David Amram - Keeping the Beat

He was a legend long before I met him. When he sauntered into the Bells of Hell the joint would come to a standstill. The Clancy Brothers might have had more star power but David Amram had a word for everyone, and still does.

            It would take him a couple of hours of bantering before he’d end up in the back room where Turner & Kirwan of Wexford held court on weekends.

Their psychedelic Yellowbelly music was not for the fainthearted, but it might just as well have been Swahili Polka, Mr. Amram could, and did, jam with everyone.

Even at a distance you could feel him soak up your vibe. By the time he’d hit the stage he already had your measure. I could never get over the ease with which he could blend into the most esoteric and chord-plagued of our songs.

The guy could play the kitchen sink. He must have had pockets built into his skin for he could produce an endless supply of tin whistles and flutes, not to mention ethnic instruments whose names I still haven’t learned.

Come to think of it, he was the first person I ever heard employ the term World Music. He should have copy-written it for, to me, he’s the genre’s living embodiment.

The French Horn was his main axe and, oh man, could he make that sing! Perhaps, his greatest musical feat however was that he made the Bells’ beer-soaked, perennially out-of-tune, upright piano sound like a Steinway.

One night Frank McCourt, then a discontented, somewhat curmudgeonly schoolteacher, filled me in on David. The Limerick man could be as sharp as a tack and even less charitable if the mood was on him, but his eyes lit up as he rattled off his friend’s achievements.

“Do you know,” said he, “that David was a Beat?”

“Like Jack and Alan,” I replied without missing a beat, as if Kerouac and Ginsburg took daily strolls along Wexford’s broad boulevards.

Namedropping was an art form in the Bells but you had to be careful around McCourt for he could spot a poseur a mile away.

With great gusto he informed me that Amram and Kerouac invented the Poetry/Jazz combination. Doesn’t surprise me now for David could put sweet music behind a crowd of braying donkeys, and often did when Turner and I drank too much Southern Comfort.

Frank’s list went on and on. Was there anyone this man hadn’t played with - Bob Dylan, Dizzy Gillespie, James Galway, Tito Puente?

The next time he graced the stage with Turner & Kirwan I was a tad nervous but there was no need, for David’s belief is that everyone has music within them, some just have to dig deeper to find it.

A few years back he celebrated his 80^th birthday with a show at Symphony Space. It was vintage Amram – he began with some of his symphonic and chamber pieces. Then, as if tiring of such formality, he joined a succession of musical friends in jams that he initiated, but then allowed to progress in whatever way the moment called for.

He began the Black 47 piece with a slip jig that ended up in some alternate Celtic Jazz universe and had me high for a week following.

Coming up on February 16^th he’ll celebrate his 59 years of keeping downtown Manhattan hip with a world premiere of Greenwich Village Portraits at Poussin Rouge on Bleecker Street. It’s dedicated to three of his many friends, Arthur Miller, Odetta and, you guessed it, Frank McCourt.

I can only imagine how he’ll musically sum up the Limerick seanchaí but I’m sure it will be with much the same sparkle as I saw in Frank’s eyes when he boasted to me long ago of the achievements of his dear friend, David Amram.

How often do you get to see and experience a living legend? Miss this show at your peril! There’ll be some famous ghosts bellying up to the bar. But even more important, David Amram will be the straw stirring the musical drink. As he said to me on his 80^th birthday, “this is just a warm up for the 80 years ahead!”

Greenwich Village Portraits An evening with David Amram and Friends

 Celebrating the music, the artists and spirit of New York’s beloved Greenwich Village

Feb 16th 7-9 pm at the Poisson Rouge  Bleecker and Thompson Streets in Greenwich Village

Pete Seeger

He called me Lang for many years. Back in those antediluvian days when people communicated through letters, my scrawl turned the two “R’s” in Larry to a barely legible “N.” He addressed me with such authority I never had the gumption to point out the error of his ways.

