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
More photos from the past weekend:
Live Irish Music Chicago - St. Patrick
Live Irish Music Chicago - St. Patrick
Live Irish Music Chicago - St. Patrick
Live Irish Music Chicago - St. Patrick
Live Irish Music Chicago - St. Patrick
Live Irish Music Chicago - St. Patrick
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