Celtic Rock Links

My housemate Aram maintains another list of Celtic and Irish Music . His list is still a work in progress.

This list is by no means complete. Please email me if you know of any bands that fit this profile that I should know about. Also feel free to send me sample CDs of your band and I'll add you. Well, I'll probably add you anyway, but send me a CD to make sure.

• Great Big Sea Straight Out of Newfoundland! My favorite band right now, and perhaps of all-time. I really can't say enough about their live show; just one hell of a kitchen party!
• Mother Grove A band I discovered early in 2003 when their singer-songwriter found my web page and emailed me. They call their style "kilt rock", a rock band with Celtic influence and bagpipes! One really can't overstate the power of bagpipes. One of their band members contacted me
• Enter The Haggis Another great Celtic rock band. They have some free tunes on their website and from what I've heard, they have some energy, some wailing fiddles, and I believe people wearing kilts are involved. I'm seeing this band as soon as they hit DC, at which point I'll include an update.
• Oysterband Good grief, why the hell didn't someone tell me about this band? The only album I've got thus far is "The Shouting Side of Life", and it's really quite good stuff. Loud, some melodies, a few weepy ballad-like songs, but generally good stuff. And they have about 15 more albums I need to acquire.
• The Punters Anoter Canadian band from Newfoundland. I've only heard one MP3, a song called "Prohibition Way" which is a pretty cool bootlegging song, I'm guessing from the 1920s. They perform a version of "Ferryland Sealer", which is a track Great Big Sea does a great live version of.
• Filthy Thievin' Bastards A supergroup of sorts in that the Bastards are a side project of the Swingin' Utters where the band members can explore their folksy sentiments. I have their first EP, "Our Fathers Sent Us", and it's heavily acoustic and their lyrics strive for tragically funny. The disc has grown on me, but only a little.
• Dropkick Murphys Boston-based punk group that plays some punk versions of folk songs like "Rocky Road to Dublin". They also cover some Clash material to good effect, and they have a great cover of the Misfits "Halloween". As far as being Celtic, since they're about as South Boston as you can get, they're likely descended from Irish immigrants. Their music is punk with a small smattering of Celtic sound on certain songs. But in general they're a punk band.
• Young Dubliners I saw them at the Iota in Arlington, VA, a club about as big as an average-sized refridgerator. I've never been so close to a show before, and they did not disappoint. If only the DC Metro ran later than midnight on weekdays, I might have been able to get their CD autographed... I bought their new CD at the concert because I've been told that when you buy at a concert rather than at a retailer, more of the money goes to the band and less to the record label's fixed costs for shipping, storage, etc.

  Young Dubliners are a great live band, and their studio material is good to listen to as well. They're also fairly cool, I didn't know this at the time but I was watching the intro to Monday Night Football at the Iota show with one of their members. I wish I payed more attention to details like what the drummer looks like...

• The Levellers My roommate Aram introduced me to this group. They're British folk-punk, I suppose you could say. Another band that must put on some ass-whoopin' live shows, though I have no empirical evidence of this because they don't make it to this side of the Atlantic Ocean as often as they should. Last time they toured the US (May of 2003) they played Pittsburgh and NYC, but not DC. Pittsburgh! Come on now, you want me to believe that a European band has a bigger following in Pittsburgh (cosmopolitan center of international culture that it is) than in DC? They didn't even play Philly, which is road-trip-able.
• John McLean Allan Rock and Roll bagpipe player, from Scotland by way of Los Angeles. I found out about him when he emailed me. I've listened to a couple of clips from his CD, and from what I hear it sounds quite fresh, with a little more edge to go with the traditional bagpipe sound.
• Blood Or Whiskey Isn't this a profound question? Blood? Or Whiskey? Whatever the answer, the band has a good sound. More rock, with some traditional hooks. Funny, twisted lyrics from what I've heard. Their lead singer has the whole gravelly-voice thing like Dickey from the Mighty-Mighty Bosstones. I look forward to seeing them perform live, and to getting a hold of their CD for less than $20, as I've only heard the clips from their website.
• Seven Nations From Orlando, Florida, Seven Nations played at Wolftrap in VA this past summer as part of the Roots tour with Great Big Sea and the Young Dubliners, on a day that was 96 degrees and humid. It was an excellent show, Seven Nations has some wonderful songs and had a few extended jams, and their bagpipe player even took off his boots and step-danced. If I were a step-dancing bagpipe player, I would not be single like I am right now... Of course if I did anything besides update my freakin' web page all the time, maybe I could fix that, too.
• Tempest I finally saw Tempest perform live last night at the Jammin' Java cafe in Vienna, VA. The venue is great, you're practically right on stage with them. Their live shows are incredible, tons of energy and lots of frenetic Celtic jamming. I especially like their rhythm section--Adolfo Lazo, their drummer, gives their music a very delicate and deliberate Caribbean feel, and Ariane, their bassplayer, just has a great subtle, subdued sense of humor on stage that you can appreciate in a small club. Plus she takes pictures of the band and the audience during shows, which is pretty cool. This is a phenomenon I often forget about--that musicians and athletes bring cameras with them and record things for themselves in the same way that way that I do. I first learned of this phenomenon when reading about the Patriots winning their 2nd super bowl, and how the players all had video cameras to record everything they could.

  Anyway, so back to Tempest--You have to love a band that hangs out after gigs to sign CDs, and they're incredibly patient with their audience. I mean, for normal people like me who don't actually brush elbows with famous people, it's often hard to know how to act around celebrities (even if the celebrities are somewhat obscure Celtic Rock legends). But they make small-talk, sign CDs, thank you for coming to their shows, it's great that they're pretty humble about the whole thing. Plus Lief's former roomate directed the Norweigian film "Elling", which if you haven't seen it you should.