            After all, he was Pete Seeger and I was barely off the boat. He seemed a bit like Mount Rushmore with a rare trace of Abraham Lincoln about him.

            I can’t even remember how I met the man. The East Village was a churning place at the time and I was introduced to many a radical by Brian Herron, grandson of James Connolly, and founder of the Irish Arts Center.

            Though Pete would have been considered a Leftist I don’t recall him ever saying anything the least ideological. It was more that he was on the side of the angels and you didn’t think twice about following him – or as he preferred marching shoulder to shoulder.

            He always seemed like a very solid island in a roiling ocean. He and that banjo of his were like a calm in the psychedelic musical storm that raged at the time.

            We were all aware of his past and how he had been shamelessly blacklisted. He may have suffered privately over this issue but he never betrayed the least self-interest or even a hint of self-pity. Once he touched your life you never forgot him. He was the embodiment of the Bobby Sands mantra – no one can do everything but everyone has their part to play. You couldn’t help but be moved by him.

            He once told me that what you leave out in music is more important than what you put in. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mouthed to myself, for I was at the stage when throwing the kitchen sink in the mix made eminent sense.

            Given that he was one of the stern folk Nazis at Newport when he threatened to cut the power to the electric Bob Dylan on stage, he loved Turner & Kirwan of Wexford and our eclectic ways. He used to stand at the side of the stage and quizzically study us – a rare occurrence because he usually masked his thoughts with either a stern or mildly amused visage.

            During a sound-check at New York’s Town Hall he bounded onstage inquiring the whereabouts of our bagpiper. We though he had taken the bad acid and were about to put him on the right track until we discovered that he was referring to our moog synthesizer and the plaintive wails Pierce could coax from it. We were playing Traveling People at the time and he told us he would write straight away to his brother-in-law, Ewan McColl, and inform him of the miracle that was transposing his folk anthem.

            Later that night one of our Shure speakers toppled over and came within inches of decapitating him. It was probably my last chance to become a Right Wing hero. In typical Pete fashion he didn’t even acknowledge the crash as the audience leaped to their feet suspecting an FBI plot.

            He called me out of the blue some years back. We hadn’t spoken in an aeon but, as usual, there were no formalities. He wanted help in writing a play about George Washington and the occasion he refused the entreaties of his followers to declare himself king.

Pete felt this story had to be told as we were in a dangerous age of presidential power and overreach. Much as I loved the man, I didn’t have the time to go traipsing up to his house in the back of beyond, for Pete could be a very exacting and deliberative person.

            We never spoke again but I thought of him recently while mixing the final Black 47 CD. Some songs seemed to cry out for embellishment; then I remembered his “what’s left out is more important…” dictum. I played back the songs in question. Sure enough, everything was already there – and maybe too much of it.

            I went back to mixing. Pete Seeger had made my life easier and more understandable. I suspect he did that for a lot of people.

Stephen Foster and the "Famine Irish"

Stephen Foster died 150 years ago today. He is widely recognized as the "father of American music." He had close connections with the Famine Irish in New York City and his music was beloved by many of them.

The mere mention of Famine Irish immigration to the US summonses images of a host of brave souls descending upon Eastern seaports and within a matter of generations electing Jack Kennedy president.

            The sheer scale of human suffering and the many failures are usually glossed over. Most rural Irish immigrants had never before set foot beyond their own townslands. Hungry, filthy and depleted by scurvy and sea-sickness, they were easy prey for quayside hustlers who fleeced them of anything remotely valuable.

            Many ended up in New York’s Five Points, then the world’s most notorious slum; some of the men cracked under the unfamiliar urban pressure and retreated to pubs and shebeens, more lit out for California and the Gold Rush, leaving behind a surplus of young women.

            If the Five Points was notorious and dangerous, it was also exciting and liberating; dancehalls abounded and the strict social and religious mores of home were often ignored in a new world where the Catholic clergy was overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of the new arrivals.

