These Are My Mountains, and I'm Going Home

“For these are my mountains, and I’m going home.”

I didn’t always feel that way about the Catskills. After all l was born near where the South Atlantic and the Irish Sea collide. In a twist of fate, I landed in the East Durham-Leeds area after being fired from a gig on glorious Cape Cod.

As luck would have it another band had been given the heave-ho at O’Shea’s in Leeds, as a result Pierce Turner and I got the job of keeping the punters “thick on the floor” at the Irish Center.

Old Gerry and Mrs. O’Shea weren’t too sure what to make of the “Wexford Hippies” as the locals called us, but Kerry people are renowned for their hospitality and, boy, did we make those patrons dance! It’s no secret that there’s been an epidemic of hip and knee replacements for all who jived and quickstepped to Turner & Kirwan that glorious summer.

I had my first shot at writing a novel down by the “waterfall” at the back of O’Shea’s but, alas, with a bevy of beautiful Bronx ladies working on their tans on those long hot hungover afternoons I never made it beyond the first fifty pages.

This weekend will, I believe, mark my 20th Memorial Day Weekend at The Blackthorne. The uncertainty arises because, like many others, time tends to come careening to a halt the moment I cross the border into the Republic of East Durham. And it’s not just because of the fatigue that follows the wild nights; no, it’s more of a general mountain dazzle that doesn’t dissipate until you hit the thruway on the way home.

I’m always amazed at the number of Irish-Americans who have never experienced the “Irish Alps.” What’s keeping you? Sure, you can fry yourself silly in the Caribbean, but what’s that compared to stretching out on the grass at resorts the like of Gavin’s, The Shamrock House, Michael Dee’s, McGrath’s, The Ferncliff, Hogan’s and a host of others as the wind whispers sweet nothings from among the leaves overhead.

My own favorite activity is strolling the back hilly roads on a sunny afternoon. There’s an old wall within an overgrown field that I like to sit upon. It’s made from the same flat stones and fashioned like those at home in County Wexford.

I often try to picture the people who built this little divide and wonder what became of their hopes and dreams – all long gone now. If you sit still long enough you’ll hear the birds in concert while small things slither by amidst the grass. Sometimes, if you’re on the right side of the wind a deer will amble past and pay you no mind.

There are few frills up in the mountains but the homespun comfort is stitched together with warmth and an easy hospitality; and if you’ve any problems with the head, the heart or the soul – and nowadays, who hasn’t - East Durham will slow the world down to a manageable pace so you can find your place in it again.

If it’s excitement you want you’ll find it this coming Saturday and Sunday at the East Durham Irish Festival. It’s a family affair with many children’s programs and a host of theatre, music and dance workshops. I’ll be doing a reading in the cultural tent at 4pm Saturday afternoon and answering questions for those who wish to know more about the worlds of music, memoir, playwriting and the price of turnips!

All through the afternoon and evening there’ll be the finest of Irish-American music with Shilelagh Law (keep away from my Green Suede shoes this year, you bowsies!), Celtic Cross, Andy Cooney, Hair of the Dog, The Narrowbacks, Band of Rogues, Dicey Riley, Erin's Og, and so many others. Black 47 will close the show at 8:45 Saturday night – then a short break and we’ll play a midnight set at the ever-popular Blackthorne.

It’s all just as it should be – madness in the mountains! Book your rooms now or dust off that old tent in the basement. Life is short! I’ll see you up in the Irish Alps.

John Leary changed the course of Irish history.

“Who?” Says Your Man up in Pearl River?

Not much is known about Mr. Leary except that he had stepped out to buy a “pack of fags” in Wexford town in 1911 and literally ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time.

“Not them Yellowbellies again!” Fumes Pearl River. “They never let well enough alone.”

