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Irish Music Session

How To Be Irish in Philly This Week

The great and glorious.

Does the fun ever end? Well, it might, but not this weekend.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!! (Or Happy Paddy’s Day to you real Irish. To the rest of ye, it’s not Patty. Not now. Not ever. Never. ) The big day is Sunday this year, and there are three local parades on Saturday that will get you in the spirit. They’re staggered a little so you may be able to make all three (some of the bands do two, so it’s possible).

First off the line is the 25th annual Bucks County St. Patrick’s Day Parade which starts at 10:30 AM from St. Joseph the Worker Church at 9172 New Falls Road in Levittown.

At noon, the Springfield, Delaware County parade starts from West Springfield Road.

Then, at 2 PM, the Conshohocken St. Patrick’s Day parade takes over downtown Conshohocken.

There’s plenty more out there to help you get your Irish on. Here it is in chronological order, and we are not taking a breath:

Saturday

9:30 AM. Paddy Whacks’ St. Patrick’s Day Dash and Bash features a 5K on a closed course to raise money for patients at the Fox Chase Cancer Center, followed by the Bash, an all-day tented event at the bar’s Comly Road location featuring Jamison, Slainte, and the Bogside Rogues. Lots of drink specials.

10 AM. Register for the new Glenside GAA at the MacSwiney Club in Jenkintown.

10 AM. Hear Clancy’s Pistol at The Boat Club in National Park, NJ.

Noon. Enjoy drink specials and lots of music at the Piazza at Schmidt’s Shamrock Celebration on Hancock Street in Philadelphia.

1 PM. Head to the Irish Center for televised GAA sports from Ireland.

2 PM. The Molly Maguires Ceilidh Band will be providing the music at the St. Patrick’s Day Party at the Knights of Columbus Hall in Glenside, a production of the Sean MacBride AOH Div. 2. Lots of dancing and fun for the kiddies.

3 PM. The Bogside Rogues go on stage at Paddy Whacks at 9241-43 Roosevelt Blvd. n Northeast Philadelphia.

5 PM. Clancy’s Pistol is on the move. They’re playing at Maynard’s Café in Margate, NJ.

6PM. Jamison goes on at Paddy Whacks’ Paddy Bash.

8 PM. Catch Burning Bridget Clear at World Café at the Queen in Wilmington, DE.

8 PM. Celtic Pride will be showing it off at the Temperance House in Newtown.

8:30 PM. The Broken Shillelaghs will fix you up at Brittingham’s in Lafayette Hill, now under new ownership (Brittingham’s that is).

9 PM. If you need a break from Irish music, check out Electric Boa and Hammer Down at World Café Live in Philadelphia. Not sure what they’re doing on our calendar, but, oh well. Everyone’s Irish on St. Patrick’s Day.

10:30 PM. Hope they get mileage. Clancy’s Pistol is setting up at yet another Jersey location on Saturday—the great old Anglesea Pub in North Wildwood.

Sunday-St. Patrick’s Day!
7 AM The Annual AOH St. Patrick’s Charity Breakfast takes place at Fado Irish Pub on Locust Street in Philadelphia.

8 AM. Have another charity breakfast at The Plough and the Stars in Philadelphia. Your host: Judge Jimmy Lynn, who can always be counted on to sing.

8:30 AM. The Derry Brigade will be at Marty Magee’s in Prospect Park.

9:30 AM. More televised GAA games at the Irish Center in Mt. Airy.

11 AM. This is a special year for the Irish Memorial—its 10th. There will be prayers, speeches, music, and, of course, Irish dancers, at this lovely location at Penns Landing Park.

11 AM. The Shantys open up the Erin Pub in Norwood for a day of celebrating.

12 PM. Clancy’s Pistol, on very little sleep, will be playing at Paddy Whacks on Comly Road in Philadelphia.

12 PM. Galway Guild will be at Fado in Philadelphia.

12 PM. Join John Brennan and the musical Brennan family, harper Ellen Tepper, and fiddler Bette Conway and more at The Water Gallery in Lansdale for a day of live music (and lovely handcrafted Irish items). You can also buy our CD, “Ceili Drive: The Music of Irish Philadelphia,” which features the Brennans, Tepper, members of Blackthorn, The John Byrne Band, and many of your local favorite traditional musicians.

