Insurrection or a jolly old bunch of tourists?

What do you think of this whole DC Jan. 6^th affair? Was it an insurrection or just a bunch of feisty tourists dropping by the Peoples House to pass the time of day?

Whatever your opinion, these “tourists” descended upon Washington DC at the summons of Donald Trump, and eventually stormed the Capitol building to prevent the lawful election of Joseph Biden.

The fact that some of them urinated in public areas, terrorized representatives of both parties, and chanted death threats against Vice-President Pence is not the reason I’m writing this column; no, it’s that they attempted to pervert the will of the American people who had elected Joseph Biden over Donald Trump by 306-232 in electoral votes and by 81,283, 361 - 74,222, 960 in the popular vote.

There have been bitter elections and contested victories before, featuring such iconic stalwarts as Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt  - and who can forget the “hanging chads” controversy in 2000 when a close Supreme Court decision led to the presidency of George W. Bush.

There were Democrats who refused to accept that result, but Vice-President Al Gore, in his wisdom, felt that such dissent on his part would do interminable damage to the United States, and so he conceded.

We ended up with the invasion of Iraq, perhaps the worst American foreign policy mistake but the country in general stayed united and moved on.

So what is Mr. Trump’s problem? Well, as New Yorkers, many of us have had ringside seats to his antics over the years. That’s why we gave him a lower percentage of votes in his hometown than practically any other elected president.

We know all about his ego and his belief in that wise old authoritarian adage, “If you say it often enough people will believe you.”

Though Mr. Trump bullied and cajoled election officials and governors in various states, most were both righteous and patriotic enough to stand up for the truth, and the integrity of the electoral system.

But even after the courts threw out the vast majority of Trump backed challenges, and Attorney-General William Barr declared that the Justice Department found no evidence of widespread voter fraud, President Trump still summoned his tourists to DC on January 6^th2021.

But then Mr. Trump often tends to favor “alternative facts” when reality doesn’t match his expectations.

What is stunning is that the party of Lincoln, Eisenhower, and Reagan has swallowed his Kool-Aid and meekly steps into line. Talk about hope and history rhyming.

It’s a long way to the midterms in November and even longer to 2024, many things will change. Given their age and the vicissitudes of public life, it’s unlikely that either President Biden or Mr. Trump will run again.

But Donald Trump will not go gentle into that good night. He will remain in control of the Republican Party and play kingmaker, forever parroting his false claim that he “wuz robbed.”

The question is – will we citizens allow his great lie to undermine a system of government that, despite faults, has acted as a beacon of light for much of the world.

I know we’re fatigued by a seemingly never-ending pandemic that has frayed our nerves and way of life.

Like many I’m appalled by the constant bickering of both major political parties and the abandon with which they gerrymander constituencies for their own advantage. Neither can I bear to watch the partisan rote sermonizing of MSNBC or Fox News, but elections are about ideas as much as people or parties.

 

Then I catch a glimpse of the hate-filled faces of those entitled tourists waving their Confederate flags while attacking the outnumbered Capitol police.

And I remember that President Trump sat on his hands and gleefully watched this travesty on television when he could have summoned help.

It’s at such moments I know that I have no choice but do my part to prevent these bullyboys, and their self-seeking political accomplices, from interfering with the democratic will of the American people.

History has shown the cost of sitting back and expecting others to shoulder our democratic responsibilities. Roll on mid-term November and 2024!

CBGB - the Irish connection

 They called it “the club that changed the world.” It perched on The Bowery, just above Houston Street, and went by the name CBGB.

It was an odd place – beginning with its name – the letters stood for Country, BlueGrass and Blues.

Practitioners of those musical disciplines rarely played the club unless they harbored suicidal tendencies.

Historians usually opine that either Patti Smith or Tom Verlaine of Television first graced CB’s stage; but I remember it differently, Turner & Kirwan of Wexford beat them by some months.

All these years later I still can’t describe our duo except to say we were loud, opinionated, and not for the faint-hearted. We also had a bawdy sense of humor little appreciated by various establishments – including the Irish Echo who printed our own graphic description of the group in an ad for The Bells of Hell.