             Despite hardship and discrimination many Irish had gained at least a foothold by the outbreak of the Civil War in 1860. Any spare cash for recreation was often spent on dancing  – the national pastime. In the Five Points most of the dancehalls were run by freeborn African-Americans - still some steps above the Famine Irish on the social ladder.

            I first became aware of the “amalgamation” of Irish and African-American couples in the disapproving musings of Charles Dickens on the Five Points. He was far more positive about the music the communities made together. In etchings of the time, you can see them – Irish fiddlers sawing away with African-American banjo and percussion players, while interracial couples danced what look like hornpipes and polkas.

            Such images led to the genesis of Black 47’s music. What would happen if you crossed jigs and reels with hip-hop beats? But I never forgot the joy on the dancers’ faces in those old Five Points etchings as the two peoples mixed freely and unselfconsciously.

            Stephen Foster already had a great future behind him when he arrived in New York in 1860 at the age of 33. Barely out of his teens he had become world famous with minstrel anthems like Oh Susannah and Camptown Races; but as blackface routines became coarser and more denigrating to African-Americans he had abandoned the form – and his success.

            He was determined to create a new American music un-beholden to racist cant or European tradition. He found the makings of it on the streets of the Five Points where he ingested the Babel of immigrant songs and melodies. He was no less struck by the music performed by the inter-racial bands and the tap dancing that was being created in competitions between Irish step-dancers and African-American hoofers.

            But with the Civil War raging people wanted patriotic songs, not jewels like Beautiful Dreamer. He retreated to the back room of a dilapidated Five Points saloon where he marked out piano keys on a rum-stained table and wrote songs daily.

            Like many he was appalled by the violence of the Draft Riots. Three days of rioting and lynching in July 1863 tore apart the Irish and African-American peoples – the dancehalls were shuttered and the window of integration slammed shut.

            Foster died six months later at the age of 37 with 38 cents in his pocket. For such an iconic figure relatively little is known – mostly because his brother, fearing scandal, destroyed much of his correspondence. The family line was that he was a near homeless alcoholic and yet there is a photo of him seemingly hale and hearty - with his friend, George Fox - taken shortly before his death. Foster also wrote over fifty songs in his last year, hardly the activity of a hopeless drunk. 

Tonight at The Cell Theatre we’ll commemorate the 150^th anniversary of Stephen Foster’s death with a performance of Hard Times and, perhaps, uncover some of his secrets.

But Hard Times no less celebrates the Famine Irish as they descended upon New York City and reopens the window on the lives they led, the music they made, and the America they created.

Hard Times runs until Feb. 2^nd at the cell theatre, 338 W. 23rd St., NYC. Tickets $18 can be purchased at www.thecelltheatre.org where dates and times of performance can also be found.

Christmas Eve in Wexford

It’s unlikely that I’ll spend another Christmas in Wexford. When I first arrived in America that would have been a doomsday pronouncement but, with time, you come to accept it as the emigrant’s lot. You weave together your own traditions or, as likely as not, adopt and adapt someone else’s.

            And yet the memories draw you back. Wexford’s medieval Main Street was a thrilling place for a child. For weeks before the big day the lights would illuminate the many shop windows, flickering, dancing, and heightening the allure of the finery and toys that would soon find their way to lucky homes.

            No one had much in the way of money and few got more than one Christmas gift, but it would be something you had requested and anticipated since autumn. Things have changed in Wexford; children get more than one gift, while the shops on the once bustling Main Street must now compete with outlying supermarkets and chain stores.

            Wexford was a great place to grow up in. You knew thousands by name or sight, but there were always new people to discover, clubs to join and some festival or event just around the corner. Though it reeked of history and had no little regard for itself, the old town throbbed with an innate sense of excitement.

            When I first moved to Dublin, I lived in Rathmines, then the heart of culchie-land. The craic was mighty, the music and the girls the finest; still on many the Friday evening I could be found out near Bray with my thumb in the air, anxious to hitch a lift home before the weekend revelries got into full swing.

