Browsing Tag

Philadelphia Fleadh

How to Be Irish in Philly This Week

You’ll kick up your heels at the Philly Fleadh this Saturday.

Are you feeling the excitement? I am. There are two great music events this weekend. I think we should mash them together and call them the Irish Woodstock, but without all the rain, mud, and bad acid.

On Saturday, it’s the Philadelphia Fleadh (pronounced “flah”—in Irish, many letters are silent) which was moved two weeks ago from its original Pennypack Park location to Cherokee Festival Grounds, 1 Declaration Drive, in Bensalem.

Jamison Celtic Rock’s Frank Daly and CJ Mills, who make up the production company American Paddy’s Productions, have brought in a stellar lineup of performers, incuding the Mahones. They’re an Irish punk band from Canada that’s been around for two decades and have some serious awards under their belts (Best Punk Album for “The Black Irish” from the Independent Music Awards) and even some cinema cred (if you saw the Academy Award-winning movie “The Fighter” with Mark Wahlberg, you heard them in the climactic fight scene). Even if you think you don’t like punk rock, you’re probably going to enjoy it with a little Irish seasoning. Trust me.

Also on the bill, our own homegrown (well, via Dubin) John Byrne Band; Raymond Coleman (stolen from Tyrone); the wickedly funny and musically talented Seamus Kennedy; the high-energy Kilmaine Saints; two bands that never seem to take a break, The Broken Shillelaghs and the Birmingham Six; Killen-Clark (wait till you hear Kim Killen sing—she’ll give you goosebumps); Jamison Celtic Rock, of course; and a host of trad performers including All-Ireland winner Alex Weir with accordion player Mikey McComiskey.

Comhaltas Ceoltoiri Eireann, a worldwide organization dedicated to promoting Irish music and culture, will be hosting a ceili at 1 and 3 PM so you’ll get your chance to do some traditional Irish dancing. (Never done it before? Ask them to do the Siege of Ennis—even I can do that one.)

And to complete the Irish experience, there will be a feis (pronounced “fesh”—in Irish, sometimes letters are also missing)which is a competition of Irish stepdancers. It’s open to all dancers.

There are also vendors selling both merchandise, food, soft drinks, and beer.

Tickets are $30 at the door. For more information, go to the Fleadh site. To see last year’s fun, look at the photos below.

By the way, May 2 has been designated “Mayo Day,” so if you see someone from Mayo, give them a big hug and a kiss.

Part two of the Irish Woodstock is on Sunday at Marty Magee’s Pub in Prospect Park. Musicians including John Byrne, Galway Guild, Mary Malone and Den Vykopal, Paraic Keane, Vince Gallagher and Robbie Furlong, Diarmuid MacSuibhne, Mike Fahy, Scott McClatchy and more will be playing everything from folk to rock to trad to raise money for the Sunday Irish radio shows on WTMR 800AM. Listen here on Sunday from 11 AM to 1 PM. Radio host Marianne MacDonald is queen of the raffle baskets so there will lots of great prizes, guaranteed. A recent on-air fundraiser brought in more than $10,000 for the shows which the hosts, including Vince Gallagher, pay for themselves. (Nah, nobody’s getting rich promoting Irish culture except maybe Bono.)

If neither of these events piques your interest (so, what are you doing reading this?), you might be intrigued by Belfast-born Keith Getty, a Christian singer-songwriter, who will be performing at a free luncheon at Proclamation Presbyterian Church in Bryn Mawr on Saturday, May 2, from noon to 2 PM. One lucky attendee will win two tickets to see Keith and wife Kristyn’s debut at the Kimmel Center’s Verizon Hall (yes, they can fill it) as part of their “Joy: a Christmas Tour” this year.

Also on Sunday, there’s a beef-and-beer fundraiser at the Philadelphia Ballroom in Philadelphia for John Sweeney, a physical therapist who traces his ancestry to Tyrone and Donegal, and who is struggling to regain his mobility after life-altering spinal surgery. The proceeds will help ease the financial burden of his ongoing rehabilitation.

Do a good thing on Sunday. There’s an Irish Tay-Sachs screening at 3 PM at the Haverford YMCA in Havertown. Albert Einstein Medical Center in Philadelphia is conducting a study on the prevalence of genetic markers for this deadly disease that strikes babies in people of Jewish, French Canadian, and Irish descent. There have been three cases of Tay-Sachs in the Philadelphia area, all children born to parents of Irish heritage who carry the gene. I got tested. It doesn’t hurt and it could help others avoid the heartache of losing a child little by little to this terrible disease.

On Tuesday, there’s a special Irish tribute to Philadelphia Councilman Bobby Henon (he’s Johnny-on-the-spot for many Irish wants and needs in the city) at the FOP Lodge #5 in Northeast Philadelphia. There will be food, drinks, and entertainment. Someone needs to play some Mummers’ music that evening. I saw him strut with St. Patrick’s Day Parade Director Michael Bradley at the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick dinner-dance this year, and he is quite the dancer.