This caused subscriptions to be cancelled but the Echo ruled that we were entitled to our own dubious opinion and besides, “a bit of controversy rarely went astray.” We were eventually banned from CBGB but that’s a whole other story.

How did we become the first band to play the storied club? That too came about through our association with The Bells.

You see CBGB originated on W. 13^thStreet, right opposite Malachy McCourt’s watering hole, then managed by Peter Myers, from Keswick who collaborated with us on the controversial Irish Echo ad. 

 

Turner & Kirwan of Wexford were house band at The Bells and as fate would have it, the original CBGB was not attracting much of an audience - Country, Bluegrass or Blues.

Turner & Kirwan, however, were packing the Bells with what the Sunday News described as “Irish Acid Rock.”

Hilly Kristal and his wife, Karen, used to close early and slouch disconsolately across the street to catch our “rowdy psychedelic” set which stretched into the late wee hours. 

  

Hilly eventually moved GBGB to another premises below a men’s shelter on The Bowery which he had been assured was on the brink of gentrification. I believe he bought a bridge to Brooklyn in the same transaction.

It wasn’t that Hilly tried to poach us from the Bells, more that he offered us a Monday night residency at his new club.

Truth be told though, we were doing roaring business around the city on Mondays with our “bartenders night out;” this idea came to us courtesy of Sir Charles Comer, Bob Marley’s PR maestro who also put out the word that we were attracting “hordes of wild women.”

But Hilly was a friend so we played a Grand Opening Monday night for him in his new club. The “wild women” never materialized but bartenders, defrocked Christian Brothers, all sorts of thirsty communists, and others from our Bells clientele lined up on the Bowery for admittance, when lo and behold, one of the residents of the men’s shelter above tossed a blunt dinner knife down into the parched queue.

No one was injured and the Grand Opening continued unabated, but the word spread about this incident and the following Monday night the only audience that showed was Hilly, his prize Egyptian dogs, a couple of hungover Bronx bartenders, and no sign of women, “wild” or otherwise.

This continued for a dispiriting month of Mondays until finally Turner and I informed Hilly that we were going home to Ireland, and that in our less than humble opinion his Country, Bluegrass, and Blues emporium on the Bowery would never take off.

Alas, the rest is history. In our absence Patti Smith discovered CB’s and by the time we returned the Ramones, Blondie, and every other manner of punk had created a sensational new scene, and not for the last time had Turner & Kirwan made a woeful career decision.

However, we were eventually invited back into the fold, and even banned which is more than I can say for any of goody-two-shoes punks that became famous.

But never let it be said that an Irish band was not the first to play at the fountain of Punkdom! 

Here’s to the memory of CBGB, Turner & Kirwan of Wexford, and to the late lamented godfather of Punk, Mr. Kristal.

Long may you promote in heaven, Hilly, we’ll never see your like again!

St. Stephen's Day in the Model County

 One of the glories of the extended Irish Christmas season of my youth was St. Stephen’s Day. The British called it Boxing Day, but that’s another story.

St. Stephen was the first Christian martyr and there was a vague echo of violence to the day around the “Model County” of Wexford.

Christmas Day itself was devoted to family, stuffing oneself, and generally lazing around in front of the fireplace.

On occasion in my teens I played a semi-legal and frowned upon Christmas Night dance in the Town Hall. These were promoted by Johnny Reck, a legendary Wexford character, and tended towards violence due to an excess of drink and lack of security.

After one particular tumultuous Yuletide evening Johnny washed his hands of such promotions declaring, “it’s not worth a visit to the dentist on Stephen’s Day!”

He was right on that score for it definitely would not have been seemly to arrive at the Co. Wexford Hunt on the morning of the 26^th with your jaw in a sling.

My family was split politically. My father’s people were “big Fine Gael farmers” while my mother’s were hard core Fianna Fail with deep roots in pre-Troubles Sinn Fein.

Suffice it to say this faction wouldn’t be caught dead at the West Brit sport of harassing decent Irish foxes.

