Red Rebel County

More live Irish music in Chicago - video from St. Patrick’s Day shows

admin — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 19:37:33 +0000

Check out this video of ‘Kiss Me, I’m Shitfaced’ (Dropkick Murphys cover) as Red Rebel County celebrate St. Patrick’s Day in Chicago 2010 with some live Irish Music:

Live Irish Music Chicago - St. Patrick\’s Day 2010 Red Rebel County

Live irish music chicago - part 2

admin — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 16:04:43 +0000

More photos from the past weekend:

Live Irish Music Chicago - St. Patrick

Photos from live Irish music in Chicago on St. Patrick’s Day 2010

admin — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 18:21:20 +0000

Check out these photos from the last show! More live Irish music in Chicago on St. Patrick’s Day 2010 @ 115 Bourbon Street on Wednesday @ 7PM! See you there!

Red Rebel County

Live Irish music in Chicago 2010Red Rebel County plays

Live Irish music on St. Patrick

Doug Crowley plays the bag pipes and some live Irish music to celebrate St. Patrick

Last Chance for Live Irish Music in Chicago on St. Patrick’s Day 2010!

admin — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 16:35:47 +0000

Last Chance for Live Irish Music in Chicago on St. Patrick’s Day 2010!

Check out the video from Saturday night’s show here:

Last Chance for Live Irish Music in Chicago - St. Patrick\’s Day 2010

Live Irish Music in Chicago - St. Patrick\’s Day 2010

And then come on out for some Live Irish music in Chicago on St. Patrick’s Day 2010 @ 115 Bourbon Street! See you there! It’s gonna be a party!

Red Rebel County

Live Irish Music in Chicago on St. Patrick’s Day 2010

admin — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 16:14:34 +0000

So I was looking over the history of live Irish music in Chicago, and I noticed a few interesting quotes (from Wikipedia):

“Irish émigrés created a large number of emigrant ballads once in the United States. These were usually “sad laments, steeped in nostalgia, and self-pity, and singing the praises… of their native soil while bitterly condemning the land of the stranger” ^[4]. These songs include famous songs like “Thousands Are Sailing to America” and “By the Hush“, though “Shamrock Shore” may be the most well-known in the field.

Francis O’Neill was a Chicago police chief who collected the single largest collection of Irish traditional music ever published. He was a flautist, fiddler and piper who was part of a vibrant Irish community in Chicago at the time, one that included some forty thousand people, including musicians from “all thirty-two counties of Ireland”, according to Nicholas Carolan, who referred to O’Neill as “the greatest individual influence on the evolution of Irish traditional dance music in the twentieth century” ^[5].

In the 1890s, Irish music entered a “golden age”, centered on the vibrant scene in New York City^{[citation needed]}. This produced legendary fiddlers like James Morrison and Michael Coleman, and a number of popular dance bands that played pop standards and dances like the foxtrot and quicksteps; these bands slowly grew larger, adding brass and reed instruments in a big band style ^[6]. Though this golden age ended by the Great Depression, the 1950s saw a flowering of Irish music, aided by the foundation of the City Center Ballroom in New York^{[citation needed]}. It was later joined by a roots revival in Ireland and the foundation of Mick Moloney’s Green Fields of America, a Philadelphia-based organization that promotes Irish music ^[7].

During the late 20th century came the rise of Celtic inspired rock groups like Flogging Molly, who reside in Los Angeles, Black 47 from New York, The Shillaly Brothers, also from Los Angeles and the Dropkick Murphys from Boston.”

And I thought about what this means as we are approaching the live Irish music season in Chicago. Red Rebel County recently started a band on a whim a little over a year ago, and we’ve turned this band into a force to be reckoned with on the live Irish music in Chicago scene. Or so we feel we have? With that said, we are coming up on several great shows, playing with several other great live Irish music in Chicago like the Larkin Brothers. And so, when I read the passages of those that have made live Irish music in Chicago in the past, it makes me both proud, and honored that we are playing shows with other bands that share in the same Chicago tradition of live Irish music. So this blog has been written as a tribute - a tribute to the live Irish music in Chicago in the past, those that we are going to be sharing the stage with on the South Side this St. Patrick’s Day, and those yet to come. Let’s really try to represent the spirit of St. Patrick this St. Patrick’s Day while playing our live Irish music in Chicago this year!?

We’ll see you all for some live Irish music in Chicago on St. Patrick’s Day at 115 Bourbon Street on the South Side on 3/17!

Slainte,

Red Rebel County

On the ‘Rocky Road’ to Irish music….1, 2, 3, 4, 5!

admin — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 02:22:38 +0000

Slainte! Only 5 days left until we kick off the legendary St. Patrick’s Day weekend here in Chicago! The weekend is sure to be lots of good fun with loads of Irish music and plenty to drink (we’re quite sure)! So, this page has been bare for quite a while, and we’re just chimin in here with a quick update to say hello.

Here’s what we were up to this weekend gettin ready for St. Patrick’s Day in Chicago: We got off to a rocky start for the usual Sunday Irish music jam session at the Crowley household! After a night of drinkin down in the city (and buckets of rain all night!), and waking up with a splittin head ache, things didn’t seem to be gettin much better on Sunday morning. You could say that the ‘luck of the Irish’ definitely didn’t seem to be with us! The phone rang around 12Noon, and it’s AJ ‘Shamus’ O’Simek ringin to let me know that there may be no Irish music this weekend for the Red Rebel County!? We were already off to a bad start (for our Friday the 13th gig!) - spooky…huh? Now, this ain’t a good omen when your next show is on Friday the 13th! Not only do we have no power at the Crowley household (the regular Irish music jam spot for Red Rebel County), but the basement was flooding (it rained cats and dogs here in Chicago on Sunday)! For F@#!s sake! What’s a band to do, we all thought? Only 5 days left before the big St. Patrick’s Day weekend of Irish music in Chicago, and we have no place to put the finishing touches on some of the Irish music classics you all have come to love and expect!? So, we pooled our thoughts about where the Irish music could go on.

Thanks to one Mr. Doug Crowley, we packed up the truck and we moved to Beverly….Hills that is; swimming pools and movie stars. Well, not really (on the swimmin pools and movie stars), but the band all headed over to Mark and Lisa’s place and fished all the gear out of the water, so that we could move the Irish music jam over to Beverly Hills to do a dress rehearsal for the South Side St. Patrick’s Day parade gig (in Doug and Mary Kay’s garage.)

All in all, it was a successful Irish music session: The band jammed out with some Irish music, the friends and family drank like champs, and after all was said and done, we are confident that we are ready to rock you for with some rock hard Irish music in Chicago this St. Patricks Day weekend!!

So, with a loud hurray, join us in the affray, we quickly have cleared the way, for the rocky road to to Chicago and St. Patrick’s Day….1, 2, 3, 4, 5! We’ll see you all this upcoming weekend…if you have any requests or ideas for Irish music in Chicago at one of the upcoming gigs, hit us up on our Myspace or Facebook pages?

Cheers….and more to come later in the week about St. Patrick’s Day weekend gigs and festivities!

Red Rebel County

We’re up and rockin’!

admin — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 19:38:36 +0000

Schweet! We’re up and rockin’!