On Wednesday, genealogist Frank Southcott (a specialist in Chester County history) will be conducting a workshop on searching for your Irish ancestors at the Bethlehem Public Library between 6:30 and 8 PM.

Then, on Thursday, bingo! The Young Ireland Gaelic Football Club is sponsoring a night of bingo to help raise money for the club. Prizes are co-ed so guys, don’t be afraid. You won’t be playing for purses. It’s at the Highland Park Firehouse in Upper Darby.

Check our calendar for more details and check back during the week for late-breaking events. We’re adding to the calendar just about every day.

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May 1, 2015 by Denise Foley

Dance, Music

Just Singing AFTER the Rain

Fiddler Maura Dwyer of the John Byrne Band … surprise!

It was the Philadelphia Fleadh that almost didn’t happen.

Last Friday, Pennypack Park in the Northeast—the site of Philly’s huge festival of music, dance and culture, scheduled for the very next day—was a waterlogged mess. The Pennypack Creek, which winds through the park, had overflowed its banks after a week’s worth of heavy rain.

C.J. Mills is a partner, with Frank Daly, in American Paddy’s Productions, which put on the festival. It was the second. Mills summed up the situation in a nutshell: “There was mud and water everywhere.

”At that point, Mills and Daly knew they had their work cut out for them.

“If this festival had been one day earlier,” said Daly, “I don’t know if we could have pulled it off.”

For one thing, he said, the stage surrounding the main stage—right on the banks of the Pennypack—was a sea of shoe-sucking mud. It’s hard to dance in mud.

City workers with heavy equipment—along with Mills, Daly, family and Fleadh volunteers—labored all day Friday in the muck, trying to get the park ready for the hundreds of visitors expected to flood into the festival, so to speak, on Saturday.

Through it all, Daly and Mills kept the faith.

“We put in a request about six months ago,” Mills said. “We had no doubt that it was going to be sunny and 73. Weather insurance is expensive, so we prayed a lot.”

All that praying worked. Saturday dawned sunny and clear, and you’d never have guessed that there’d ever been a problem. And the second Philadelphia Fleadh went on right on schedule. (Massive amount of photos, below.)

Walking down the winding path into the park, you could hear the music pounding out of the Ed Kelly Amphitheatre all day—The Mahones, The John Byrne Band, The Birmingham Six, Burning Bridget Cleary, The Shantys, and we could go on—14 bands in all, compared to nine last year.

And there were plenty of people strolling, and in some cases dancing, down that path. Daly and Mills weren’t sure precisely how many, but early afternoon they were certain that the second Fleadh was turning out to be a bigger draw than the first. “Attendance is definitely higher than last year at this time,” said Daly. “Last year, we had 3,000, and we think we’re going to do more this year. And we’re running on schedule—which is a shock.”

A new feature this year probably boosted attendance this year, Mills said. A Feis—an Irish dance competition hosted by the Celtic Flame School of Irish Dance—drew about 120 dancers, but also a host of family, friends and fans. Kids, mostly girls of all ages in curls and sparkly dresses, took to the stage in a sunlit meadow surrounded by tall trees. So much nicer than a musty hall somewhere.

More bands played in their very own sunlit meadow just across a wooden bridge from the Feis. No amphitheater in this case, just a stage, but that meadow was filled with folks in lawn chairs—and more than a few up on their feet, dancing away.

Traditional musicians churned out their own brand of Irish music in an overheated tent, but no one seemed to mind the temperature.

Ten vendors peddled their T-shirts, hats, jewelry, kilts, glassware, gifts and more throughout the grounds, and if you wanted great food or, say, a cold brew—no problem. There was plenty to go around.

The whole show ended with an 8 p.m. show featuring lead fiddler Mills’ and lead singer Daly’s own band, Jamison.

Getting a good cross-section of the Irish community in on the act was a priority this year, says Mills.

“You have the Philadelphia Ceili Group, you have punk rock,” he said. “Every aspect of Philly Irish, we tried to hit it. We wanted to get all of those groups in here today, including parts of the Philly Irish-American world that I’m not a part of.”

It was a lot to manage, but the whole operation went off with clockwork efficiency. Calls over their walkie-talkies kept them running, but Daly and Mills actually seemed relaxed.

“We have a ton of volunteers. By the second year, it’s become a machine, already wound up,” said Daly. We learned everything last year. We felt then like we were making something out of nothing. We learned every part of it—dealing with bands, dealing with volunteers, dealing with public relations. Other people saw what we did, and they wanted to jump at it this year.00

“This is bigger than C.J. and me now. This year, other people are running us.”