Though connected to the horsey set, my father’s people were more likely to bet on the ponies than ride them. Still, my father religiously escorted us to the hunt taking care to be there well in time for the handing out of the  “stirrup cup.”

This was usually some form of hot whiskey, the smell of which wafted amidst the ordure of fresh horse manure outside some rural pub. With the hounds baying, the steeds whinnying, at the blare of a loud bugle, all would set forth in pursuit of the wily Wexford fox.

A gate to some big field would be thrown open and off the hounds would tear followed by the riders charging towards some huge ditch or hedgerow. There, the inexperienced met their Waterloo, ending up nose deep in Wexford muck, the unlucky ones being mortifyingly dragged by the stirrup.

We proletariat, on foot, would gallop past these fallen gentry, trying to conceal our laughter, and save energy for the long morning ahead of racing up and down hill, glade, and ploughed field. I never saw a fox being apprehended, much less killed, but it wasn’t for want of effort.

Eventually, we’d make it back to my Fine Gael grandfather’s for Stephen’s Day dinner at 1pm sharp.

A reserved and silent man, he did occasionally crack a smile at the tale of some horsey friend or neighbor who had come a cropper in a thorny ditch.

After one such dinner I had my only experience of mumming. The custom has long since died out around Co. Wexford and was probably in its final throes when I witnessed it.

I knew something was amiss when my Granny moaned, “Sweet Jesus protect us!” and blessed herself in unison. This was her all-purpose shield from misfortune that ranged from the death of a family member to the sighting of a lone magpie.

“The mummers have arrived,” said she to a reciprocal sigh from my grandfather.

And there they were bold as brass – four men in dresses, their faces slathered in everything from damp soot to their wives make up. One was brandishing a wooden sword, another waving a small birdcage that housed a wren, while their comrades danced a hybrid jig-tango, as they parodied a tale of St. George slaying the dragon.

At the end of the performance there was an unspoken, but vaguely threatening demand, for refreshments and payment, to which my Granny produced four large dusty bottles of Guinness while my grandfather meekly counted out an equal number of ten-shilling notes.

With the dragon safely slain, the mummers uncorked their large bottles, pocketed the legal tender and departed, while my Granny’s warm old kitchen descended once again into silence.

Meanwhile, up in the County Hospital, a mud-spattered Fine Gael horseman had a bone set, and at the dentist’s Johnny Reck spent some of the takings from his semi-legal Christmas Night dance, as another St. Stephen’s Day limped to a martyr’s close.

An Emigrant Christmas

 Christmas!  The very sound of the word can set the heart thumping, and yet there’s a vague unease associated with the word too, especially for the emigrant.

Christmas was a magic time in the Wexford of my boyhood. Festive lights hung above the Main Street causing the December frost to sparkle on the pavement below.

Even the poor – and there were many – walked with a strut, their heads held higher than usual, for fathers, daughters, and sons would soon be returning home from London, Birmingham, Liverpool, and God-knows-where-else.

My father was one of those, though he wasn’t restricted to a frantic Christmas week vacation; no, being a merchant seaman with some seniority, he could take whatever time off he liked, as long as his money held out.

Still, there was always the childhood fear that if he didn’t make it home because of weather or other emergency we’d have no Christmas at all. I guess that was where my Yuletide unease began.

When Pierce Turner and I left for New York on a freezing January morning it was fully understood that we would return home the following Christmas. We gave little thought to visas or international treaties, we were musicians off to the Big Applet to “make it,” whatever that meant.

And we did well early on – recorded a single and got a big spread written about us in the Sunday News - little money, of course, but enough of a stake in the music biz to want to stay.

So, we hired an immigration lawyer and thus did our Christmas troubles begin. This gentleman unequivocally stated that if we went home we would likely not get back because we’d overstayed our visitor’s visa.

He repeated this mantra the next Christmas, and it wasn’t until our third December in the US that we achieved legal status.

What a Christmas we had that year in Wexford! We were like returning heroes. The streets sparkled like diamonds for us.

But something had changed – at least for me – the streets of New York had grabbed a hold of me. I had achieved that nebulous emigrant status – caught between two worlds, I was neither here nor there.