12 PM. Have your lunch at Roller’s in Chestnut Hill and hear Kitty Kelly Albrecht and her husband, Mike Albrecht. For $10, you get a copy of the latest Philadelphia Ceili Band CD, “Kelly Time.”

12 PM. There’s an open house at the Gloucester County AOH/Richard Rossiter Memorial Hall in National Park, NJ, featuring live music by the Broken Shillelaghs.

1 PM. There’s a family friendly event at Tom & Jerry’s in Folsom featuring Blackthorn—and they promise Irish music all day long.

1 PM. Attend the annual St. Patrick’s Day Mass at the Irish Center. Afterwards, enjoy a lunch of ham and cabbage and shepherd’s pie (it will be authentic, believe us) along with music and dancing.

1 PM. Bill Monaghan and Celtic Pride make their annual trek to the stage of the Sellersville Theatre.

4 PM. Mick Moloney and Friends come to the Cape May Convention Hall. Expect topnotch traditional Irish music and some great stories.

5 PM. Mary Beth (Bonner Ryan) and Friends Irish Band will be playing at The Springfield Inn in Springfield. What a voice!

6 PM. Pack the House Entertainment is going green at World Café Live Downstairs. Listen to three rock and three hip-hop bands, wear something green, participate in the leprechaun costume contest (winner gets a green $50 bill—do they come in other colors?).

7 PM. Chances are I will know about half the audience at the TLA because I count many Saw Doctors fans among my pals. These Galway rockers come to Philly every year because of the love.

8 PM. Burning Bridget Cleary will be at World Café Live.

8 PM. Clancy’s Pistol (where were you all day?) will be playing at Dubh Linn Square in Cherry Hill, NJ.

8 PM. Catch the Shantys at Reedy’s Tavern on Frankford Ave. in
Philly.

9 PM. Galway Guild will be rocking RiRa at the Trop in Atlantic City.

The great and glorious.

That’s it so far for Paddy’s Weekend, but keep checking back because new events are being added to our calendar about every hour. Please note: Some sessions on our sessions calendar that repeat every week may not be as scheduled because of the weekend events. Call ahead to find out about any changes. There are more details on all these events on the calendar, including addresses and even maps.

Ah, but that was just the weekend. There’s more.

Blackthorn leaves this week for spring training—if you didn’t book, you missed out.

On Tuesday, Sir James Galway, celebrated Irish flutist (flautist?), comes to the Kimmel Center in Philadelphia.

On Thursday, Mary O’Malley, the Heimbod Chair at Villanova, will be reading from her newest work, Valparaiso, which deals with themes of Ireland’s economic boom and bust, at Villanova.

There’s also a new recurring event on our calendar—Irish Music Thursday at Schileen’s Pub in Westville, NJ.

On Friday, the Yanks are coming. American-born trad musicians Dylan Foley, Dan Gurney, and Sean Ernest will be playing a house concert in a private home in Ambler. Contact info is on our calendar.

Coming up: the Robbinsville St. Patrick’s Day Parade is next Saturday, as is the Delco Gaels Night of Comedy and Music (I thought that was what “Dancing Like a Star” was) at St. Laurence Hall in Upper Darby. And Clancy’s Pistol will be playing at Big Heads Pub in Willow Grove next weekend. Like Chicken Man, they’re everywhere, they’re everywhere! Hats off to ya, lads!

Enjoy St. Patrick’s Day and don’t do anything we wouldn’t do.

March 15, 2013 by Jeff Meade

Music

Last Call at the Three Beans

The gang at the Bean.

Since April 1995, if you wanted to hear or play Irish music in South Jersey, the Three Beans coffeehouse in Haddonfield was your cup o’ Joe.

That’s about to change. The Three Beans is losing its lease and, on May 21, one of the longest-running sessions in the Delaware Valley is moving to new digs—the Coffee Garden, at 57 East Kings Highway in nearby Audubon.

