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Happy St. Patrick's Day: A Concert Review

I hope you didn’t have to drink any of that awful green beer or even get drunk on anything -- leave that to the professional Irishman or the pseudo Irishman or the wannabe Irishman or the ignorant Irishman.

Like many “Name-that-nationality/Americans” I am proud of my heritage, but I am proud of it every day, not just on March 17th, and no, I don’t get drunk on “St. Paddy’s” though in fact I’m drunk almost every other day: on Saint Patrick’s Day, I refrain from drinking, for I am a confirmed contrarian . Joke!

The Irish in me is blood deep and blood wild. It needs no call for celebration -- it is who I am. I need never set foot on Irish soil. I’m 100%. My people were driven out of Ireland by the English landlords who controlled the land and the harvest and in a time of famine and starvation exported all Irish crops to England to feed their own, leaving my people to starve and creating a situation where peasants, unable to pay their tithes on their meager landholdings, had their land confiscated and were themselves transported to America or Australia. My people came to America during the great Famine of the 1840’s, through New York, to Ohio, then Chicago.

To this day, the only English I like are the Beatles, the Stones and the Who! And oh, yeah, Princess Di.

My great, great Uncle, Seamus Twomey, invented the car bomb. But that is neither here nor there (at least not here).

Every American ethnicity has their story and I embrace them all. Each year I celebrate Cape Verdian independence with my neighbors, the Da Cruz’es. I embrace my Italian brothers, my Latin brothers, my African/American brothers, and my every, Slash/American brothers.

One of my best memories in the Mt. Hope community is being invited to Nada’s home for an ethnic celebration of her family’s Serbian heritage, St. George’s, a saint’s day important to her family. We sampled ethnic food and met her mother and her children, and I felt privileged to be welcomed into her home and into her culture. It was a blessing.

Low self-esteem is endemic to this country, an epidemic in the U.S. That is why so many of our countrymen are what I call Europhiles (and that is worse than being an Anglophile, in my opinion), where everything European is better than anything American, be it cars, cosmetics, or health-care systems. Bull-*ucking- *hit!

I lived in Europe for a number of years, and I love Europe and Europeans and their varied cultures. But they had neither heat nor hot water, drinkable water nor phone service for everyone, when I lived there.

They’d still be in the dark ages. Cowards, perverts, many of them, to be polite, if we hadn’t shown them the way. But I digress. And I don't mean to insult the many good hearted people I love there, just their politicians and their obstinate, socialistic, creativity suppressing ways. But I digress.

So Happy St. Patrick's Day.

To celebrate Saint Patrick’s Day my wife and I went to a concert at the Blackstone River Theatre.

In my vision for this website I envisioned members of the community contributing reviews of the arts, movies, concerts, books, etc. to the website for other members of the community to enjoy, and for writers with the initiative to contribute, a forum.

Well, I’ve never written a review before, but we heard the Karan Casey Band perform at the Blackstone River Theater, Friday night, and this is my attempt at a review.

Karan Casey has perhaps, arguably, the best voice in Celtic music. And she is a sweetheart besides. She began her career as lead vocalist for the great new wave Irish trad band, Solas, lead by Irish/American multi-instrumentalist virtuoso, Seamus Eagan.

Karan Casey

She soon struck out on her own and to this point has three superb albums to her credit.

The line up of her band at this concert consisted of a well known guitarist, Rob Iverson, Kevin Vialilly, on keyboards, and a cellist. With Guitar, cello, piano, and vocals the sound of this band was stately, almost classical in nature, with wide ranging, subtle dynamics. Karen’s voice is an instrument in and of itself – pitch pure and full of a vast range of sounds and emotion and nuance. This was apparent in the several songs she performed unaccompanied in the Gaelic language. She lead off the concert with a stunning version of the old traditional song “She Moved Through the Fair” and ended the concert with a song she wrote, “Bright Winter’s Day”.

At the Blackstone, there is no separation between artist and audience and between sets, when my wife, Irene, complimented Karen on her gifts and on her giving of her talent, Karen kissed her on the cheek and said, “Thank you., so much.” I bought Irene, Karan’s latest album CD, and being shy myself, I asked Irene to have Karen autograph it for me -- Karan wrote, “Thank you, Karen Casey.”

Happy Saint Patrick’s Day.

John Michael Kevin (Shay-McGuiness – P’McGuiness) Twomey

Posted at March 18, 2007 01:04 PM

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