There would be many more crazy Christmas returns. Do you remember them? Drinking and bidding fond farewell to the crew in your local pub, then getting dropped off in someone’s truck or van at Kennedy Airport, more whooping it up in the departure lounge with a host of other returnees, then stumble aboard the Aer Lingus jet, where the party continued unabated in the smoke-filled cabin until breakfast was served an hour from Shannon.

The festivities rarely ceased at home as you basked in the delight of your family; but by the Feast of the Epiphany, The Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens or the East Village was whispering in your ear and it was time to get on with your real life.

There were Christmases too when I didn’t go home and felt like a traitor – once I took a Kerouac road trip across the country to San Francisco, another time I headed south to the sun and Hemingway’s Key West.

I haven’t had a Wexford Christmas in over 30 years. I began my own family, and two little boys waiting for Santa to arrive - the light of anticipation sparkling in their eyes - helped ease the loss.

In American fashion, we celebrate the feast on Christmas Eve now. It’s joyful but far more sedate than the manic celebrations I remember in the pubs of Wexford.

Christmas Day itself can be difficult. The memories of parents and grandparents “hidden in death’s dateless night” can occasionally be overwhelming, but nothing a hot whiskey can’t handle.

And by St. Stephen’s Day, the Christmas season is pretty much over in New York – the sales have begun, a buck has to be made. It’s easy to forget that the Wexford Christmas will continue unabated until at least the New Year has been ushered in.

Here’s to a very happy Christmas to all of you wherever you celebrate it. And to those undocumented who once upon a time made the choice to stay here, and have not celebrated an Irish Christmas in many years – we haven’t forgotten you.  Your day will come.

Oliver Cromwell, Reggae Mon

 Isn’t it a terrible thing to open the New York Times and read the obituary of a friend, especially one you haven’t thought about in donkey’s years?

But then, as Malachy McCourt has been heard to say, “Sure there are people dying nowadays who never died before.”

Leaving aside Limerick logic, I recently stumbled upon a half-page of the “fake news” Times devoted to Terence “Astro” Wilson.

Now you might say to yourself, who in God’s name is that – but you’ve probably hummed along with him as he toasted “Red red wine, you make me feel so fine; you keep me rockin’ all of the time” in a thick Jamaican accent with his band UB40.

However, the minute Astro left the stage he reverted to his normal Birmingham accent. Ah that Reggae magic, how did it ever become so popular?

Well, some of its roots are Irish. Blame it on the divil himself, Oliver Cromwell!

After Old Ironsides grew tired of exterminating Catholics during his Irish campaign, he decided there was a buck to be made out of sending them to Barbados to cut the sugar cane.

Around that time, the King of Spain was thinking of recapturing the island of Jamaica from the Brits, whereupon Cromwell hit upon the notion of offering Barbados Paddies freedom and some Jamaican acres in the hope that they might defend their new homeland.

It all came to naught, for the King of Spain figured that Jamaica would breed more trouble than it was worth.

But the Irish had already arrived with their songs and stories and intermarried with African slaves and indigenous locals, and many generations later their descendents began skanking to up-tempo Ska that eventually morphed into stately Reggae.

But what is this Reggae and how did it become a worldwide phenomenon?

Well, if you take the four beats in a bar you’ll find that most types of popular music put the emphasis on the 2^ndor 4^thbeats. Reggae, on the other hand favors the 3^rd beat

This tends to give the music an offbeat feel with lots of space, though when I picked up the guitar to make sure this was the case I found myself “scratching.” This has nothing to do with an itch. It’s more that you dampen the strings with your left hand and play double time until you hit the third beat with a more resounding upstroke.

Try it - you’ll soon be skanking with the best, addressing your boss as “Mon,” and shaking your dreadlocks to beat the band!

I took to this music like a duck to water, probably because my father used to listen to Calypso records while cooking up his beef curry.

But Wexford also embraced Ska Music in the 1960’s, in particular our local skinheads who adored Prince Buster, one of the genre’s originators.

