FROM THE SONG SLEEP TIGHT IN NEW YORK CITY TO THE NOVEL ROCKIN' THE BRONX

Fordham University Press will publish Rockin' The Bronx on March 3rd, 2025

The novel, Rockin’ The Bronx, came directly from the Black 47 song, Sleep Tight in New York City (https://youtu.be/-7yt6zKLjZs?si=HHFjt-ROuSQQlJri ). In the song, Sean Kelly, a young man in rural Ireland is addressing his girlfriend, Mary Devine, who has emigrated to The Bronx. He can’t understand why she doesn’t write or call, they had been so close. He senses something is terribly wrong and in the song he visualizes what that might be. When they were together in Ireland Sean always looked out for Mary, but now he feels that someone, or something, has taken his place, and he is bitterly resentful. 

I got the inspiration for the song while traveling through NW Donegal, marveling at the beauty of the coastline and comparing it to the concrete fields of The Bronx. Performing this song was very intense, for you had to become Sean, and feel what he felt; such is the way with character-driven songs and Black 47 had many. Words alone couldn’t nail all the emotions, so we often stretched out the instrumental passages and found Sean’s loneliness and loss within the improvisation. 

As we performed the song over many years, the story began to solidify, until I began to divine Mary ’s secret and the dramatic ending of the story that I would eventually write as the novel, Rockin’ The Bronx.

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AFTERNOON DELIGHT AT THE IRISH ARTS CENTER!!

The Irish Arts Center houses one of the best bars and lobbies in New York City. A saloon of sorts, it’s all about conversation. There are no racks of televisions distracting you – it’s a special place where you can mingle with peers, punters, and others with a love for Irish culture and theatre.

Like many, I don’t get out as much as I used to but that’s okay, because at the IAC I usually run into 30 or so people I know - or should know - and many’s the confidence is exchanged over some well-pulled pints.

On a recent afternoon I met friends and acquaintances from all over the US, Ireland and the UK as we gathered for Culture Ireland’s Meet The Irish 2025. It featured six Irish theatre companies showcasing  their work, courtesy of this driven and benevolent Irish Government organization.

Culture Ireland has been in operation for 20 years and their brief is to fund Irish artists and arts organizations, and help them promote their work worldwide. 

Led by indefatigable director, Sharon Barry, they do an outstanding job. So far, they have awarded over 9000 grants to the tune of €84m.

The list of those they’ve assisted is vast and consists of household names and “complete unknowns,” to quote Bob Dylan.

Like many New York artists I’ve never been blessed with, nor applied for, any kind of grant, so I doff my hat to the Irish government in its willingness to promote home-grown artists – money well invested that will return all sorts of dividends.

Not that any of the six acts I saw at the IAC seemed spoiled or spoon-fed, the cost and scars of developing their art were evident, but each showed a desire to portray the new Ireland they inhabit.

Confident, fearless, provocative, passionate - the work I saw often delighted in banishing shadows and exposing what lay behind them in the old Ireland.

One surprise, there was little in the way of broad politics on display, although sexuality, gender, identity, intellectual development, family, and other topics received bracing treatments. Then again, take away the issue of race, and you could say much the same for current American theatre.

Each company in their short, allotted time tackled their particular subject, or obsession, with such depth that certain thoughts and images still spring to mind.

I found Bellow, the opening piece, very moving. It examined the life commitment to Traditional Irish Music of ace accordion player, Danny O’Mahony, through the prism of Brokentalkers, a modern experimental theatre group. Gerry Keegan was an accomplished and ever-probing guide and interrogator.

Grace, a play for young people, will touch anyone who has cared for a person with developmental issues. It concerns a father and daughter who have no need of words to communicate. When the father dies, Grace must find new ways of “talking.” But then, “love doesn’t need words. You can just feel it.” And we did.