  I have no idea why the show wasn't sold out a long time ago... It was a great, high-energy show with good music, and the band hangs around to sign CDs and chat with the audience. The energy level was similar to a Great Big Sea show, even though the median age of the audience was a quite a bit older. The only thing I can think of is that their songs are typically quite long (at least 4 min each) and therefore aren't as short and poppy, so perhaps that prevents them from gaining the same type of market share?

  So perhaps this summer I will finally make it up to Bethlehelm, PA in August for the gigantic music festival that Tempest participates in every year? I may as well since I'm moving up to Hamilton, NY to teach at Colgate next year, and it's sort of on the way. It's refreshing to know that I'm not too old for road-trips!

  Note to self: No more Celtic Rock shows the night after playing Dance Dance Revolution!

• Clannad Clannad's songs are so eerie, I like them even though they're typically not drinking songs. They have approximately 10,000 albums, I'm sure that some of them are great and some aren't... But I have no idea which albums to pick up first. Can someone help me out here? I'm soliciting the advice of random people who see my web page on which Clannad albums to purchase.
• The Prodigals Jig-punk at its finest. Great versions of Ghost Riders in the Sky. Pretty good rhythm section.
• Carbon Leaf I saw them open for Great Big Sea. Originally from Richmond, VA, they somehow managed to get a single repeatedly played on DC 101, one of the DC area's overplay-happy poppy-rock Clear Channel stations. I'm not sure how true this is in general, but their singer had the "dreamy-eyed, tortured artist" look going for most of the show. I think it may be an act, though, so that women are attracted to his "dark side". If I were a rock star-- which I still maintain I could have been if I hadn't wasted all that time doing homework instead of playing guitar-- I'd probably do the same.
• Black 47 Just discovered this band not too long ago when I finally got ahold of "Funky Ceili" on mp3. I cannot wait to see this band live! Their singer-songwriter-playwright Larry Kirwan is pretty eccentric, he's got the anti-establishment and socially progressive sentiments of a late 70s punk rocker, but his music is a blend of hip-hop, reggae, rock, with some definite Irish influence.
• Flogging Molly Folk-punk band of Irish and Californian origin. Their show had more energy than any show I've ever seen. Every time I see this band with my roommate Aram, something crazy happens on the way home. First time we saw them at Nation in DC, we missed the last Metro and had to cab it from SE DC back to College Park. On the way home from the Recher Theater in Towson, MD, there was a hazmat spill in front of us and we got stuck for 4 hours on the Baltimore beltway between 12:30 and 4:30am. That part sucked, but Aram had his laptop and "Empire Strikes Back" on DVD, so it wasn't too bad. If we had left 2 min earlier, we would have missed the accident entirely. But had we left 1 min earlier, we would have been involved in the accident. So all things considered we got away pretty cheap.

  Anyway, the show was excellent! Dave King looks like he's pushing 40. At first I thought he was pulling a Shane MacGowan, drinking and partying himself out of his prime. But shit, Dave King is close to 40, he started in the early 80s with Fastway.

  "Drunked Lullabies" is an excellent CD, I highly recommend it:
  

• Runrig Depends on my mood whether I want to listen to them. Definitely not drinking songs.
• Saw Doctors Imagine Bruce Springstein if he were a band from County Galway. Rootsy music, lyrics that cut right into your heart. OK, I got sick for their March 12, 2003 show in DC. I really wanted to go, but such is life.
• Celtic Grove Not a band, a website that features band and provides streaming celtic music, so that when you get tired of the 200 song playlist featured by your local Clear Channel Communications affiliate, you can tune in on the web and hear something useful.
• Saint Bushmill's Choir I got a hold of one of their MP3s, a rollicking rendition of "Foggy Dew". They're made up of members of Seattle punk bands The Gits, Subvert and The Pinkos, and from what I've read put on amazing live shows. Based only on their version of "Foggy Dew", I would see them live.
• Scythian Acoustin Celtic-folk-rock outfit based here in DC. They usualy play on Thursdays at Fado's, an Irish pub in Chinatown that's evidently part of a nationwide chain of pubs. They were pretty good, though because they're playing to yuppies on a Thursday night, they have to cover lots of stuff, like Bon Jovi and the Proclaimers, to keep people drinking. The band consists somehow of brothers of Ukrainian descent. I want to hear them play a gig where they don't have to cater to the thursday-night yuppie crowd.
• The Pogues: Arguably the first group to meld punk and traditional Irish music, the Pogues are not as good on CD as I expected. Their good stuff is excellent, but they have a lot of stuff on their albums that feels like filler.

  So the Pogues played a short tour in the states this year (2006), and their date at the 930 club in DC sold out before tickets went on sale. I kid you not--I went to the website immediately upon receiving the mailing about buying advanced tickets, and it was sold out. They added a 2nd date which also sold out before going on sale.

  I've never seen them play live, and I'm starting to suspect that I never will. Although seeing the Pogues in 2006 can't compare to seeing them fifteen or more years ago... It would probably be like seeing the Rolling Stones in the 2000s, or at least that's what I keep telling myself because I missed the show.

• Steeleye Span: This is the band that started it all for me, and from what I've read, they're the pioneers (along with Fairport Convention) of playing traditional folk songs with rock instruments and more modern sentiments. The girl I dated in college introduced me to this band back in 1997, she had grown up listening to them and singing along to their songs with her parents. I grew up listening to the "Alvin and the Chipmunks Christmas Special" on vinyl... Funny how these things work out.
• Fairport Convention: Another pioneering group. Somehow they swap members back and forth with Jethro Tull.