Kathy DeAngelo, who with husband Dennis Gormley has been moderating the musical get-together at Three Beans since April 1995, notes that it’s not the first time the session has had to move. The session has been filling all the available seats of the cozy lounge of the “the Bean” for so long, it’s hard to remember that it was ever anywhere else. But it was. “We were doing the session at other places before that—for 3 or 4 years,” she says. (One of those places was Katie O`Brien`s in Haddonfield.) “We’re undoubtedly the longest continuously running session in New Jersey, and probably the Delaware Valley.”

The new place, like the Three Beans, is unlike most other traditional music session in that the strongest brew on tap might be Columbian supremo. Gormley sees this as an advantage over noisy bars. “Because this place is another coffee house,” he says, “we don’t have to worry about being in a place where there are four TV sets on the wall.”

So the good news is: The music will go on. The sad news is: It just won’t be in the comfy confines of the Three Beans, home to a harp case full of cheering memories and good times. Gormley recalls with fondness all the great musicians who have passed through, including the legendary Eugene O’Donnell, tenor banjo phenom Angelina Carberry and button accordion wizard Martin Quinn, and world-class harpers Grainne Hambly and Billy Jackson.

Marie Ely, who has played whistle and flute in the South Jersey session since Katie O’Brien’s (including a stint when the session took refuge in a church basement), says the Three Beans session started small, and grew. “The first session at the Bean consisted of Dave Field and me. Kathy and Dennis had a gig,” she says. “We maybe had four pieces in common and were comfortable enough playing two of them.”

Compared to the bar, Ely says, “The Bean was a homier atmosphere. They were very accepting of our session as compared to Katie’s, where, toward the end, we had to compete with karaoke night.”

May 14 will be mark the last session at Three Beans. But to help you preserve the memories, we offer a photo essay and two videos.

Watch videos of music sessions.

May 7, 2009 by Jeff Meade

News

Session Surprise: A Visit from Angelina Carberry and Martin Quinn

Angelina Carberry and Martin Quinn settle in next to local fiddler Caitlin Finley.

Banjo whiz Angelina Carberry and her husband, the great box player Martin Quinn, were in town over the weekend for a concert at the Coatesville Traditional Irish Music Series. I missed it, and I was feeling bad about that.

Of course, one way to make yourself feel better when you know you’ve missed out on some choice traditional Irish music is to find yourself a good traditional Irish music session. So I headed off to Shanachie Pub in Ambler on Tuesday night, bodhran in hand, planning to console myself with a couple of pints of Smithwick’s and the odd reel or jIg. (If you’ve ever heard me play bodhran, you know what I mean by odd.)

The place was already jammed with musicians when I got there, including—estimating conservatively—327.5 bodhran players. My partner Denise showed up, with her husband and son in tow. With so many drummers, I sat things out for a while with Denise, Ed and Pat.

Then I looked up to see Dennis Gormley and Kathy DeAngelo, who ride herd over the Three Beans session in Haddonfield, walk in the door. And right behind them … Carberry and Quinn. Kathy manages the two.

I headed back to my seat and waited for an opportunity to jump in on a tune or two. I got the opportunity at last … a blistering set of reels. My right hand fell off at the end. And it was good.

Carberry and Quinn, based in County Longford, play with laser-like precision, and yet they somehow—magic, I’m thinking—sound spontaneous and fresh.

The unexpected appearance caused no end of upset for Denise and me. We’re rarely sans camera. Shanachie co-owner Ed Egan went off in search of a disposable camera (thanks, Ed!), and Denise squeezed off a few shots. Not the quality we’re used to, but workable. Oh, thank heaven for 7-11.

Thanks, too, to Ed for risking life and limb by standing on a chair to capture an aerial view of the proceedings.

Aside from an accidental encounter—and what are the odds of that?—your last chance to see Carberry and Quinn in this neck of the woods is Saturday, August 2, at the Hunting Shanty in Tuckerton Seaport, 120 West Main Street. The show starts at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $15.

July 31, 2008 by Jeff Meade