Gina Moxley looked, sounded, cajoled and provoked like some of the artists at the old Dance Theatre Workshop in Chelsea. I look forward to seeing a full production of her I Fall Down – A Restoration Comedy. She’s funny, irreverent, and just what you need if you’re suffering from a case of the blahs. I regret not meeting her over a pint.

I’d always wondered what Mark O’Rowe’s work was like, and then realized I’d already read a review of Reunion. This “zinger of a play” is probably the closest to “regular” theatre. Given its universal theme of family reunion, I wouldn’t be surprised to see it ensconced someday at a large Off-Broadway house.

Illness As Metaphor is based on the Susan Sontag book that caused a sensation in New York some years back. Dead Centre, a much toured and acclaimed theatre group, deals not so much with illness, but the language used to describe illness in a serious but witty manner. I still shiver when I think of this gripping piece, for it addresses trials many of us will face.

London-Irish woman Emer Dineen exploded onto stage in 0800 Cupid by THISISPOPBABY – a cross between Freddy Mercury and Cáit O’Riordan in drag. Her hymn to Jesus was electric, honest, and a fine song that stands on its own merits. I did have a pint with her and can’t wait to have more.

What a way to spend a cold Monday afternoon. Thank you, IAC and Culture Ireland.

WELCOME TO THE NEW AMERICA

 So here we go again. Round 2 with President Trump. 

I have little doubt that he is the most influential American politician of the last 80 or so years. But this is the America we live in: where self-entitlement, whining, and lying are more important than self-sacrifice, a degree of modesty, and trying to make life better for your fellow citizens.

I sometimes wonder if the pandemic wiped away some of our ability to focus on the  preceding years?

I recall the first Trump presidency as a time of unmitigated chaos. In fairness, Mr. Trump himself seemed shell-shocked when it became apparent that he was about to become president.

He was inheriting a first class economy that during the Obama years had gained over 10 million jobs, unemployment was down to a low 4.7%, 15 millions more Americans had health insurance and the S&P 500 was up 166%.

Apart from the continuous lies, about-faces and narcissism of the Trump years I remember three major events. A 35-day shutdown of the US Government over building the wall that he boasted Mexico would fund – that fit of infantile pique cost the country $11billion; the ripping up of a hard earned nuclear treaty with Iran, and of course the pandemic itself when our president folded, amid suggestions like shooting up disinfectant as a solution.

He's never been a great man for a crisis, but he does have streaks of luck – how amazing none of them coincided with his casino ventures; but once more he has inherited another first class economy.

President Biden might not have been able to keep eggs at a reasonable price, but in his four years he has created 16 million jobs, unemployment averaged around 4%, while the S&P 500 has gone through the roof.

The problem with President Trump is knowing when to believe him. Then again, he doesn’t appear to know himself. During the recent campaign he promised to slash grocery prices immediately he gained office. 

Now he’s admitting that such a task will be “very hard.” No one seems to have informed him that if he follows his two big campaign pledges – to introduce tariffs on China, Mexico and Canada, plus deport great swathes of immigrants -– prices and inflation will inevitably soar again.

But is there a method to his madness? Perhaps all his threats and bluster have been designed to cause “fake news” journalists to fling their laptops at the wall and head for the pub.

He’s definitely serious about reducing taxes - just like every other billionaire. 

The Trump Tax cuts of 2017 provided the top 20% of earners over 65% of the benefits (the top 1% netted approximately 20%). But in such matters, he’s very democratic - every taxpayer got a smidgin of relief; the problem was, the country couldn’t afford it.

The current national debt is $35 trillion and the annual interest that we’re collectively forking out has now reached serious proportions.

Still, the main thrust of the new Trump presidency will be another tax give-away that, along with other campaign promises, could up the national debt to well over $40 trillion. Hey, they don’t call him the King of Debt for nothing. 

 

No wonder he’s hanging down in Mar-a-Lago with Musk and Bezos – both of whom have rockets that can leave this debt-ridden, blazing country behind and zoom off to tax-free Mars.

