by Marc GunnSo where to begin? First, let me say many, many, many thanks to Kimberly and Doc Grauzer. They were kind enough to let me crash in their hotel room for the weekend which allowed me to get my first taste of everything I've heard about the North Texas Irish Festival.

What had I heard? Well, the shows a great, but you also don't want to miss the sessions at the host hotel after hours. The craic is grand! And it was.

My Pick of the Best of North Texas Irish Fest 2006:

• Brother,
• The Tea Merchants,
• Jed Marum,
• Onya,
• the after hours session, and
• hanging out with Doc Grauzer.

Friday Arrival
I drove up rather late on Friday. Arrived in Dallas around 8pm and drove over to visit my friend Donna Duncan from faire. She now has a business called Costumes in Time that does period costumes. I was thinking of augmenting my faire outfit. A lot of it will depend on money though. Meantime, she sized me and we caught up.

Then I was off to the hotel. I arrived and found Doc and Kimberly in the lounge, relaxing with Sarah Dinan and her friends. I said hi to a bunch of other folks in the community and then went up stairs to unpack my autoharp and bodhran.

Downstairs we found a nice session down one of the halls with a dozen folks or so. A couple months ago, I was briefly shown how to play the bodhran so I bounced between my two instruments. I'm still no where near up to speed for playing melody on the autoharp. And there are some chords which I am limited by for sessions. So the bodhran balanced that out rather well.


Saturday at the North Texas Irish Festival
We jammed until 2:30ish which Doc said was a slow night for sessions. That's okay though because we got up at 8am. That was painful. Then we ate breakfast and took a shuttle to the festival. We were first in line for the gate. I spent much of Saturday recording Station IDs for my Irish & Celtic Music Podcast from as many bands as I possibly could. I had over 40 by the end of the weekend.

The very first band I caught was Paisley Close. I first met Cid at the House of Dra at the Texas Ren Fest, and she was sweet enough to give me a copy of her band's new CD, All On A Day. Excellent CD! I even added them to The Secret World of Celtic Rock compilation CD.

From Paisley Close, I raced over to Seamus Stout. Their show was over, but I did catch them for some promos at least. Then on to see Jed Marum.

Jed was a pleasant surprise this year. He submitted a CD for my Celtic MP3s Music Magazine about three years ago. But I never really listened to it. So when I did my Irish & Celtic Music Podcast last week I listened to the CD and found out what a great voice he has. I was even more pleased because I kept running into him at just about every show I went to. He's extremely nice and a genuine guy. A folk musician of the truest sort.

After Jed's show, I met up with Clan Gunn and walked arond a bit. I made my way over to the other building and said, "hi" to Lanora of Things Celtic. That's when it occurred to me I made a big mistake.

I paid for an ad in the NTIF program for my Irish Drinking Songs for Cat Lovers CD. If I was REALLY smart, I would've said, "Go over to the Things Celtic booth and purchase a copy." And of course, worked it out so they had copies of the CD there. Drats! Well maybe next time... Though I'm not sure it was financially feasible. Ah well.

At 2 o'clock, I saw Ed Miller perform with John Taylor and Rich Brotherton. The sound at the beginning of the show was a bit messed up, but the songs as usual were wonderful. Forunately, the sound issues were resolved by the end of the show.

Next up was Beth Patterson. I had heard about her from a lot of friends in Louisiana. She was good. However, I wasn't too impressed with the electronic drum kit. I might've enjoyed her show more if she just stayed acoustic. So I didn't stick around long for that show. Instead, I went over to see John Williams & Dean Magraw. Some great tunes from them. You can tell John loves playing music.

At four o'clock, there was a bodhran workshop. Since I know virtually nothing about the bodhran, I decided to go. Lo and behold, I ran into Michelle Hedden over there. Michelle recorded on my cat CD and also plays backup drums for us just about whenever we are in Missouri.

