and live up to that—and not make it a cliché, that’s for sure.”

All three describe themselves as journeymen—or, as Roudebush quips, “I like to say that my job is finding work.”

Roudebush has been “finding work” for over 30 years. His 2002 revival of “Equus” was nominated for eight Barrymore awards and won five, including Best Overall Production of a play, Best Ensemble and Best Director. He has taught at The American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York, The University of Memphis, The University of the Arts, Virginia Commonwealth University, along with being Theatre School Director for the Walnut Street Theatre for four years. He is currently director of musical theatre for the Performing Arts Institute in Kingston, Pa.

Both the actors are well-known in Philadelphia theatre. Like most actors, they do—or have done—other things. But what they do all the time—because to do otherwise would be unthinkable—is act, and when they’re not doing that, looking for opportunities to act some more.

Braithwaite, a Barrymore award winner (for the role of Boyd in “The Big Bang”) used to teach theology, theatre—and sex education to freshmen—at St. Joe’s Prep: “I used to say—I teach theatre, theology and sex ed, so we do ‘Agnes of God’ every year.” (Cue the rim shot.) He still directs shows at St. Joe’s.

Faith has appeared Off-Broadway in “The Secret Garden” and “Like It Is” at the York Theatre. He is a three-time Barrymore Award nominee. He and his wife have a children’s performing arts studio in Plumsteadville.

Now, as to that sneak preview:

The final dress rehearsal of “Stones in His Pockets” will be open to the public on Sunday, August 31, at 2 p.m. The suggested donation is $10, and all contributions will be donated to the Hibernian Hunger Project, a community service program that feeds needy people in the Philadelphia/Camden area. (Hey, how can you call yourself a Hibernian and not go?)

Three preview performances will be held September 2-4, with tickets discounted at $20. Talkbacks will be held after the first two 8 p.m. previews, as well as on Thursday, September 11, at 8 p.m. and Sunday, September 21, at 2 p.m.

Opening night is September 5, followed by a reception. All evening performances are at 8 p.m., and matinees begin at 2 p.m. on Wednesdays and Sundays.

Tickets are $25 for all Wednesday-Thursday performances and $30 for Friday through Sunday shows, with discounts available for groups of 10 or more. Tickets are available by calling the Act II Box Office at (215) 654-0200 or online at www.act2.org.

Act II is at 56 East Butler Avenue, just a block from another venerable borough institution, The Shanachie Pub. Shanachie is also a show supporter. Look for an opening night appearance by the pub’s co-owner, singer Gerry Timlin.

P.S.: We’re supporters, too, even though it’s mostly moral support.

Editor’s note: Broadway and Irish actor Declan Mooney is stepping into the role of Charlie Conlon. Mooney, who joins Tony Braithwaite in rehearsal, replaces Chris Faith, who was forced to leave the show due to a family emergency.

Mooney will easily fill the shoes of Faith. He has performed the role of Charlie two other times, including as stand-in for Tony-nominated Conleth Hill in the Broadway production of the play. Dialect training will not be necessary for Mooney: He hails from Downpatrick in County Down, Ireland, and came to the States to attend college on a soccer scholarship.

August 22, 2008 by Jeff Meade

News, People

A Philadelphia AOH Leader Moves into the National Organization’s Top Spot

Seamus Boyle with local AOHer Will Hill at the Ancient Order of Hibernians' Project St. Nicholas in the Northeast in December.

Seamus Boyle has always been a prominent player in the Ancient Order of Hibernians locally, and active in Irish and Irish-American issues.

Over the years, he has continued to make his mark as a leader within the national AOH.

Now, following the AOH’s election in New Orleans in July, Boyle is the organization’s newest president. He’s not the first Philly guy to hold the top post, but he is the first Quaker City-based national AOH president since Michael Donohue, who held the office from 1923 to 1927. (Before that, according to Gerry Ennis, secretary of the state board, Joseph McLaughlin held the post from 1912 through 1919. And before that, Maurice Wilhere was president from 1886 to 1893.

It’s been a long, long time, then, since a Philadelphian claimed the top spot.

We asked the new president to tell us about his plans—and a bit about himself. Turns out there’s more than a bit to say. Seamus Boyle has led an amazingly active life.

Here’s what he had to say:

Q. The AOH has been identified with a lot of issues over the years—protecting Catholic churches from the Nativists and supporting the Molly Maguires in the early going, all the way to more recent concerns about Northern Ireland and immigration. During your tenure as president, is the AOH likely to try to have an impact in any particular areas of politics of public policy? On what issue or issues would you like to make your mark?

A. I think the issue of immigration and the undocumented is probably one of the most important issues facing us as Irish-Americans today. It seems that those who are not eligible to receive a green card because they overstayed a visa or some other minor infraction are treated the same as a terrorist who wants to destroy the United States.

The Irish immigrant is for the most part young, works hard, pays taxes, stays out of trouble and wants to stay here and raise a family. The only difference between them and the millions of immigrants who came before them is the bureaucracy and the lack of common sense that will not let them stay.