I hope he’s budgeting mucho trillions for the climate catastrophes he’ll soon be dealing with. Makes you wonder why he’d want to be president – maybe he does actually believe extreme weather is all a hoax!

What does America stand for anymore? I used to think I knew.

Then I look back at the footage from January 6, 2021. I see a mob of half-addled “patriots” summoned to DC by a venal man who refused to accept the will of the voters.

I see some of that mob using American flags to beat policemen whose job it is to protect the Capitol. 

I see more of that mob searching for the Vice-President with intent to do him harm, and I know that President Trump sat on his hands rather than call in the national guard to safeguard lives and the constitution. 

And now President Trump, who could not beat his own felony charges, intends to grant pardons to convicted members of that mob. But then, maybe he’s lying about that too. 

Welcome to the new America. 

A COMPLETE UNKNOWN - DON'T LOOK BACK

The old Philips tube radio was my best friend in those Wexford boyhood days. It took a couple of minutes to warm up but then it delivered the sweetest, fullest sound. And on a particular evening I had it blazing, for I was alone in my grandfather’s house.

From the first notes of a new song - a big jumble of Hammond organ, Fender Stratocaster, and an in-your-face New York rhythm section - I knew the world was changing. By the time Bob Dylan sang, I knew he had changed too, for he was no longer the polite folkie apologizing, “look out your window and I’ll be gone;” instead, he was sneering a caustic kiss-off, “How does it feel to be on your own... a complete unknown, like a rolling stone.”

It was a Rock ‘n’ Roll moment I’ve treasured down the years. Within a week I’d learned the full four verses, and have sung them well over a thousand times. A gig can be falling on its face, but that song can always turn around a saloon, a club or even a stadium.

So, I was leery about seeing A Complete Unknown with Timothée Chalamet as the young Dylan who went electric with that song, and turned the 1965 Newport Folk Festival on its ear.

His portrayal of Dylan is excellent, as far as it goes. He definitely captures the confident young singer who hitches from Minnesota to Greenwich Village, and in short order becomes the reigning prince of Folk City, Café Wha and wherever else acoustic guitars were plucked.

There are beautiful moments when he visits Woody Guthrie, wasting away from Huntington’s Disease in a New Jersey Hospital, and assumes his mantle.

His quirky romances with Suze Rotolo and Joan Baez are handled sensitively, and Monica Barbaro as Joan is a knockout both in voice and character. 

Director James Mangold captures the essence of the West Village as “the times they are a’changing,” though much was apparently filmed in Jersey City and Hoboken.

Chalamet even sparks rare glimpses of Dylan’s cyclonic artistic vision, and his refusal to allow anyone to limit it. 

Dylan is still a wonder - even now in his 80’s he’s out there touring, doing it his way. I saw him some years back in unfashionable Bridgeport; after waiting through two long opening acts, most of his boomer audience had drifted off home because he refused to pay homage to his standards. 

He wasn’t even playing guitar anymore, arthritis had choked his hands, but his new songs sounded great. 

I was proud of Dylan. He still didn’t give a fiddler’s, it was his way or the highway, and that’s something Hollywood never captures when it comes to Rock ‘n’ Roll. The vision and toughness of legendary musicians – I am the boss, and I know best.

Chalamet gives it his all but method acting, no matter how good, can only take you so far. You’ve had to have done it to pull it off – to have been there on stage and know that you are right and the rest of the world is wrong.

That’s what’s missing in Chalamet’s very honest portrayal: edge, toughness, hardness, whatever you want to call it. And that only comes from a life on the road, failure, messing up, then picking up the pieces and pushing on. Samuel Beckett summed it up best, “fail better.”

Oddly enough, the actor playing a lit-up Johnny Cash backstage at the Newport Festival does capture that essence; whereas an ever-smiling Ed Norton, though he’s receiving almost universal accolades, doesn’t come close to capturing the Pete Seeger I knew. 

