Memorial Day Weekend

For twenty years I knew exactly where I was going to be on Memorial Day Weekend.  This was highly unusual for Black 47 – though our schedule was always full, it was rarely predictable.

Still the six musicians and two technicians of the band had much need of stamina for we usually spent Friday and Saturday among the green hills of East Durham, while Sunday and Monday took us to the deep Southside of Chicago.

Old dogs for the hard road we departed New York City early Friday for two reasons – to miss traffic and secure the best musicians’ rooms in The Blackthorne Resort.

 I always enjoyed the drive up the Thruway, for these would be our last easeful hours until Tuesday.

Once we were given our room keys by the ever welcoming Rita, I’d begin my rounds.  Hellos to Bob Handel and his two sons, Dale and Roy, then I’d make my most important call – into the kitchen for a visit to the late, lamented Ginger, Bob’s wife. 

With one warm appraising glance she could tell me exactly how the last year had treated me better than any doctor, wife or mother. 

For that matter, it was not unusual to find various members of the hardboiled Black 47 crew in deep conversation with her around the kitchen table at all hours of day and night.

The large bar/dancehall of The Blackthorn would be full on Friday night. Our job was to keep that audience totally engaged for the cream of Irish bands would be playing in the many other excellent resorts. 

As we only played original music this called for maintaining a sustained sense of drama – easier than you might think since we never played the same set twice. If we didn’t know what was coming next – then how could the expectant revelers?

I always spent Saturday afternoon trekking around the local back roads, inevitably visiting the ruins of an overgrown cottage flanked by a stone wall that could have been transported direct from the Aran Islands. Had the original inhabitants moved west or cut their losses and returned home?

Such musings vanished at 9pm when we’d take the stage at the East Durham Irish Festival. As headliner you’re expected to draw crowds from NYC to Albany – not just for vanity but for admission receipts, and to provide customers for the many vendors, the lifeblood of any festival.

We were now in the thick of the weekend – strutting our stuff on the big stage. However, there would be barely time for pictures, autographs, hugs and kisses before we’d again hit the packed Blackthorne for an in-your-face audience more akin to CBGB’s in the 70’s than the gently rolling Catskills. 

I loved those second gigs. New songs, new energy, all thought gone, back to basics, the reason you got into Rock & Roll in the first place.

But we would already be in a rush against time for our flight to Chicago would leave at 8am from LaGuardia. Our tech crew would go into high gear. Pack the van, round us up, get on the Thruway, speed down to our West Side storage, load off amps, drums, and out to the airport, bleary-eyed, but full of cranky attitude.

If possible then, pass out on the plane, hopefully get picked up at Midway and be whisked off to the Holiday Inn; but sleep was dangerous, better retain last night’s intensity, for by the time we hit Gaelic Park that evening, what seemed like the whole South Side of Chicago would be expecting the show of their lives.

And what a sight - a moshing, propulsive crowd, teetering on the edge of alcoholic anarchy hurling themselves over the barricades beyond eager to join us onstage.

No sleep yet though for the party would be raging back at the Holiday Inn with fans from all over the Mid-West who had traveled far to greet us. What did we talk about? Who knows – who cares!  It’s all a blur now. One year bleeding into an abandoned other! 

And yet, a happy Memorial Day Weekend to my many friends in the green hills of East Durham and in the concrete fields of South Side Chicago, I haven’t forgotten you. You’re still the best!

Surgical Strike Shopping

I have a confession to make. I’m a reluctant shopper. I know this is very unpatriotic since 70% of US GDP comes from us spending money on ourselves or each other. My reluctance has nothing to do with cheapness, I hasten to add, for I vigorously compensate in various saloons and hostelries around the country.

Christmas is a time of trial for me. I begin to get nervous around Thanksgiving and the first onslaught of carols. But I have the perfect antidote for the following month-long orgy of consumerism. I become a surgical-strike shopper!

However, I do procrastinate until Christmas Eve, and this has led to panic-filled moments of elbowing one’s way through crowded stores, while imploring surly employees to descend into basements to locate a particular size or color.