            Back then I wouldn’t have dreamed of missing a Wexford Yuletide. Basically, the town closed down from Christmas Day until January 2^nd while the citizens dedicated themselves to feasting, fraternizing and ripping it up in pubs and dancehalls.

            It was a rare family that hadn’t relatives in London, Birmingham, or some other industrial center of the UK. Many returned home in mid-December and the narrow streets would ring with shouts of welcome and recognition. Not many ventured across the Atlantic. I mightn’t have either but for a distaste for British policies in the North of Ireland.

            I spent my first two Christmases in New York in a gentle state of inebriation, as did most homesick illegal immigrants. If you risked a visit home, you might not make it back safely through Kennedy. I feel for those currently undocumented – many with children who rarely see grandparents. When I finally got my papers in order I vowed never to miss another Christmas at home. And I didn’t – for many years.

            But things change with the passing of parents. It’s not that you don’t care for sisters and brothers but with the house gone, there’s an odd lack of center, and anyway isn’t it easier go back in the summer for the good weather!!

            And yet I miss Christmas Eve in Wexford. It would begin in some pub in the early afternoon; there you’d meet friends and friends of friends until the room would be rocking with laughter, joy and music. Still, no matter what the craic, one had to be home for 6 o’clock tea with your mother. She would want to know whom you’d seen, were many out, did you run into this one or that?

Then back to the pub for another marathon. Oddly enough, the evening would be topped off with midnight mass in the Friary. Even to those with less than strident faith there was something magical and reflective about that service.

 

            The hard chaws stood in the back by the holy water font, and there was always room and nodded acceptance amongst them. We didn’t beat our breasts with the pious; like the poet, Patrick Kavanagh, we were transients, present only to be blessed by a “white rose pinned on the Virgin Mary’s blouse.”

            For Christmas transforms everyone and in the end, it doesn’t really matter if you celebrate it in Wexford or New York. A very happy Christmas to you and yours!

Merry Christmas, Baby... A Lower East Side Serenade

She was my first IAP (Irish-American Princess). Well the first that I lived with at any rate. Tara had somehow made her way down to the Lower East Side from the leafy, lace-curtain environs of Westchester, although she was anything but stuck up.

Back then I had a regular Sunday gig in the less than ritzy Archway up the Bronx and she fit in there like a fist in a glove. Of course, she was quite a looker so that didn’t hurt with the lovesick Paddies.

She had beautiful grayish green eyes that would mist over in any kind of conflict or passion; there was much of both in our relationship. The boys said that she could twist me around her little finger. They were right, but oh that twisting could be so sweet. 

Things came easy to Tara. She had succeeded at everything she’d turned her hand to. But she wished to become a successful singer, the rock that many have foundered upon.

I must have seemed like a good step up the ladder; along with gigs in the Archway and John’s Flynn’s Village Pub, I regularly strutted my stuff at CBGB’s and Max’s Kansas City.

It was to be a match made in purgatory for both of us. Whatever, as they say, I was in need of some stability and moved into her apartment on First Avenue. 

I always seemed to have “just missed” her parents on their visits to the city. That should have set the bells ringing but I guess when you’re in love…

Actually, our first major disagreement was over my parents - when I announced I’d be spending Christmas with them in Wexford.

“Our first Christmas together?” She shuddered.

“Well, you can come too.” Although I broke into a cold sweat at the thought of telling the Mammy that we’d be bunking together in the ancestral homestead.

“I couldn’t desert my parents,” she countered as though I was sentencing her whole white-picket-fenced clan to twenty out on Rykers.

“But what about my parents?” I countered. And on it went as lovers’ quarrels do until her eyes were so misty and beautiful I feared that her heart might indeed break.

Well, I wrote my Mother a particularly tear-stained letter full of half-truths (God rest her soul, I suppose she knows the full story now). I didn’t dare telephone; I wasn’t man enough to bear two loads of womanly angst.

In truth though, the part that really hurt was that I would miss the traditional Wexford boys’ night out on Christmas Eve. And so I extracted a promise from Tara that we’d at least tie on a decent substitute.