He definitely nails the enveloping warmth and grace of this iconic figure, but not Pete’s craggy patrician nature or, for that matter, his sheer orneriness. Dude stood up to the US Government and wouldn’t name names during the McCarthy witch hunts. He preferred to lose his living and be blacklisted.

Pete was an almost biblical man of principle who didn’t waste smiles – but when you earned one, oh man, did you bask in it.

So, go see Timothée Chalamet in A Complete Unknown, it’s a lovely, if innocent, look at a watershed moment in popular culture. 

Then check out Don’t Look Back, D.A. Pennebaker’s unsparing look at Dylan, the hard man of genius. His destiny was to change music and sweep so much else aside, and oh my, did he do so – and spectacularly! 

A SIGHTING OF MICHAEL

Even at the worst of times Christmas was a big deal in Wexford. This had much to do with the mass return of emigrants. Everyone in town had someone in London or Birmingham; the Ffrench family had a famous cousin, George Harrison, in Liverpool.

With the ferry leaving daily from Rosslare to Wales, the saying was “you could go out for a drink on Saturday afternoon, end up at Paddington Station Sunday morning, and get the start in construction Monday.”

Everyone came home for Christmas, except those with families, or lads who had done a runner over an unexpected pregnancy, and those tragic few who had gone off the rails.

My Granny Kirwan’ brother, Michael Moran, was one of the latter.  Along with their brother, Matt, they were the Morans of Fisher’s Row. Like many up there by The Faythe, they were of seafaring stock. Their father, Capt. James Moran had gone down with his vessel in a great storm off the coast of Wales in 1898.

Their mother was their rock, she took in lodgers, ran a pub, and eventually the two boys went off to sea. Captain Matt Moran was a great success and became one of the founders of Irish Shipping. He was killed in a shipboard accident in 1942.

Michael was quieter and very close to his mother. He took her death badly, went back to London and was never heard from again. 

My granny had made a good marriage to my grandfather, Lar Kirwan, a successful cattle dealer with two big farms, one of which was less than a mile outside town. She lived there in a fine house up a tree-lined avenue.

She was a woman of much imagination, while my grandfather was quiet and steely; she used to murmur that her family was hesitant about the match, feeling she’d be isolated outside town and should marry among her own outgoing seafaring folk.

One day around Christmas I went with my father to visit. Though he was the eldest son he was often at odds with my grandfather and was making his living at sea. Lar wasn’t home, but some cattle had gotten loose so my father was out fixing a fence.

A knock came to the back door and a willowy man in his Sunday best waved in the window at us.

Granny seemed to recognize him. She fixed her hair, and hurried to the door. They exchanged some quiet words in the scullery, then she brought the man into the kitchen and set about making tea.

“How did he look?” She asked.

“Well enough.” The man replied.

“Did he say why he hasn’t written or come home?”

“You know Michael, quiet as ever. Just said, if I was in Wexford for Christmas to drop by and tell you he was okay.”

“Was he drinking?”

“He’d had a few, I ran into him at The Shakespeare on Holloway.”

“He had no news?”

“Divil a bit, just insisted I come all the way out here to see you.” He blew into his chapped hands and looked eager to be gone.

The conversation tapered off. Granny excused herself. She had been crying when she returned. She wrote some lines on a sheet of stationary, licked an envelope and, in her best copperplate, addressed it to  “Michael Moran.”

“Give this to Michael if you see him... ask him to write.”

The willowy man gravely took the envelope and, after she gave him some pound notes, he left without finishing his tea.

She sat down heavily at the table and held her head between her hands. I didn’t know what to say.  

“What’s the matter?” My father asked when he returned from the fields.

“John Byrne from The Faythe saw Michael in London. He’s alive.” 

“Haven’t I warned you about this!” my father muttered. “How much did you give him?”

“With Matt gone, I’ve no one left.”

“If Michael was alive in London, I’d have heard. You’re too much of a soft touch.”

Their routine continued - my father convinced that Michael had taken to the drink and disappeared in some foreign port. My granny hoping against hope that someday her brother would walk up her tree-lined avenue.