Indeed, the citizens of my hometown are renowned for stirring up trouble: in 1798 they seceded from the British Empire and proclaimed Wexford a free French Republic. The comrades barely had time to learn the words of Le Marseillaise before the forces of the crown counter-attacked and hung many of them from the rickety bridge that spans the Slaney.

The Wexford proletariat were no less riled up in 1911 when the owners of the two largest local manufacturing firms, Pierces and the Star, forbade their employees to join the Irish Transport and General Workers Union.

James Connolly hastened down from Dublin and led the outraged citizenry through the streets in a series of torch-lit processions. The factory owners, un-amused by such shenanigans, complained to the Royal Irish Constabulary, whereupon the RIC baton-charged and that’s when the unfortunate Mr. Leary threw a spanner in the works of Irish history. He took a severe blow to the noggin and soon thereafter departed this earthly coil.

Now Wexford people take their annual drubbing by Kilkenny hurlers with a certain sang-froid but they draw the line at the cracking of innocent skulls. Battle lines were drawn: the strike and subsequent lockout dragged on for many cruel and hungry months before the workers capitulated and reluctantly promised they would forswear any further notion of collective bargaining and other such communist carryon.

Bitter seeds were sown and, even in my boyhood over fifty years later, class resentment still lingered in the narrow streets and back lanes of the old town.

Leary’s death, however, was to have other implications. James Connolly concluded that factory owners could always summon the RIC in times of industrial strife. He decided that workers had need of protection in their ongoing struggle for decent conditions and a living wage – hence, the formation of the Irish Citizen Army.

The ICA became a factor in the great Dublin lockout of 1913 by neutralizing the gangs of hired thugs who terrorized the strikers. Alas, this strike too was broken leading Connolly to decide that the only way to change the system was by armed revolt. In 1916 he commanded the uprising from the General Post Office – which event, for better or worse, spawned the Irish Free State in 1922.

There are no statues to John Leary in Wexford. Few even remember his name. However, the town is seething once again. The manufacturing plants have long gone -replaced by supermarkets or abandoned hulks of stone and girding.

The factory owners long ago took their profits and repaired to the leafy groves of Dublin or London leaving only resentment in their wake. That hereditary bitterness is now directed at the banks, property developers and politicians who recently crippled the country, its credit, and even worse its sense of confidence and identity.

The young are tripping over themselves to flee a mortgaged state that was thriving only seven or so years ago. What went wrong?

The same deadbeat litany as over here – cheap credit, speculation that bordered on gambling, and a punctured housing bubble, but also, rather uniquely, a political class too stupid to even run the figures before they financially guaranteed a bunch of latter day gombeen bankers.

Meanwhile, the ghost of James Connolly peers down from atop the GPO shaking his head in disbelief: how many times had he warned about such an eventuality. And by his side the fractured shade of John Leary grieves for the vast majority of Irish people who had nothing to do with any of the excess but just like him happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. And so it goes...

Happy May Day, comrades!

Empty Vessels

Empty vessels make most noise, my granny used to mutter. Jeez, she should be around today - the unrelenting chatter would drive her up the walls.

I write this on a train to New Haven. Directly in front of me a master of the universe has made at least seven noisy phone calls berating, cajoling and generally ramming his opinion down a succession of reluctant throats.

Now you might say I should interrupt and demand that he take into account the silent majority suffering around him. I would counter, however, that there are over 300 million guns in this country and nearly as many stressed out people; besides this gentleman does not strike me as a follower of Mahatma Gandhi.

And anyway he’s only at the same annoyance level as the lady across the aisle who seems to think she is the only one who has ever been blessed with children, and that the universe waits with bated breath for the next pearl of wisdom that may drop from the bratty three-year old Einstein accompanying her.

Whatever happened to the etiquette that once governed the sharing of public space? Gone with the cowboys, I suppose.

Some in my carriage have donned earphones to lessen the decibel level, but the majority have become so inured to rudeness they might well be Rush Limbaugh listeners.