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May 9, 2014 by Jeff Meade

People

Grab Your Blankets! The Fleadh is Coming Back!

Fun and family friendly!

File this piece of advice from Frank Daly away to pull out any time you’re thinking of throwing a big music event: “Never rent a park.”

Not that Pennypack Park isn’t a great venue for an Irish music festival. Daly and partner C.J. Mills rolled out their first one there last year, the very successful Philadelphia Fleadh, in a niche of this rambling, 1300-acre green space in northeast Philadelphia. Best friends, partners in American Paddy’s Productions , and members of the band, Jamison, Daly and Mills are putting the finishing touches on their second festival—scheduled for Saturday, May 3—and Daly says it was an easier sell to the Fairmount Park Commission this year.

“They weren’t difficult to deal with last year, but they weren’t inviting,” says Daly. “Frankly, they heard Irish event and they thought debauchery, port-a-potties, people fighting.”

In other words, not exactly like folks letting out of Sunday Mass. “They were there last year watching, and I think they have a much different idea,” says Daly. In fact, it’s a little more like folks letting out of Sunday Mass, only with bands, beer, and bouncy castles.

“We had 2,700 people attend last year and they were a great group of people. It was very family friendly,” he says. And the Fairmount Park Commission was impressed. “They say me and CJ out there the next day at 5 AM picking up trash,” he laughs. “They saw we weren’t throwing a giant drunkfest there.”

This year, expect more of the same—along with Irish beer. “That was the only complaint we got,” says Daly. “We didn’t have Irish beer. Well this year there’s Guinness, Smithwicks, and Harp.”

And an appealing mix of both traditional and Celtic rock acts, including some of Philly’s finest: the Paul Moore Band, Jamison, the John Byrne Band, Buring Bridget Cleary, the Hooligans, Raymond and Mickey Coleman, the Birmingham Six, the Jameson Sisters, the Broken Shillelaghs, Killen-Clark, The Ladeens, and Seamus Kennedy. This year’s import are the Mahones, a punk rock Celtic band from Canada. Last year, it was the Young Dubliners.

Instead of a DJ tent, says Daly, this year’s festival will include an acoustic tent with music sessions and workshops for those who want to perfect their tunes and a ceili dance at 1 and 3 PM where instructors will show you the steps to the Gay Gordon and Siege of Ennis so you can join in the fun.

Festival Food and Maggie’s on the Waterfront will be feeding the crowds and there are 10 vendors selling everything from kilts to t-shirts. And this year there’s a bonus—an open feis (pronounced “fesh,” it’s an Irish step dance competition) hosted by Celtic Flame School of Irish Dance that’s also free. “You don’t have to buy a ticket to the festival to go to the feis,” Daly says.

Philadelphia Fleadh is one of three Irish-themed events American Paddy’s Productions mounts every year, including American Celtic Christmas during the holidays and Paddypalooza, a tented Celtic rock party around St. Patrick’s Day.

Next year, they’ll be adding a fourth—Sober St. Patrick’s Day, a family-friendly, alcohol-free program that got its start in New York and has been enormously successful (as in, sold-out) in New York, Casper, Wyoming, Richmond, Virginia and Belfast, Northern Ireland.

“It came about because of my friendship with Katherine Ball-Weir who is involved in the local branch of Comhaltas Ceoltoiri Eireann [an Irish organization supporting Irish music and culture among Irish people]. We met when I was doing marketing for Kildare’s pubs and we worked on bringing big name Irish traditional musicians to West Chester University who would then play at the session in the pub.”

Ball-Weir, whose teenaged son, Alexander, is a fiddler and a member of The Ladeens, managed to secure the rights to the name from the New York organization and she, Daly, and Mills are planning the event for 2015, on Philadelphia parade day.

“We’re looking for a spot—and we’re definitely not renting a public park,” laughs Daly. “They told us when we rented the park they’ve only rented out Fairmount Park two times. One was for “Made in America,” and the other was the Philadelphia Fleadh. So me and Jay-Z,” he deadpans, “are almost exactly the same.”

You can order tickets for the Fleadh by clicking on the Fleadh ad on our pages, or by going to their website.

April 4, 2014 by Denise Foley

News

A Fleadh to Remember

Kicking their heels at the Philly Fleadh

It’s over, but if you were there, you’re probably already planning for next year.

The inaugural Philadelphia Fleadh down at Pennypack Park in the Northeast brought together some of the finest Irish musical talent the city has to offer, including the likes of Jamison, the Bogside Rogues, the John Byrne Band. There wasn’t a moment the whole day when the park was not awash in jigs and reels.

If you wanted dancing, there was plenty of that, too. And food. And drink. And more food. And more drink …

We captured the action in photos.

Check them out!

June 28, 2013 by Jeff Meade