This never made sense to me - for skinners in general didn’t like Black people, but given their propensity for violence I never argued this subtle point with these bovver-booted, denim clad, aggressive young gentlemen.

Catching Bob Marley in his legendary Central Park concert was a spiritual experience. The clouds of ganja that enveloped the whole affair no doubt helped.

The Wailers were the tightest band I’d ever heard and for the first time I really understood the magic of Reggae. I also noticed that the sparse rhythm was a perfect vehicle upon which to hitch a story.

But then Marley was a shaman who enticed you into his orbit with his addictive call and response. As he wailed his pithy tales of love and liberation the whole city seemed to change gears and move to a reggae groove.

This was not lost on me, and years later with Black 47 we would employ the same beats and grooves to propel message songs like Fire of Freedom and Change. We even dared to offer tributes to the master with versions of his Three Little Birds and Get Up, Stand Up.

How odd that Oliver Cromwell, that arch-fundamentalist Christian who introduced ethnic cleansing to Wexford may have scattered seeds in the Caribbean that would one day lead to Reggae music in Jamaica.

So in the words of the poet, Robert Nesta Marley:

“Lively up yourself, and don’t be no drag

Lively up yourself, for Reggae is another bag.”

Donegal Visionary on the South Side of Chicago

 In the City of Chicago

As the evening shadows fall

There are people dreaming

Of the hills of Donegal…. Luka Bloom

 

It’s a rare piece of real estate on this planet that a Donegal person hasn’t strode over. My father told me he once heard a tenor from Letterkenny break into The Homes of Donegal in a Hong Kong saloon.

Still it was a surprise to run into Frank Bradley and his family when they came to see Paradise Square at Chicago’s Nederlander Theatre last Saturday night.

I hadn’t seen Frank since Black 47 disbanded seven years ago but I should have known he’d show up, for Donegal people are nothing if not loyal.

Frank was legendary in Irish music circles as the promoter of Irish Fest at Gaelic Park way down on the South Side of Chicago.

Black 47 first played Irish Fest in a snowstorm on Memorial Day Weekend 1991, I kid you not! We were outdoors too and despite the elements delivered a full 90-minute set.

I guess that got us the gig for we headlined the festival thereafter until 2014.

As we laughed and reminisced, I was reminded of how welcome I always felt on the South Side. For in neighborhoods like Beverly, Bridgeport, Mt. Greenwood and the suburbs of Oak Park the Irish heart still beats strongly.

The Irish have spread all over the city now but they gather together every Memorial Day Weekend in Gaelic Park.

During the Black 47 years it was not unusual to have 50,000 of all ages and classes gathered together to whoop it up during Irish Fest.

In our large tent there would be a mosh pit the like of which you wouldn’t see in CBGB’s. While down the field other tents would respectively feature old time waltzes and Traditional Music to beat the band.

But that was just one week of the year. Gaelic Park goes about its considerable business the other 51 weeks also.

It’s the home of the GAA in Chicago and sits on 62 acres with six full-size playing fields, and a main sports stadium.

And it all came about because Frank Bradley and a tightly knit board of strivers and achievers looked out on a field in Oak Forest back in 1979, and dreamed of creating a new home for Irish sport and culture.

The Chicago GAA itself was founded in 1890 and has had a distinguished history. It has, however, prospered or declined depending on Irish immigration.

The Great Depression and World War II delivered severe body blows, but the revered organization revived again courtesy of fresh waves of immigration in the 1950’s and 1980’s.

While there are many surviving football, hurling, and camogie teams, the great hope now comes from the juvenile clubs – children and grandchildren of immigrants who compete with other youth teams locally and around the mid-west.

An Irish cultural camp is held every August where children from 6 to 12 are introduced to our history and traditions through workshops in dance, drama, language, music, sport, and art.

With the resident Gaelic Park Players and Choir there’s no shortage of theatre and singing, and yet, as with the North Side Irish Heritage Center, you’ll be listening a long time before you hear anyone under 40 with an Irish accent.

It amazes me that given the power and clout the Irish have in both major political parties we consistently fail to use it to solve this existential conundrum.