All changed, utterly changed. Last December 24th such was the paucity of shoppers I could have demanded that I be carried like a pasha through the deserted racks; and talk about the smiles I received, surliness is indeed a thing of the past in retail. Not to mention that everything had been marked down 20-40%.

I was home within hours - gifts wrapped and hidden under the bed - confident that I had aided President Obama boost his paltry 2% annual growth, soon to be measured against President-Elect Trump’s promised gargantuan 4%. 

Unfortunately, two of the three stores I visited on Christmas Eve have closed, while the staff looked particularly glum in the empty third the last time I sauntered by.

Nor is this retail cataclysm limited to my neck of the woods. Malls are in trouble everywhere, American Apparel is closing down, JC Penney and the mighty Sears are scaling back and may not survive the full frontal assault of online shopping. 

There is no doubt that many jobs in warehousing and transportation have been created by the mighty Amazon and other online retailers. But what happens to cities if you take away the great downtown flagship stores? 

Will they be replaced by mom and pop stores, as one might hope? No way, Jose! If the big chains cannot do battle with online retailers, who can?

Amazon is finally turning a profit. Hurray, but Twitter, Uber and so many other online behemoths are not. The common online formula seems to be – drive competitors out of business by slashing prices, survive on Wall Street investment, and eventually take the company public and make a killing. 

Spotify’s annual revenue crests 2 billion dollars and yet it still has not turned a dime in profit. But it has obliterated the livelihood of a generation of musicians and destroyed their entrepreneurial dream of someday making back the money they’ve invested in recording an album. That dream still exists for the vaunted .001% of megastars; but for your meat and potatoes musician – fuggedaboutit!

It’s the same disturbing trend that we see in life in general – the world belongs to the super-rich, with an ever-dwindling share of profits accruing to everyone else!

Candidate Trump used to trumpet a cruel world where $25 per hour miners and manufacturing employees were being swindled of their jobs by crafty foreign governments, elite liberals, and criminal Mexicans. These dispossessed workers were being forced to downgrade to service jobs in the $8-12 per hour range. 

However, what happens if many of these service jobs are also disappearing. And don’t tell me that warehouse workers won’t soon be replaced by robots that don’t even need a lunch break, let alone a couple of hours of anxious sleep.

If there’s a solution it will come in the form of education and skill attainment. After all, someone’s going to have to oil the bloody robots and keep them from rusting.

Education costs money, however, and such expenditure is hardly on the books in President Trump’s New Deal. Ah yes, we’re back to good old-time voodoo economics – cut taxes for corporations and the wealthy and eventually the bucks will trickle down to the rest of us peons. 

Oh dear, I’m already fretting about Christmas. Excuse me while I click on Amazon – I’m sure they’ve already got some good December deals on tap. No more surgical strike shopping for me!

Dev - The Boy From Bruree

In a recent interview I was asked why I didn’t include Éamon de Valera in my play, Rebel In The Soul, now running at The Irish Rep.

I had to pause a moment before not owning up to the truthful answer – I don’t care much for this most preeminent of Irish politicians. 

Truth be told, though, Dev was far too canny to ever get mired in a fight between church and state as happened to Dr. Noel Browne. He instinctively knew that battling the Catholic Church in the Ireland of 1951 was akin to “dancing jigs on quicksand.”

Even his enemies were in awe of Éamon de Valera, for he stood apart, cultivated an air of aloofness, and had no trouble sticking a knife between a rival’s ribs. This consummate Irish politician was born in New York City.

His mother sent him back to Bruree, County Limerick at the age of two, soon after the death of his father, a Spanish music teacher. His grandmother, Elizabeth Coll, raised young Éamon in a laborer’s cottage. Too poor to afford a bicycle he walked seven miles to and from the Christian Brothers School at Charleville before winning a scholarship to Blackrock College.

Blackrock would have a huge influence on the Boy from Bruree. He taught mathematics there and later in life befriended a president of the college, Dr. John Charles McQuaid with whom he would craft the Irish Constitution of 1937. 

He became a national figure when he was one of the last leaders left standing after the 1916 Uprising - spared execution because of his American birth.

The first great question mark about de Valera arose when he refused to attend the treaty negotiations in London in 1921. Many feel that he sent Michael Collins in his place to reap the blame, for he knew that gaining a united Ireland was impossible.

