Serving the Flathead Valley & Montana since 2006. A reality based independent journal of observation & analysis. © James Conner.
Today is Saint Patty’s Day, so we’re featuring videos of Irish music and/music by Irish musicians. We’re presenting the videos one at time on the home page, and all together on a special page that will fill up with goodies during the day (and load more and more slowly).
It’s been fun, presenting videos of Irish music. Here are the final three of the day, starting with the High Kings’ version of the Black Velvet Band. I thought about posting another Dessie O’Halloran number, but decided to spare you (one reviewer said Dessie’s voice sounds like a goat undergoing rectal surgery, a description not as hyperbolic as I wish it were).
A jaunty ballad inspired by the California gold rush of 1849. That was during the Irish potato famine, so the reality was a lot grimmer than presented in the song. This performance is mildly notable for its melodic guitar work. I wasn’t able to identify the artists.
Enniskillen is in Northern Ireland, midway between the upper and lower sections of Lough Erne. It’s history is long, storied, and sometimes bloody, and the basis for Tommy Makem’s song, here sung by Makem and the Clancy Brothers.
Tommy Clancy and Tommy Makem in Milwaukee performing a classic a cappella.
An old Tommy Makem song, performed by The Bantry Boys at St. Stephens in Spring Lake Heights, New Jersey. Killybegs is a fishing port on the northwest coast of Donegal Bay.
John Keegan Casey’s classic ballad of the Irish rebellion of 1798, sung by the High Kings, a new group from Ireland that features modern arrangements of traditional music, and includes Finbarr Clancy, who used to sing with the legendary Clancy Brothers, from whom we’ll hear later today.
The Rev. Ian Paisley’s been around so long I thought he was dead. He he isn’t, but Luke Kelly, the man who made Phil Coulter’s musical send-up of Paisley famous, is. Here are the Brennan Sisters singing Hand me down my Bible on the 30th anniversary of Kelly’s death. Lyrics and backstory.
Whiskey, pistols, sacks of money, and pretty women. What could go wrong? Santiano delivers a foot-stompin' performance of a great ballad.
And if you’re up to it, a performance of Diggy Liggy Lo that makes Doug Kershaw look tranquilized.
Second up today is Steve Earle performing Galway Girl at the Kennedy Center in, I think, 2000, accompanied by Donal Lunny, Sharon Shannon on the melodeon, a fiddler resembling Maureen Dowd, and a master of the tin whistle.
To begin the day, here are Dessie O’Halloran, the Brennan Sisters, and Sharon Shannon on the melodeon, in Limerick with a spirited version of Come down from the Mountain, Katie Daly (lyrics).