I wish there had been a happy ending, but emigration is messy and some people fall between the cracks.

A very happy Christmas to you all. Hold your families close.

THE LIQUID PILGRIMAGE TO PUFFY'S!

 New York City is jammed in these boom times. The sidewalks are abustle with shoppers, the streets clogged with vehicles, their passengers staring out mournfully as we walkers glide by pitying their immobility.

Then again, it was always thus. Take Broadway in the 1860’s. Back then, New York’s main street was divided: the “Dollar” side on the west catered to the gentle folk from Washington Square, while the “Shilling” side on the east was exclusive to the hordes of immigrants from the nearby Five Points.

While writing the musical Hard Times, I used to track the down-at-heel composer Stephen Foster as he made his way down the crowded “shilling” side to Nelly Blythe’s Saloon where he could parlay his once brilliant reputation into cheap drinks.

I was reflecting on economic drinking and the disappearance of the buyback recently when I remembered an odyssey I used to take on Sunday afternoons when I lived in the far East Village. This was back in the 1970’s when one could live on hopes, dreams, and a couple of gigs on the weekends up in the Kingsbridge area of The Bronx.

One Sunday afternoon, while in recovery from my Bronx labors, a friend arrived at my apartment where I was entertaining some others over a couple of six-packs.

He had heard it on good account that a bevy of “high-end models” congregated at Puffy’s Tavern on Hudson Street in Tribeca and were interested in meeting “interesting people of diverse means.”

Why any of our scruffy bunch felt that such ladies would be taken with the likes of us is a mystery to me now, but back then hope sprang eternal; so began our pilgrimage to Puffy’s.

It was decided that we would break for a beer at Fanelli’s on Prince Street in Soho, as an aspiring writer among us had been treated to a sufficiency of buy-backs on his last visit there.

Thus began my almost 50 year association with the second oldest continuous drink and food joint in NYC. Prices have risen since my first fateful visit, but I’m happy to report that writers, aspiring and otherwise, are still welcome and buybacks, though rarer, are common enough. A salmon sandwich is still a bargain and the pint of Dogfish 60 IPA is to die for.

We then stumbled on to Kenn’s Broome Street Bar on the corner of West Broadway. Kenn Reissdorf, owner and artist, dressed like an urban cowboy, resplendent in turquoise, while his wife Berry, a former model, was the thinnest and sharpest bar owner I’ve ever met.

Alas, both have passed on to the great saloon in the sky, but their place has been taken by Jonathan Kaufman, a delightful, outgoing proprietor who likes nothing better than visits from thirsty pilgrims. The BLT on Rye is mouth-watering and the Sierra Nevada Pale Ale will please greatly, while the once sacrosanct tradition of the buy-back is not unknown.

Over the years, as the pilgrimage gained notoriety and new devotees, we added many blessed stops that included: The Holiday Lounge, a Ukrainian beer & shot joint on E. 8^th where owner, Stefan Lutek, would bid us godspeed with $1 brimful glasses of Jameson’s; and who could forget the esteemed Ear Inn on W. Spring that dates back to 1817, and whose Lamb Burger washed down by a pint of Guinness approaches Godliness, and so on and so forth and so fifth, as John Lennon used to say.

I can almost hear members of Shilelagh Law, up in the far reaches of County Yonkers, speculating on how a bunch of rowdy tossers was greeted by Puffy’s “high end models.”

Well, they proved quite friendly, digits were even exchanged, but only Mad Dog Brodsky, a writer of some renown who went on to edit Hot Tub Magazine, ever claimed to have dated one.

I doubt the relationship ever came to much as she didn’t attend his Shiva. Yes, time and, no doubt, a surfeit of shots took a toll on our number, and eventually our weekly pilgrimage fell by the wayside. 

However, in this coming age of anxiety, I sense there will be need of alcoholic fortification. So, on the first Sunday after President Trump’s inauguration, the pilgrimage will resume - destination Puffy’s! 