Dev’s reputation has suffered as Collins’ star has ascended. For good reason - Ireland would have been a far different place if the charismatic, outgoing Collins had lived to lead the country.

It’s hard to argue that de Valera’s conservative vision did not stifle the country socially and economically thereby contributing to the ongoing curse of emigration. However, he did keep Ireland neutral and out of World War II; and yet one of the great strikes against him is that he officially offered condolences to the German minister in Dublin on the suicide of Adolf Hitler.

Whatever way you weigh it, the Boy from Bruree is a play unto himself – though Machiavellian and judgmental, he had a burning love for Ireland, its language, customs, and people. But was this love perverted by his overweening ego and sheer sense of entitlement?

If he doesn’t play an actual part in Rebel in the Soul, he is the elephant in the room that influences the other three characters.

Sean MacBride may have outgrown his position as de Valera’s secretary but he never lost his awe of the man. And in 1948 when MacBride’s star was rising as leader of the nascent Clann na Poblachta party, Dev called a surprise election knowing that he might lose but that his former secretary had not as yet developed the organization to win. My guess is he also figured that MacBride would not thrive in a coalition with the conservative Fine Gael party - “men I had been shooting at 25 years ago.”

Soon after his expulsion from Clann na Poblachta, Dr. Browne joined the Fianna Fail party. De Valera had little time for iconoclastic reformers, however, and showed him the door some years later.

Perhaps, John Charles McQuaid suffered the cruelest fate for he and Dev were close friends. Yet the Limerick man stymied McQuaid’s ambition of becoming Cardinal by putting in a word with the Vatican on behalf of the more mild-mannered, and easily managed, Archbishop D'Alton of Armagh.

For when push came to shove Éamon de Valera brooked no competition – a fact that each of the three major characters in Rebel in the Soul eventually had to come to terms with.

His star may be on the wane but it would be the height of folly to ever ignore the towering, tireless Boy from Bruree.

Rebel in the Soul

On April 11^th, 1951, Dr. Noel Browne, Minister for Health, resigned from the first coalition government, and a new Ireland was born. 

His decision had far reaching consequences. The most important was that church and state would begin to separate and the nascent Republic of Ireland would set out on a long painful journey that would eventually lead to an independent civil society.

Within weeks the coalition government fell and in the subsequent election Éamonn de Valera and his Fianna Fail party were returned to power. Sean MacBride’s Clann na Poblachta party was decimated, and Archbishop John Charles McQuaid, de facto leader of the Irish Catholic Church, would soon be seen in a new light.

Hopefully, you can find out how this all came to pass at The Irish Repertory Theatre when my play, Rebel in the Soul, begins previews April 12th with opening night April 18th.

The story has always fascinated me, probably because the three main characters, Browne, MacBride, and McQuaid were such interesting figures; it’s hardly surprising that each gave a somewhat different account of how the events in question came to pass.

It’s been a thrill to watch Patrick Fitzgerald, Sean Gormley, and John Keating bring these characters back to life. In many ways we see the events unfold through the eyes of Browne’s wife, Phyllis, played by Sarah Street; Mrs. Browne was a singular person herself for she knowingly married a man with Tuberculosis. Talk about love and commitment!

I hasten to add that this is a play, not a documentary. Playwrights can go places that the narrators of mere facts cannot. We can explore character and act on strong supposition, or even hunches. 

And what characters! You couldn’t invent Browne’s life and trajectory. His parents both died of Tuberculosis, the dreaded “silent death” leaving him orphaned and penniless on the streets of London at the age of 10. 

From out of the blue he was granted a full scholarship to a prestigious Catholic Prep school, and eventually returned to Ireland as a member of a wealthy Anglo-Irish family. He became a medical doctor with the one goal of eradicating Tuberculosis; elected to parliament, on his first day he was made Minister for Health.

Sean MacBride was the son of Maude Gonne - muse of Yeats - and Capt. John MacBride - 1916 martyr. At his birth, his mother declared him “a man of destiny.” And he surely was. A confidant of Michael Collins in his mid-teens, he became IRA Chief of Staff, founded Clann na Poblachta, arguably the most promising Irish political party; and after his political career imploded he helped found Amnesty International and introduced the MacBride Principles that did so much to outlaw sectarianism in Northern Ireland.