A very simple question could be put to every political candidate in the country – What do you intend doing about legalized immigration into the USA?

I, for one, have had enough of the current smug Know-Nothing, xenophobic attitude towards immigration.

Walk down any main street and you’ll see signs in store windows seeking new employees. These jobs could be filled by immigrants with work visas or green cards and would help set the economy on a sound economic footing again. With an aging population this is more than a dream, it’s practical politics.

But just as important, there’ll come a time when we’ll need newly arrived visionaries from Donegal, the like of Frank Bradley and others, and we won’t have them because of a failure of will on our part to demand far sighted and meaningful immigration legislation.

Chicago Irish!!

 I’ve been in Chicago for four weeks now rehearsing the musical, Paradise Square, for an opening at the legendary Nederlander Theater on Nov. 2^nd.

It’s been a long haul since some of you saw Hard Times – from which Paradise Square evolved - in the infinitely less spacious Cell Theatre on 23^rdStreet in Manhattan back in 2012.

But don’t worry, you will not have to trek out here, Paradise Square will open on Broadway at The Barrymore Theatre on March 20th.

Over the years I’ve played countless gigs in Chicago and have always enjoyed this bustling metropolis.

It’s really two cities - North and South, and the twain rarely meet. For instance, the North is Cubs mad, while the South adores the White Sox.

Chicago is far from integrated too and that makes it an excellent location for a pre-Broadway run; for Paradise Square deals with the amalgamation of the “Famine Irish” and African-Americans in New York’s Five Points before they were torn apart in the Draft Riots of July 1863.

It’s the story of two brutalized peoples: one fleeing enslavement, the other escaping the Great Hunger. Its subjects include the desire for freedom and the price of immigration.

The Irish are dispersed all over greater Chicago now, but their spiritual home is in the Bridgeport area where they flocked after An Gorta Mór to help build the Illinois and Michigan Canal.

But Chicago and every other city in the US now have something in common: You’re unlikely to hear an Irish accent on anyone below the age of 45.

I’ve been noticing this dearth of the brogue for over 20 years. At first it caused me little concern; the flow of Irish immigration had been cut off before – during the two world wars and after the passing of the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965.

Still, you felt that eventually matters would redress themselves, as they did in the 1970’s and ‘80s when many young Irish stayed beyond their visas and added greatly to Irish American culture.

But as the US became more conservative politically, Ireland became more liberal, and after 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq many young Irish didn’t feel at home in this country anymore.

Both Canada and Australia were much more welcoming and suited them better both politically and socially.

Irish America won’t disintegrate without them. Many young Americans of Irish heritage now spend a university semester or two in Dublin, Galway and Cork.

They even learn to drink Guinness, which most young Irish have forsaken, and they bring back their experiences of modern Ireland and share them with families and friends.

Meanwhile Irish Americans visited the “homeland” in droves in pre-pandemic days and will likely do so soon again.

But it’s not the same is it? The young Irish who came here in the 70’s and 80’s shook up Irish America; they brought with them their politics, their music, their modern outlook, and most importantly, they settled here permanently.

Most of them have done well. They own the bars now, while others started small businesses and have assimilated into Irish America.

We need the current new breed of Irish to shake us up once again. They are well educated - few will mix cement or head straight from the building site to the pubs like we did.

No, they’re more likely to gaze into their laptops and create giant digital businesses like Stripe, the brainchild of the Collison brothers from Dromineer, Co. Tipperary.  

     

It’s time for Irish America to demand new and practical immigration laws. With national elections nail-bitingly close, and Republicans and Democrats in stalemate, there couldn’t be a better time to leverage our voting power.

And by looking out for ourselves we could help bring overall change to a fatigued country that’s slowly slipping back into bigotry and nativism.

As little as 50,000 new Irish accents legally entering the US every year would help energize not just Irish America but the country as a whole.

It’s too much to expect that like the19^thCentury immigrant Irish in Paradise Square they’d help create new forms of culture like tap dancing, but let’s once more throw open these creaky Green Card gates and find out.