Many of our ex-political prisoners like Pol Brennan are treated like a criminal or worse. Malachy McAllister, Matt Morrison, and many more have been harassed and badgered by every agency in our government; it is time it stopped and we are the only ones that can do it.

We need to stand up for our people, we need to band together no matter what organization we belong to and pressure our politicians to do the right and just thing. Politicians hear us when we have a loud voice because they know what we can do if we were organized. We only have a few months left to make the politicians listen to us and, make no mistake about it, when they know the voting power we have they will listen or suffer the consequences. After November we have no leverage; once they are elected all we will get is lip service. We need to do it now. Remember, if they don’t help us, then we don’t help them. It’s a very simple formula.

Q. Is Northern Ireland a non-issue for the AOH, now that we have had our kumbaya moment with Martin McGuinness and Ian Paisley? What has to happen next on that issue, from the AOH perspective?

A. Northern Ireland is at peace now, or so we are told, but they cannot be at a true and lasting peace until they are One United Nation. I have heard on so many occasions that the war is well and truly over and our help is no longer needed. Ask the people of Belfast or Derry, Tyrone or Armagh whether we are needed or not, and I know you will get a different answer. Our ex-prisoners who need to be trained for jobs, the many organizations that help the prisoners and their families, the families who were affected by the collusion of the British security forces and the Loyalist death squads need our help.

The reason we need to be involved in bringing a closure to all the open cases is because the world listens to America. We need to pressure the British government through our politicians to bring our Island together as one and we can accomplish that end if we organize, put our petty differences aside, unite and pressure our politicians here in America. If we do this, we can accomplish anything.

Q. You’ve been closely identified with immigration reform. What’s your approach to the issue? What would you regard as the best income for Irish immigrants?

A. Years ago it was much easier for people to immigrate but because of many reasons including 9/11 and the situation in Iraq and Afghanistan it has made it almost impossible to get permanent status here. Family does not count any more, and corporations no longer want to put advertisements in newspapers for workers as they once did to attract our Irish qualified workforce because they were getting sued for discrimination. All our visa programs have dried up, and our green card quota has been drastically reduced.

Q. Some have said that one possible result of immigration restrictions is that Irish communities like those in Delaware County might become much smaller or dry up altogether. Why is that an issue?

A. I think we need to find a fair quota for our people and work with other groups to find this solution. If we have few or no immigration policy it affects all the communities as it hinders our heritage and eventually our children will know nothing about our history, which is so precious to us. Our language and sports here have already suffered and we cannot afford to let it decline any further.

Q. Do you feel like the Irish need to work with other immigrant groups to achieve reform? I mean, fundamentally, this is not an Irish issue so much as an immigrant issue, is it? Can we really achieve any progress on Irish immigration without finding common cause with, say, Latin American or Asian groups?

A. I think that the Irish have more to offer than some of the other groups and I do not mean to degrade any nationality. The Irish have a head start on other groups because the have a tremendous work ethic, great education and speak English, and that is an advantage for employers. We as Irish are not looking for anything except to be treated fairly.

Q. I understand you are a native of Armagh. When did you move to Philly? Tell us about yourself and your family.

A. I was born in the townland of Faughiletra, Jonesboro, County Armagh on July 5, 1942, to Terence and Katie (McArdle) Boyle. My father came to Philadelphia in 1953, where my aunt Mary lived and he stayed with her until we arrived in May of 1954. My father was a carpenter who was offered a job in Philadelphia with Matthew McCloskey, one of the biggest contractors in the Northeast and later became ambassador to Ireland.

My father bought a new house, which was being built at the time in Mayfair, St Matthews’s parish. I finished 8th grade in St Matthew’s and went to Father Judge, graduating in 1961. I had an older sister, Noulagh, who passed away in October of 2004, another sister Carmel, brother Michael who passed away in September of 2005 and a brother Thomas. I was the second oldest of 5.

I married Bernadette (maiden name also Boyle) in Ireland in August 1970, and have three children, Michael, Tara and Bronagh, and six grandchildren: Kieran, Colin, Megan, Sheila, Brady and Finnegan.

I became an apprentice carpenter in Carpenters Local 122, graduating in 1966. I went to work traveling for (BACM) British American Construction Company, returning to Ireland meeting Berna and building a house in South Armagh in Killeavy.

I returned to Philadelphia in 1971 and became very involves in Irish Northern Aid and the AOH. I became involved in the Carpenters Union as an officer and worked up to get elected as business agent for the Philadelphia Council of Carpenters and got elected every election until I retired in 1997.

I had always been involved in the AOH Division 39 from 1972 and became an officer shortly after joining and have been an officer ever since on a division, county, state or national level. I wanted to do more for my community and for the people of the North of Ireland, where I was born, and the AOH was very involved in both of these issues.

August 7, 2008 by Jeff Meade

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