Now I hasten to add that I’m far from a Noise Pollutant Nazi. I lived for many years above an after-hours club and slept like an innocent on the rare nights I was not downstairs adding to the pre-dawn hubbub.

On one occasion in a San Franciscan motel room I even slumbered through the hoots and hollers of a party thrown next door by members of the reggae group, Burning Spear. Of course, given their unrelenting smoky Jamaican patois, I couldn’t understand a word they were saying.

I guess my real problem is the sheer inanity of the exchanges one is forced to endure in cell phone conversations, most of which seem to begin with that most existential of questions: “Where are you?”

I know exactly where I am - just past Stamford - and I’ve had a frightening epiphany. The day must nigh be at hand when phone service will be introduced into the NYC subway system.

I’m that rare pilgrim who loves the subways. No one speaks, no one looks at you, and there are 656 glorious miles of non-existent chatter from the top of the Bronx to farthest Rockaway.

Even clueless European tourists instantly recognize the code – “Shut the hell up and don’t even dream of looking at me!” I have little doubt that a posse of zombie aliens in drag could make the ride from 207th to Beach 116th without so much as a raised eyebrow.

I recently wrote to President Obama and Speaker Boehner with my solution to the fiscal crisis. Slap a five-cent tax on every cell phone call; and should these two guardians of the American purse care to resurrect the golden days of the Clinton surplus, then charge a dime for each text and a quarter for every digital Christmas card that takes more than ten seconds to open.

They could save Social Security, Medicare, Steve Duggan’s line of credit out in Belmont, and those beautiful bridges to nowhere beloved by Sarah Palin (Whatever happened to her? Seems like Snooki stole her thunder.)

Ah, peace comes dropping slow, as old Yeats once sighed. The lady with the three year old Einstein departed in Fairfield, probably signing him up for advanced courses with the Jesuits; and halleluiah, the master of the universe has disembarked at Bridgeport lugging two bulging cases – full of assault rifles and 30 rounds magazine clips?

Many passengers have drifted off, mouths open, Bieber or Britney breathlessly pumping through their earphones. The benevolent ticket collector has just heaved a sigh of relief – New Haven in sight and no shoot-ups, shouting or Red Sox-Yankees showdowns.

And my poor granny is safe in heaven - far from those empty vessels that she so abhorred, and blessed that she never made it to this age of ceaseless, noisy vapidity.

New World Order

I have great respect for the free market system though I grew up in a country unafraid of the occasional brush with socialism.

The US, on the other hand, prefers to let the markets rule, though who knows what would have happened had the federal government not intervened effectively in the financial and economic crisis of the past five years.

Where needs must the devil drives, you might sigh, and the less government the better! But no matter what your ideology, you have to wonder how we ended up with an economic system so seriously out of whack?

Despite the unemployment rate remaining unconscionably high, large companies are making money hand over fist and sitting on mountains of cash. Apple has so much in reserve that they could buy every person on this planet a $20 dinner and still have a wad left over to toast us all with some top shelf champagne!

There’s something intrinsically wrong with this scenario, particularly when the $137 billion they currently have in pocket is projected to grow to $170 billion within the year.

And it’s not just Apple: Microsoft, Google, Pfizer, Cisco and a host of others are hoarding almost unimaginable amounts of cash at a time when common sense – patriotic or economic – would dictate that some of these reserves be invested in job creation.

But why bother investing in America? Steve Jobs himself thought President Obama hopelessly naive for suggesting that a portion of Apple’s overseas manufacturing be returned to the US. Bigger profits are, after all, the name of the corporate game and much more likely to be realized in lower wage countries.

That may, however, be changing. With American productivity soaring, there’s less need for workers, leading to greater competition for jobs and thus lower domestic wages.

The question is – when are Americans going to wake up to the new reality? This is no longer your father’s capitalism; rather it’s a new corporate system where super-executives are paid in the millions while everyone else scrambles to scrape out a decent living.