“No problem,” she said and was good to her word. She was fairly abstemious for those times but, when called upon, could drink like a fish with little ill effect.

We bought a tree, decorated it, and strung flashing lights all around the apartment. I almost felt like Jimmy Stewart in It’s a Wonderful Life.  Almost! For around 7pm I slipped on my black leather jacket, she dressed up to the nines and off we strutted up First Avenue to get well and truly shellacked.

God knows how many bars we hit, I certainly don’t; but I was feeling no pain by the time we reached Max’s Kansas City. Why Max’s on Christmas Eve? Well Tara liked to make the scene, besides I knew the doorman and got in free.

I was also familiar with the bartender who slid many the shot of watered-down whiskey towards us. And then, through the shroud of smoky darkness, I heard the London accent. 

“Roight!” The spiky-haired ghost in black leather wearily exclaimed.

The platinum blonde next to him droned on as junkies do.

“Roight.” Sid Vicious reiterated whenever a response was expected.

I casually whispered his name to Tara. 

“Oh my God!” She shrieked as though Jesus had just hopped down off the cross and offered to buy a round.

Sid looked up blearily, whereupon Tara flashed him a smile that would have done justice to Marilyn Monroe on steroids. 

“The blonde looks like a piece of all right,” I countered and winked at Nancy Spungen.

“From a bottle!” Tara sniffed just as Sid laboriously hauled himself off his stool and stumbled towards the restrooms; whereupon Ms. Spungen laid her head down on the counter for a wee snooze.

We were still awaiting Sid’s return when Tara looked at her watch and gasped. “It’s ten minutes to twelve.”

“Expecting to turn into a pumpkin?” 

“No,” she moaned, “we won’t get into St. Patrick’s!”

   

“What for?”

“Midnight mass, of course. What do you think?”

Was she kidding - from Max’s to matins?

When we arrived at the church off Avenue A, I could tell it wasn’t exactly what Ms. Westchester had in mind. For one thing, the priests all wore shades and spoke Polish. Still, the place was packed and we reverently stood in the transept in close proximity to an ornate candelabra - wax dripping from its many branches.

Perhaps, it was the heat, though it could have been Max’s watery whiskey; for one moment I was sweating and swaying, the next I was writhing on the marble floor painfully disengaging myself from a myriad of hot waxy candles. There was immediate uproar with many Eastern European ladies screaming at me, and Tara, no doubt, wishing she was safely home in leafy suburbia.

When I awoke on Christmas morning much of her extensive wardrobe was laying atop me.  She was modeling a matronly gray jacket and skirt, the hem inches below her knees, damn near a foot down from its usual height.

I leaped from the bed and grabbed my Doc Martens, pink shirt, and black leather tie and jacket.  Unlike my dearest, I had long before settled on an outfit appropriate for my first appearance in Westchester.

“You don’t look well, baby,” she laid a cool hand on my brow and cooed, “You’re just burning up.”

I did feel as though one of those monsters from Alien was ready to hop out of my stomach but I had much experience of that condition.  “No, it’s okay. I want to do this for you.”

She hemmed and hawed before blurting out the truth, “It’s my mother…she wouldn’t like you.”

“What’s there not to like?”

“Well, your clothes, for one thing. I mean, are you serious?”

And with that, the fight fled from me. I could just picture the whole clan dressed in Kelly green singing Danny Boy around a turf fire - her auld one, no doubt, peering out at me through lace curtains.

Tara took me in her arms whispered that I should go back to sleep, and hinted that on her return Santa might provide some x-rated delights. But I wasn’t that easily mollified and delivered one last parting shot as the door closed behind her, “So what am I supposed to do, have Christmas dinner in an Indian restaurant?”

Well, I didn’t fall back asleep and the hangover was of the galloping nature, gaining ground all afternoon. But the hunger was no joke either and when I eventually sauntered up First Avenue the only places open were of the Indian persuasion.

