This Sunday is St. Patrick’s Day, the traditional American celebration of all things Irish. For the bands that specialize in the tunes of Old Erin, it’s crunch time.
“It’s busy, but it’s also a hitting your head against a wall,” says Irish fiddler Linda Relph. “When you’re done, it feels good. It can be a drain, especially all the craziness that can happen in pubs. People show up, drink all day and lose their personal boundaries.”
Relph has been playing traditional Irish music in Texas since the 1990s, after moving here from California. St. Patrick’s Day is a big deal for her, and she sometimes plays three shows a day when it happens on a weekend. This year, her biggest event is in Allen, dubbed Fiddlinda & Friends: An Evening of Celtic Music on March 15. It’s a rare chance for her to spend the holiday headlining an actual concert rather than just livening up the local drinking halls, though she’ll also be doing that.
“It’s not a pub,” Relph says. “It’s not going to be crazy drunken people asking me to play ‘Danny Boy.’”
Note from your humble reporter: While interviewing Relph, my brain blue-screened when trying to name traditional Irish songs and all I could think of was “Danny Boy.” I regret that I annoyed Relph and made her feel this outlet was run by posers.
“I get to play with friends that I have been with socially, in the sessions, but I successfully coerced them to come and join me for this show,” she continued. “It’s not going to be a group I’ve played with for five years doing just another gig.”
Still, the pubs are where most people are going to get their fill of fight songs and mandolins. Plunk Murray has six shows booked in four days, including bouncing back and forth between Gillespie’s Tavern in Richardson and the Celt Irish Pub in McKinney. It’s only about 20 miles between them, so the band should just barely be able to schlep their gear around in time.
And there is a lot of gear. Plunk Murray comes more from the Pogues and Dropkick Murphys side of the Irish music scene. They use a full drum kit and an electric bass, though they still bust out traditional tunes such as “Come Out Ye Black and Tans.” There is a deep connection between punk music and Irish song themes.
“It’s about the IRA and the British,” says singer, banjo and mandolin player Johnny Zercher. “You can absolutely feel the same rebel vibe here in Texas.”
Zercher recalls a recent trip to Ireland to visit his daughter. He loudly sang the song on the street as they were walking along, much to her embarrassment. It was a true punk dad move.
Plunk Murray looks forward to the chaos of St. Patrick’s Day. They already play weekly gigs, so it’s not as if they have to dust off the rust for the shows. Still, it can be a logistical nightmare, especially prepping a large drum set in one location and only moving what they need for a smaller one. It’s anarchy.
“Drink a lot of water, that’s my advice,” he says. “I only hate it’s happening during allergy season. We’re all going to get sinus infections this weekend. Aside from that, come out and have a drink. It’s a part.”
Stylistically, Slugger’s Rule falls somewhere between Relph and Plunk Murray. They come from the tradition of The Dubliners and other pioneers of traditional Irish music making the crossover to pop. Matthew Cook is another multi-instrumentalist and singer with the group, the only one that seems to be taking it comparatively easy this season. They have only two shows booked for the holiday.
“We kind of intentionally pulled our punches this year,” Cook says. “We’re all very tired. Half of the band has younger children now, and it’s a little harder to hit as hard as we used to. We’re pretty happy coming in and playing some music, then having a whiskey.”
Cook waxes eloquently on the power of Irish music that gets played to mainstream audiences this time of year. Some of the songs are hundreds of years old, and the basic melodies remain the same. Every act improvises and iterates, obviously, but the same old love songs and bitter tragedies remain. We talked briefly about modern songwriters like Taylor Swift, and he had this to say.
“God bless contemporary songwriters, too, because they do an awesome job, but there’s this weight and connection to the old songs,” he says. "'Muirsheen Durkin’ is a song we do about a guy who leaves Ireland to pan for gold in California and never comes home. That guy was real. It actually happened to him, and it lives on through us.”
The world of traditional Irish music, like all music scenes, has its gatekeepers. Relph came from the world of old-timey fiddle contests and was snubbed by the grandson of a pioneer in the field during one event in Idaho. He thought that she wasn't appropriately archaic for using a bodhrán (Irish frame drum) on stage.
Nonetheless, she's had peers come up to her and tell her that they appreciated her deviation. She has continued doing things her way up to now, and the results keep her going.
“That’s one of the greatest things, to feel like I’ve accomplished my part of exposing someone to the music," she says. “There is always someone with a small child, and people will bring a kid to drop a dollar in the tip jar. They’re so, so excited to be a part of it.”
Cook agrees that St. Patrick’s Day is more about the continuation of the songs than adhering to any specific traditional lineage.
“Everyone has their own opinion on what instruments count as traditional and where it’s from. We don’t tend to worry too much about that,” he says. “We play what we love and pass it along, as it was done for us. So, it stays loved and doesn’t disappear. That’s the most depressing idea. What if it vanished one day?”