Politicians have been slow to curtail the new order since both parties are dependent on the financial crumbs falling from corporate tables. This was highlighted when Mr. Jamie Dimon, CEO of JP Morgan Chase, lorded it over the Senate Banking Committee’s members as they sought to make sense of the multi-billion dollar trading - aka gambling - losses incurred by his company. The senators’ obsequiousness is understandable, however, given that the bould Jamie controls millions in annual campaign contributions.

There’s little sign of the corporate noose loosening. With the housing market rebounding unemployment rates will inevitably creep down towards “acceptable” levels, but most new jobs created will be low paying. According to the New York Times the preferred new worker is a “22-22-22” - a twenty-two year old college graduate who will work twenty-two hours a day for twenty-two thousand dollars per annum.

What to do? Well, the first step is to figure out how democracy should deal with the new economic reality. Both Roosevelts dealt with comparable crises in the course of their presidencies, is it too much to ask that the President, Congress and the Supreme Court provide us with some safeguards from a rapacious corporate culture?

Corporations and their executives must be made realize that they are partners with US citizenry – not its masters. A little fiscal carrot and stick might help: overseas profits should not need repatriation before taxation, while socially conscious companies could be rewarded with tax breaks for investing stagnant cash reserves in job creation.

We, as consumers in a viral, social-media culture, should also appreciate that we wield considerable power – a boycott of companies who think only of their bottom line would work wonders in refocusing corporate goals.

But first things first - we need to recognize that we have drifted into a new economic world order that has little interest in our welfare or that of our children – only then will we come up with the appropriate solutions to this growing threat to the common good.

Dropkick Garden

It’s always great to watch someone’s dream come true. That thought flashed through my mind last month while gazing out from the stage at the multitude mobbing Boston’s famed TD Garden.

It’s a long way from Quincy to headlining the Garden but the Dropkick Murphys had dared dream of such a thing when they first began rehearsing in the basement of a friend’s barbershop.

Even though I had my hands full whipping up the overflow crowd with Black 47, I couldn’t help but reflect on the magnitude of what this Southside band of brothers had accomplished.

From the outside all triumphs seems inevitable, almost pre-ordained; but when you’re in the thick of the music business yourself you soon learn just how improbable any success is.

Giving a mere 100% is useless; anyone can do that. What’s called for is 150% and on a 24/7 basis. I recognized the same elements backstage on that pre-St. Patrick’s night gig at the Garden that I’d seen while on tour with Cyndi Lauper almost thirty years ago – a fierce attention to detail and a blinding desire to be the best.

It goes without saying that there has to be talent involved but even more importantly you must introduce a new dynamic to the mix. Cyndi combined the effervescence of 80’s pop with Ethel Merman; the Dropkicks melded hardcore punk with a streetwise Irish-American sensibility.

Punk music originated in CBGB’s as a reaction to the complexity of progressive rock music. It was thrilling to watch its birth as a generation of unschooled bands crossed the unruly three chord roots of rock & roll with that eternal youthful desire to be true to oneself.

The aggressive and simplistic lyrics of Punk and its younger brother Hardcore were often a problem; though usually serviceable in the heat of a pulsing performance, they could sound strident and one-dimensional the next morning.

However, when the Dropkicks grafted on the mythology of Irish-America to the ferocity of Hardcore a different beast was created, and a new tattooed generation was given its own individual portal into Gaelic culture.

All politics is local, said Boston’s Tip O’Neill. He might have added that the best music is usually site specific too – Springsteen’s Jersey Shore, The Saw Doctors’ rural Galway, Bob Marley’s Jamaica. The Dropkicks not only speak for Boston, they are the personification of the hardscrabble greater south side of that town. Their best songs reek of working class Irish blood, sweat, tears, and angst, shot through with an overwhelming need to keep it real.