And what of John Charles – so powerful and ubiquitous was he in Irish life that he had little need of a surname or title. Nowadays it’s often hard to appreciate the power of the Catholic Church in Ireland up until the 1970’s or just how completely this complicated man micro-managed the country’s political, social, and cultural affairs.

Volumes have been written about Archbishop McQuaid and, yet, he usually emerges as an ecclesiastical ogre, instead of a solitary man of his times and position. An obsessive-compulsive, he had a deep love of poetry and, indeed, was an unlikely patron of the hard-drinking, obstreperous poet, Patrick Kavanagh.

Did anyone ever know Sean MacBride? Such an extraordinary and admirable man, and an Irish-American icon, he was not at his best during the 1951 crisis. Then again, which of us is in the eternal battle between principle and pragmatism. There’s a haunted quality to MacBride’s gaze that’s hard to ignore in most portraits.

And Browne? He eradicated the scourge of Tuberculosis from Ireland and demanded free comprehensive health coverage for pregnant women and children up to the age of 16. But was ever a man so unsuited to the game of politics.

The US is still wrestling with the issue of decent health care for all its citizens. Perhaps, we’re in need of an iconoclastic Noel Browne who was willing to risk all for his goals back in 1951.   

Rebel in the Soul, written by Larry Kirwan, directed by Charlotte Moore, at The Irish Repertory Theatre, 132 W. 22^nd St., NYC 10011, April 12-May 21, irishrep.org – 212.727.2737

$20 off preview performances April 12-17 with Code PREVIEW

$10 off all performances using Code EARLY (expires 4/18/2017)

Dispossessed Generation

I’ve travelled this country for many years in awe of its beauty and sheer size. 

I admire its self-sufficiency, the way it picked itself up after the Vietnam and Iraq Wars and the attack on 9/11. 

There’s a resiliency and a willingness to roll up the sleeves at the worst of times, and an openness and generosity of spirit that emerges when things get better. 

But there’s a new element swirling about in the hinterland – despair. I see it in the faces of the many opioid abusers. They were a mystery to me at first – I could tell they were junkies, but they differed from the fevered smack heads of the East Village.

Opioid users tend to be more passive, perhaps because they have much more access to their drugs of choice, many of which are prescription painkillers. Debilitating these drugs may be but they seem to be keeping a lid on the almost existential pain that you sense in so many economically depressed areas. 

This despair has become more pointed over the years. I first noticed it soon after the attack on the World Trade Center. Did the sudden loss of American invincibility cause the change? 

Still, New York City suffered more than anywhere else and yet I don’t sense the same debilitating angst in the five boroughs. But head 75 miles in any direction out into the country and it begins to hit you. Despite longstanding urban poverty, I suppose cities breed more opportunities.

I have little doubt but that the Great Recession of 2008 opened the floodgates of despair. People who had always treasured job security were shocked by the fragility of the American economic system. It suddenly became crystal clear just how much more their corporate superiors cared about the financial bottom line than the loyalty of employees.

But the collapse of 2008 only hastened what was already afoot. Out in the Rust and Coal Belts, 21^st Century technology had for years been replacing jobs that paid $25 per hour. Meanwhile, standbys like the great service employers, McDonald’s and Wal-Mart, rarely pay more than an entry level $9.   

   

Is there any wonder there’s a curdling despair rampant across the country? And now instead of getting people to face up to the fact that we are in a time of great and inexorable economic change, we have a president who is promising a return to the good old days.

What’s staggering is that many people believe him, even as his party is busy trying to demolish the Affordable Care Act one of the few meaningful safety nets for this dispossessed generation. 

Many others are convinced that the president hasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell of turning things around, but at least he’s “shaking things up” and “draining the swamp” – even as Goldman Sachs dominates his cabinet. 

What unifies these people is that they have no faith in the Democratic Party, once the defender of the working class.

Nor do they trust the federal government to do anything for them. And yet who else is there? Surely not their erstwhile corporate masters who have little interest in anything but the bottom line.