A dusting of snow was descending as I stormed into The Taj Mahal. The lone customer didn’t even bother to look up from his book; I sat there glaring at him, cursing all cruel-hearted IAPs and wishing I was home with my Mammy in Wexford.

The snow was swirling around First Avenue and White Christmas was leaking from doorways as I headed back to the apartment. I turned on the blinking Christmas lights and took a couple of fierce slugs of Jameson’s whiskey, turned the Clash up to eleven and rehearsed ever more vicious and vengeful ways of breaking up with Ms. Westchester.

She must have forgotten her keys for, at first, I didn’t hear her knock above Strummer’s bawling. I strode over to the door, angrier than any Old Testament prophet. She stood there, face flushed from the cold, snow in her hair; she was expecting my fury and accepted it with grace. She smiled gently, her grayish green eyes misting over, and I barely heard her murmur, “I missed you so much.”

She reached up, held a sprig of mistletoe over my head and kissed me as if for the first time. And when she whispered, “Merry Christmas, baby,” all the fight fled out of me and young love in all its passion returned.

From Dingle to the Stars - Walking on Cars!

I don’t know who first turned me on to Walking On Cars. You never heard of them? They’re the rage of the Dingle Peninsula and all points east in County Kerry!

            I get a lot of tips on bands from listeners to Celtic Crush, my show on SiriusXM. Most come to nothing: though the band may be dynamite on stage, they often lack great or distinctive songs; and for radio it’s all about the magic that unfolds in those three for four broadcast minutes.

            I was intrigued that Walking On Cars hails from Dingle. That part of the world may boast the finest traditional players; yet, it has made less than a dent in the international pop charts.

            The first thing that struck me about the band was that Patrick Sheehy sings with his natural Kerry accent. In an odd way it was like hearing The Dubliners for the first time and realizing that the inner city Dublin burr is head and shoulders above any generic mid-Atlantic accent. It’s real, in your face, and reeks of the ancient streets that have nurtured it.

            Two Stones from Walking On Cars first EP, doesn’t immediately jump out at you – most songs that leave a lasting impression don’t – the rule of thumb being: if you like it instantly it’s derivative. But on a second listen I was hooked within minutes.

            Walking On Cars synthesizes so much of the fine pop music of the last 50 years, beginning with The Beatles and ending with the current 17 year old New Zealand wunderkind, Lorde. And yet, Two Stones is its own distinct universe, full of lovely harmonies, simple but affecting piano chords, a driving rhythm section, melodic guitar, and impassioned vocals – all wrapped together with a Dingle sensibility.

            I played the track a number of times on Celtic Crush and was impressed by the reception. One person even pulled his car off the highway just to savor the song.

There’s a deep emotional pull to the music, something you just can’t put your finger on, and yet you know that it’s coming from the singer not the song - the band not the notes they’re playing.

            I was in Dingle for a night in October and met Patrick, Sorcha Dunham (keyboards) and Paul Flannery (bass). I was a bit stunned by Patrick at first, for he bears an odd resemblance to our own late lamented singer, Ray Kelly. Their personalities were not unlike either – friendly, thoughtful, intense, a little shy. Sorcha and Paul, the heartbeats of the band, were more outgoing.

            They invited me to see Walking On Cars the following night in Killarney. I thought it might be a local pub gig; instead it was sold out concert and I had to fight my way to the front through a mob of screaming teenage girls.

And what poise this young band has. They already behave like seasoned professionals. Each has found his/her own place in the spectrum of sound and presence – Paul, chatty and rock solid on bass; Sorcha, appealing and quietly assertive on keyboards; Dan Devane, melodic - even symphonic on guitar; Evan Hadnett propelling the whole thing on drums. And all coalesced around, but not dominated by, a sensitive Kerry heartthrob, Patrick.

            Backstage after I mentioned some of the echoes I’d heard – The Cars, Phil Manzanera; but they’d never heard of Ric Ocasek, though Roxy Music rang a bell. Good for them! Who needs the past when they’ll soon become their own icons.