Onstage it’s one for all and all for one as they attack the audience like the Bruins on a 5-3 power play; but the driving force and main songwriter is bassist, Ken Casey. Born in Milton, MA, the most Irish town in the US, Casey has been with the band since the beginning.

The Bruins analogy is hardly out of place, for Ken is as happy on the ice as onstage. Teamwork and cohesion are all important to him and before every gig the band huddles as their theme music plays, receiving last minute encouragement from Casey.

From the outside it’s all a beautiful noisy epiphany when a powerful band hits the stage and tears down the fourth wall between performers and audience. But so many vital elements go unnoticed – the tour manager, the front of house soundman, the monitor mixer, the guitar and drum techs, but perhaps most important of all nowadays, the merchandise sellers who drum up the profits that keeps the organization ticking over when the band is off the road.

But none of that would have counted more than a beer-soaked scally cap if Ken Casey hadn’t wondered – what would happen if I mix Hardcore with Boston wit and grit, how wicked cool if I cross The Pistols with Finnegan’s Wake or The Clash with The Wild Rover?

Such ideas are made in heaven; and this particular one erupted fully formed within shouting distance of God’s back garden - on the streets of Quincy and Milton. Let’s go Murphys!

Our Lost Sisters - The Amalgamationists

I first became aware of their existence in faded penciled sketches from the dance halls of New York’s Five Points neighborhood.

Perhaps it was their happy faces that made the young Irish women and their African-American dancing partners seem so natural and unaffected. Only later did I discover that these particular inter-racial couples were called Amalgamationists.

The very word itself seems Dickensian and has long gone out of currency. But Amalgamationists were a well-known presence in the socially liberated environs of the Five Points.

Picture New York in 1844 - on the cusp of the great Irish Potato Famine - a raucous, though manageable, port city. Within a decade it had been swamped by up to a hundred thousand hungry, frightened Irish, glad to put their feet down on any steady ground after a brutal trans-Atlantic journey.

It was the first major emigration to the US that contained equal numbers of men and women. The vast majority came from very rural backgrounds. Pete Hamill once put it to me, “the newly arrived Irish saw more people in their first ten minutes on Broadway than they had in all their lives back home.”

They had no qualification for urban living and were instantly thrown into fierce competition for the humblest of jobs. Is it any wonder that some of the men cracked under the pressure and retreated to the many pubs and shebeens of the Five Points, while others headed for California and the Gold Rush.

Irish women didn’t crack – there were children to be looked after; besides a hardscrabble living could be made taking in washing, and there were kitchens to be run and sculleries to be scrubbed in the great Yankee houses uptown.

The African-American men in New York City were mostly sailors, waiters, carriage drivers and dockworkers; they were a step up the social ladder from the arriving Irish. With a shortage of African-American women in Manhattan it was only a matter of time until unions were formed.

It didn’t hurt that dancehalls were mostly African-American owned at a time when dancing was the national pastime; besides, inter-racial socializing had been common in the Five Points for years.

Amalgramationist couples and their children stuck together and moved into the same areas, Hart’s Alley being the best known. A new social experiment was afoot; though viewed suspiciously by wealthy uptown reformers it was not considered a threat because of the apparent stability and compatibility of the couples.

But tensions mounted after the Civil War broke out. The Irish felt they were being discriminated against on the docks whenever African-American longshoremen were hired. Then on Jan 1st, 1863, Abraham Lincoln made his Emancipation Proclamation; the fear amongst the Irish – fanned by unscrupulous Democratic politicians – was that New York would soon be flooded by liberated southern slaves.

The first compulsory draft into the Union army followed soon after; it was bitterly resented by the Irish particularly since the wealthy could choose not to serve for a payment of $300.

On July 13th rioting flared across New York City. African-Americans were attacked and special venom was directed towards their Irish wives. Hart’s Alley itself was besieged and almost set afire.

The Amalgamationists fought back, pouring burning starch from the rooftops onto the rioters. The inter-racial couples held out until the Union Army arrived, but by then the free and easy social climate of the city had changed utterly.