Who knows, perhaps the granddaughters of the original “high end models” will be there to greet us.

REFLECTION ON THE ELECTION

 At around 11:30pm on November 5^th I realized the jig was up. Some figures came in from North Carolina, and though hardly earth-shattering, I knew that if Kamala Harris was under-performing in the Raleigh/Durham area it would be a short night.

Congratulations to President-Elect Trump. He is truly a remarkable politician with an unerring ear for the moods, needs and resentments of modern America.

Now that he has swept both the popular and electoral college vote, is there any chance he might endorse a straightforward democracy that picks its president by popular vote?

 

For all practical purposes, the recent election concerned only the seven “battlefield” states, while the four most populous, California, Texas, Florida and New York barely got a look in.

I had returned from Ireland to cast my vote, I might as well have stayed there skulling pints, for I was one of a very few people voting at my polling station in South-West Manhattan.

 

Meanwhile “battlefield” voters were often forced to wait in line for hours. Thanks, Founding Fathers, the electoral college is right up there with your blind eye towards enslavement and women’s suffrage.

Despite his gloomy and often dystopian outlook, President-Elect Trump is inheriting a first class economy (as he did in 2016); unemployment and inflation are low, while growth and productivity are high. 

He has promised to reduce prices, though without offering any plans, except to “drill, baby, drill.” He obviously hasn’t heard that under the Biden administration the US  became the world’s largest exporter of energy. 

 

Perhaps someone should tell him that gas prices at the pumps are currently quite low. Or is Elon squiring him around in his Tesla?

I’ve always thought of this year’s presidential contest as the pandemic election. How soon we forget that less than two years ago we were going mano a mano with Covid 19?

It will take years before we can put these crazy days into perspective. But in the meantime, there is no doubt that Donald Trump has caused a realignment in the Republican Party, and indeed throughout the entire electorate.

 

And what of the Democrats? Bruised, bleating and hemorrhaging demographics. When will the party understand that it can’t alienate working class and rural communities, and expect to eke out any more nail biters?

As lame as it sounds, they need a commission of street-savvy pols, the like of Joe Crowley, Tim Kennedy, Martin O’Malley, John Tesler or James Carville to point out just where they’ve gone astray.

Despite all he did to economically revivify the country, President Biden is the big loser. What was he - and his family – thinking? Or did ego blind him to his condition and the country’s perception of him?

 

Had he stuck with his promise to be a bridge to the next Democratic generation, there would have been primaries to test the mettle of Josh Shapiro, Gavin Newsom, Gretchen Whitmer, Kamala Harris and others. 

As it was, he appeared to ignore his Vice-President, so that Ms. Harris often seemed out to lunch on the economy, the most vital matter in any presidential election.

Although this daughter of immigrants ran a valiant race in the little time she was allotted, I doubt anyone is longing for another Harris candidacy.

Candidates aplenty are already positioning themselves to run in 2028. But the next major battle will be the 2026 mid-terms, when a revivified grass-roots Democratic Party could take advantage of the mess Mr. Trump will inevitably cause.

His choice of Pete Hegseth, Tulsi Gabbard, and Robert Kennedy Jr. for cabinet posts is outrageous, unless he’s testing his authoritarian control of the Republican Party. At the best these three promise chaos and confusion.

Hopefully Mr. Trump’s positions on tariffs and mass deportation are part of his trademark bluff and bluster, for how many want the rising inflation and mass misery that will accompany the extreme measures he promises.

Meanwhile global warming is going nowhere, regardless of how many times the president-elect calls it a hoax. The national debt of $36 trillion shudders at the thought of his second coming, and who knows what rough beast lies waiting in the wings? Who had any notion of Covid 19 at the Trump inauguration in 2017?

Make sure your hatches are oiled and ready for battening down. With the worst full of passionate intensity, the center will be well tested, hang in there until 2026. And whatever you do, “Don’t mourn – organize!”