            Will they make it? In a way they already have – attracting a big following without a hit on the radio – much like Black 47 did in New York City.

            Will they become big stars? Luck, perseverance, and the right connections will be of paramount importance. And so much can go wrong so quickly.

            But I think they’ll be fine. They’re infused with a can-do spirit and are united against the world; and while they posses that great Kerry exuberance, they’re not without a dollop of Kingdom reserve and common sense.

It’s a long way from Slea Head to superstardom, but how great it will be to hear a Dingle accent pealing out from Number one!

            

You Can't Beat A Good Franciscan!

            I’m a sucker for churches. I can feel at home in a chapel or kirk of any faith. Part of this comes from being raised by a grandfather who was a monumental sculptor - a rather grand term he employed for his craft as headstone maker.

            Most Sunday afternoons would find us pottering around some graveyard in County Wexford. Bored to the teeth I would often retreat to the adjoining church for some shelter from the wind. He would eventually join me and comment on the lines of a statue, the granite in a pillar, the marble on an altar, and more circumspectly: the eccentricities of the parish priest and the prospects of his curate.

            I was influenced too by my love of Wexford’s Friary where I served as an altar boy for five years.

            The Franciscans arrived in Wexford in 1255 and have never left, although they were forced into hiding during the worst days of the Reformation. Enraged by the town’s resistance to siege, Oliver Cromwell’s Roundheads slaughtered seven friars before trotting their horses across the high altar of the medieval church.

            The powerful bond between the friars and Wexford people was rarely spoken about; they were just part of the fabric of the town. This union handily survived a wave of anti-clericalism during the Lockout of 1911-12 when the Catholic hierarchy was presumed to support the factory owners rather than the workers. Through all this unrest the Franciscans never stinted in their support for the working poor and were hailed for it.

            Like many I felt more comfortable in the Friary than in the two majestic twin churches whose steeples seemed to egotistically stab at the sky. Even as a boy I found them pompous and they offered little in the way of artistry, apart from their pipe organs that thundered beneath the massed choirs that gathered in both houses of worship.

            But even that show of hymnal firepower paled in comparison to the hushed beauty of the shrine to St. Anthony where I regularly served 7 o’clock mass on Tuesday mornings. There I’d minister to the saintly Father Ignatius as he presided over his congregation of dotty, elderly ladies. One morning I fainted on the altar steps and regained consciousness untended – neither priest nor congregation had noticed such was their devotion to this 12^th Century Franciscan.

            I never witnessed a man so consumed with God as Fr. Ignatius until encountering a blind Muslim mystic in Southern Turkey. Nor have I ever met a priest as jolly as Fr. Justin, OFM. He was like a rolling ball of laughs as he traversed the narrow streets and back lanes of Wexford town. He was also a first-rate confessor. Every sin from an anemic fib to fornicating with a thousand naked Cossacks earned the same penance of three Hail Marys.

            When I related this observation to Fr. Mychal Judge OFM one riotous night in Connolly’s he pondered for some moments before murmuring, “three Hail Marys straight from the heart can cure a world of heartbreak.”

            It was in the Friary too that I made my last confession, largely because Fr. Justin had been temporarily replaced by some lunatic cleric who roared to the rafters that I had polluted my eternal soul – and this while I was in the preliminary venial sin stage of my disclosures. I thought it better to spare the poor man a heart attack, and me everlasting Wexford notoriety, and so I fled for the door and years of agnosticism.

            The Grey Friars have taken over the old church now – no doubt they’re a good outfit, although I miss my men in brown. Father Mychal once did some detective work for me and related that Ignatius had become well known as a mystic within the order, while Justin went to his eternal reward with a smile on his face.

            Mychal’s gone now too and what a loss he is to the many who turned to him in times of trial. Yet, no matter how far one strays from the old faith, it’s always a comforting feeling to know that an ancient church continues to stir so many warm and treasured memories.