Memorial Day weekend in the Irish Catskills and a Save the Date for the Screaming Orphans at Tir na Nog

Ladies & Gents,

Thanks to all who came out on Saturday night to see Shilelagh Law at Connolly's. We didn't quite beat the all-time record for this Meetup but it was still the best turnout we've had this year and we saw a great show.

Just wanted to fill you in on some upcoming things. As many of you already know I'm sure, the 31st East Durham Irish Festival is the Saturday and Sunday of Memorial Day weekend, May 24-25. Lots of good bands will be playing there including I think just about every local Irish band and several more from other parts of the US and Canada and even some from Ireland. Click HERE for more information. We're not planning on organizing a Meetup for it but just passing this along in case you're heading upstate or don't have any plans yet for the holiday weekend. Sounds like a good time.

Looks like they have one Irish festival or another there all summer long in fact. If anyone's interested in escaping the city for a Meetup there this summer, do let me know. I'm game to organize.

One of the bands scheduled to perform up there this year is the Screaming Orphans--four sisters from Bundoran in Co. Donegal, now based in New York. And that brings us to the next Meetup I'm organizing: to see the Screaming Orphans at Tir na nog on Saturday May 31, one of their last performances in the area before they head out on tour. They mostly sing pop songs, think somewhere between the Bangles, the Cranberries, the Corrs and Bananarama. This however will be an acoustic performance and they've got a fiddle, accordion and bodhran in their repertoire. I believe their mother was a well-known traditional Irish musician and singer back in the day. So it promises to be a very interesting and entertaining performance, perhaps something a bit different than what we'd normally see in this Meetup. One of the first Meetups this group ever did was to see this band at Tir na Nog, but that was more than a year ago and most of us weren't in the group then, myself included, so we're overdue.

I'll put together an invite soon, but just wanted to send that out as a save the date. I'll have more info later. In the meantime, check out them out on MySpace. Lots of good songs there.

Just a heads up, Linda's out of town this week and won't be at the seisiun at Dempsey's tomorrow. Some members of this Meetup will be among the musicians as usual, so the Meetup isn't canceled, there just won't be an organizer there. And of course our next event after that is to see Mary Courtney and Morning Star at Tir na nog this Friday night, be sure to RSVP for that.

We're also working on the Celtic Music Meetup Neighborhood Pub Crawl Series. More details to come...

See you down the road.


-Dennis (assistant organizer)