In the following months over 50% of African-Americans moved out of downtown Manhattan and with them the Amalgamationists.

Where did they go? More than likely they were subsumed into African-American neighborhoods in Staten Island, Long Island and the new “colored community” forming up in the farmlands of Harlem.

Where once they were a vital presence, suddenly the Amalgamationists were gone. All that’s left behind is the occasional mention in dusty history books and the happy faces of our lost sisters dancing with their handsome partners in faded sketches from long vanished Five Points dancehalls.

Fat Cats, Cheap Suits, & Celtic Invasion

The music “biz” is hitting new lows – and that’s saying something. Where once fat men in cheap suits up on 57th Street ripped you off with a smile, now faceless young dot.com warriors “lease” your songs and pay fractions of a cent when one is played.

Still, you can sit around lamenting that you didn’t major in computer programming rather than Stratocasters, or you can find other ways of getting paid for making music.

While having a drink with Jon Birgé of Valley-Entertainment we hit upon an alternative: get a great song from each of a dozen fine acts and put out a compilation CD?

Ideally, the artists should be from the same field but have a different artistic sensibility. Since I seem to know every Irish-American band along with their maiden aunts, my gig was to choose the material – Jon to market the CD.

We set a couple of ground rules: bands would get a small advance and a royalty on each CD sold. The bands could also buy the CDs at wholesale cost and mark up accordingly.

Thus each band would be paid a royalty for every CD the eleven other bands sold, along with a first-class introduction to eleven other fan bases. In other words, the more you sell the more you make; the more anyone else sells, the more you make too! And if one song were to take off, then all twelve acts would be in the gravy.

The trick was to enlist the most interesting bands, and choose songs that would not only gel together but appeal to a wide audience. Hosting Celtic Crush on SiriusXM for almost eight years has given me some insight into the latter. I pride myself on finding great songs that have been overlooked in our teeming musical meat market.

It doesn’t take a degree in rocket science. You just have to wade through an ocean of refined mediocrity to find a track that both sparks your interest and contains that ineffable something that will move a mass audience.

Thus I chose a number of overlooked local classics like “You’re So Beautiful” by Pat McGuire, “McClean Avenue” by Shilelagh Law, “22” by Celtic Cross, “Weekend Irish” by Barleyjuice, and “Sullivan’s Lake” by Garrahan’s Ghost.

To bring in a wider Celtic influence I included two Scottish gems: “Clash of the Ash” by Runrig, the best band you never heard of, and “Wacko King Hako” by Peatbog Faeries who put grooves under bagpipes that have to be heard to be believed.

I needed a couple of names for marquee value: Mike Scott gave me a brilliant unreleased version of a Waterboys classic, as did Hothouse Flowers. I tossed in the zany “Uncle Jim” by Black 47, which tells of Fr. Jim Hughes quixotic mission to East Belfast to convert the Rev. Ian Paisley.

The CD is called Celtic Invasion and also contains “The Irish Rover” by Blaggards, the kings of Houston, and “Buile Mo Chroí” by John Spillane, the bard of Cork City. Officially released last week, Celtic Invasion has been picking up radio play all over the country and selling like cold pints in August.
You can get a free download of my “intimate” thoughts on each band at www.celtic-invasion and if such ravings pique your fancy you can purchase the music in digital or CD form – no “leasing” necessary!

Will this idea succeed? I haven’t a clue, but it’s one hell of a compilation that crackles from first beat to last and will shake the dust from the ceiling at any gathering – St. Patrick’s Day or otherwise.

It’s already a success – Your Man Up In Pearl River says it’s the hottest thing since fried bread - and if it breaks even financially then we’ll round up another dozen acts and give them the same opportunity to beat the dot.com leasers!

And if it fails, well we tried to make a difference, and at the very worst I might still have a career ahead of me as a fat cat in a cheap suit up on 57th Street.