And yet the federal government is the only entity with enough power – or interest - to form a coalition with corporations and begin to educate workers for the new economy, as has been happening in Germany for years. 

This won’t solve the whole problem. But it could help current high school graduates gain work-study apprenticeships in the new 21^st Century factories that are rapidly becoming the norm.  Unfortunately, these modern work sites will be mostly automated and employ few - though pay will be good. 

And what of the rest? Many will be forced to work in service industries, which is why it’s vital that a national minimum wage provides a livable income.

It all sounds pretty bleak, doesn’t it? Perhaps, but it beats the dishonest promises of bringing back jobs that have gone forever.

And what of the opioid users? Well, Obamacare, for all its defects, offered rehabilitation opportunities for those who wished to kick the habit. Trumpcare - if it ever materializes - will provide none. 

And so, the president’s hollow promises will continue to echo in the shuttered factories of the hinterland as a despairing, hollow-eyed generation shuffles by.

Saint Patrick's Wild Stallion In Times Square

I’ve seen many a St. Patrick’s Day – mostly playing in a band atop a large stage, amidst a swirl of action but removed enough so that the forest can be clearly distinguished from the trees.

Where to begin?  I suppose in the metropolis of Wexford where St. Patrick’s Day was at best an insipid dud. With not much else going on in March we’d line up on the Quayside and watch the Confraternity men and Legion of Mary ladies parade by in a murmur of rosaries, accompanied by the local FCA (Army Reserve) who at least marched in time. 

My favorites were the Foresters – they wore green and white Robert Emmet type uniforms, knee-high black leather boots, and plumed hats. 

The lack of alcohol, however, weighed heavily on both marchers and observers, as pubs back then closed for our national feast day.

At my first New York St. Patrick’s Day Parade I felt I had stepped into Caligula’s Rome. Though quite early in the morning the bacchanal was already in full swing – not just booze either, but weed wafted gently by on the cool breezes of Fifth Avenue. Sex, too, was in the air as leggy drum majorettes kicked for the skies and suburban high school kids made out with vigor in fashionable retail doorways.

Later that night in Tomorrow’s Lounge, Bay Ridge, I had one of the best gigs of my life as Turner & Kirwan of Wexford shook the considerable dust off the rafters. In truth we could have played Enya-on-Ambien dirges and the packed house would have roared along with gusto. To top it all we got paid double!

It was then I realized that on St. Patrick’s Night a band mounts a wild stallion. All you have to do is hold on to its mane, dig in the spurs, and off you go with the flow! 

The following year, however in our innocence, Turner & Kirwan played ten 40-minute sets in Manchester, NH and received sweet damn all bonus. Somewhat miffed we invited the friskier looking part of our audience back to a party in a house that had been lent to us. 

I will not bore you with the salacious details; suffice it to say we left Manchester in somewhat of a cloud. So much so that when I returned many years later with Black 47 I had to put forth that the Kirwan playing with the disgraced duo from Wexford had been my Uncle Larry.

There was never a need for such white lies in New York City on March 17^th. For one thing, no one would be crazy enough to give Black 47 a loan of their house on that sainted liquid evening.

Not that there weren’t hiccups. One night in a shadowy corridor of the Letterman Show, fatigued and overwhelmed, I thought I had lost my mind when assaulted by a battery of little people dressed as leprechauns who were merely seeking autographs. 

Another year on the Conan O’Brien Show I almost had a heart attack when I forgot a line from our song James Connolly on national TV.

But there were triumphs too. I can still feel the crowd and band meld together into one tightly clenched fist when I hear our Live in New York City CD recorded on St. Patrick’s Day in the late lamented Wetlands club.

I thought I might give the whole thing a break when Black 47 disbanded, but BB King’s on 42^nd Street wanted the real rockin’ New York Irish music experience again, so I’m back in the game with a new kick-arse band for a night. 

Cáit O’Riordan of The Pogues and Chris Byrne of Black 47 will join us for some songs. Lia Fail Pipes and Drums from Mercer County will kick off the evening. Pat McGuire, our old comrade from Spéir Mor and Paddy Reilly’s days will team up with Geoff Blythe of Black 47 to do a set; and my son, Rory K, the hip-hop artist, will jam the grooves with Celtic themes like Fresh Off The Boat – dear God how did I beget a rapper – perhaps it’s karma for Uncle Larry’s long-ago wild night in Manchester?

Whatever! See you at BB’s in Times Square when we mount that St. Patrick’s Night wild stallion one more time. Bring your spurs!

Larry Kirwan & Friends, BB King’s, 237 W. 42^nd St. NYC  (212)997-4144     

Doors 6pm/Show7pm

Tickets: http://bit.ly/2iK94Xl or at the door

Fanatic Ladies

It’s odd to see yourself in a movie, especially when you have no idea what’s coming next. Such was the case when watching a rough cut of Fanatic Heart recently.

In the course of 25 years with Black 47 I’d acted the clown in a number of MTV videos – hardly a great experience, since that pathetic medium emasculated Rock & Roll and left it the flaccid force it is today.

Still, I’ll be there with my popcorn tomorrow night March 2^nd when Fanatic Heart (the Black 47 movie) premieres at Cinépolis Chelsea for Craic Fest’s Gala opening.

The directors, Vic Zimet and Stephanie Silber really captured the arc of the band. It is far from the usual musical puff piece as our only directive when they began filming 17 years ago was to “show it like it is.”

They didn’t stint on that – the passage of time is well commemorated in lined faces and graying hair – but who gives a goddamn considering the alternative? We all got out alive - more than can be said for many around us.

It was interesting to watch from the outside. From my perspective at the center of the cyclone it was all one big swirl of passion, fatigue, dissonance and delight in a continual battle to do exactly what we wanted.

One of the most interesting people interviewed was my sister from another mother, Mary Courtney. She was the woman’s voice on Livin’ in America, one of the band’s signature songs. 

I guess the reason she fit so perfectly is because we all came from the same Bronx music cauldron and shared many political views.

Watching her made me realize how interesting it would have been to feature the other women members of Black 47. What a cast of characters!

I first met Mary Martello while setting Caoineadh Airt Uí’ Laoghaire (The Lament For Art O’Leary) to music for a dance-theatre piece by June Anderson. Mary had never heard the Irish language or the great epic poem and yet she sang as though raised in a Munster Gaeltacht.

I used part of that performance for the intro to Big Fellah, our song about Michael Collins. Kurt Sutter, Sons of Anarchy creator, was so taken with Mary’s vocal he featured the track on the Lochan Mór episode gaining the band a worldwide audience. Mary continues to act and sing in the Philadelphia area.

I don’t know where I met Christine Ohlman. A Rock & Roll legend and singer with the Saturday Night Live Band, she’s often called The Beehive Lady on account of her spectacular bouffant! And what a voice – somewhere between Ronnie Spector and Janis Joplin! Take a listen to her on Black 47’s Blood Wedding where she channels the pain of Carlita, a Lower East Side woman caught in a crime of passion.

Some of you already know Celtic princess, Ashley Davis. I met her on her first night in NYC after a stint as sean-nós singer in a Michael Flatley extravaganza. A collector of rare songs when she’s not writing her own classics, her solo career is booming and, to top it all, she had the good fortune to marry a Bronx boy. She adds her haunting voice to Fatima, a young Muslim woman with a decision to make, on Black 47’s New York Town album.

Nora Shanahan showed up at our recording studio after a night on the town. She was one of the singers in New York’s great lost band, The Táin. Totally distinctive, she reminded me of a peroxide punked-out Bridie Gallagher. She was accompanied that morning by an entourage as well oiled as herself. But, man, when she lit into Bodhráns on the Brain, the room lit up. 

Bodharns is a rip-roaring fare-thee-well-sucker song about an Irish girl ditching her cool New York boyfriend for an “auld alcoholic bodhhrán maker.” I still laugh whenever I hear Norah ripping me apart and am delighted she found happiness back home in Ireland.

There were other ladies - just as distinguished - who sang with Black 47, God bless them. Perhaps they’ll show up at Cinépolis Chelsea tomorrow night. If not, see you there.