On the downside, Albert Alphonso was one of the teachers. While Mark Stone did his best to educate us in a useful workshop, Alphonso did his best to Waste our time. I'm still rather pissed about that. I sent NTIF a letter about it too. Lesson to be learned, if you ever hear of a workshop with Alphonso, don't bother!

There was one other downside about having a bodhran workshop at 4'o'clock. Two Austin groups, The Tea Merchants and Sarah Dinan, were playing at that same show time. So I would have to wait until Sunday to see them.

At 6:00, I went to see Robbie O'Connell and Aoife Clancy. That was kinda weird. Aoife seemed to have her own band. And Robbie was sorta smacked into the center of it all. So it was rather disjointed as they swapped back and forth singing songs. But the individual songs they performed were quite beautiful.

Next up was a band I've heard occasionally, but never spent much time listening to--Brother. I caught their 7:15pm show. And it was amazing! The band fuses Australian tribal with original songwriting, bagpipes and didgeridoo. They put on a powerhouse of a show.

Great performance. It left me with a major high as I went back in to find out when Doc and Kimberly planned to head back to the hotel. But I was stopped short with something more out of the ordinary than Brother. That was Onya.

The Star & Harp Pub Stage was filled with three guitarists singing basically acoustic alternative rock. Onya was center stage. She's a singer/songwriter who recently won Ireland's version of "American Idol", I think. She has an amazing voice.

I came in when she started singing an original song called "Pass the Bottle" that had the audience singing along. They played a few of those fun sing-a-longs. And I was just totally mesmerized by her.

Seeing as how her musical style was completely different from everything else at the festival, I went up and talked to them after the show to find out if they were heading to South By Southwest. No, but they were heading to Austin on Monday to play at Mother Egan's. Sweet!

From there, I caught the shuttle back to the hotel. On it were The Makem and Spain Brothers. I recorded a quick promo and chatted with them a little. Then back at the hotel, I joined several sessions until the wee hours of the morning. Yes, it was a marathon... sort of. But what a blast. My finger was sore from playing the bodhran too. The craic was hightened because I was able to try out a couple bodhrans, but Austin bodhran-maker, Rob Forkner. Now I'm aching to get a new bodhran. Man! Those drums sound good! One step at a time though.


Sunday at the North Texas Irish Festival
I think it was like 4am when I finally went to bed. I did NOT want to wake up Sunday morning. Doc is definitely a morning person, but I am not.

We joined a bunch of others to catch a shuttle to the festival before the gates opened. And I was pleasantly surprised to find that Brother was on the shuttle. I talked to Brother the day before about doing an interview with them before their first show. We had 20 minutes to drive. So I interviewed them on the bus, asked other riders if they had any questions for the band, and Angus video taped a part of the interview.

The interview was a high, but my exhaustion took it's toll after that. I caught a few minutes of Threadneedle Street. Their stage still had sound issues. Combined with the fact that I was fighting to stay awake from sleep deprivation, I decided to walk around. So I made my way over to see a few minutes of the Trinity River Whalers. I was anxious to see Brother again. So I did. But while I sat still much more on Sunday, I was still so wiped. I finally went to the Clan Gunn tent. Sat down for a moment, and within minutes, I was passed out.

I woke up thirty minutes later feeling MUCH refereshed. I caught a little bit of Michael William Harrison's show, fantastic, before heading over to catch The Makem and Spain Brothers.

That was pretty cool to see. I never really listened to Tommy Makem outside of a CD I have with him and The Clancy Brothers. But they all had a very similar style. Nice powerful vocals. I understand why those groups did so well. And they definitely have that Makem sense of humor. Great performers.

At five, I caught Paisley Close again and afterward headed over to the Austin lineup. Sarah Dinan and The Tea Merchants were playing the last two sets on the Star & Harp Pub Stage. Sarah had a new band and a whole new band lineup and consequently new songs. Her vocals were gorgeous as usual.

But the highlight for me was The Tea Merchants. I gotta say, NTIF made a big mistake putting them at such a poor time because they blew away many of the other trad bands I heard. They were amazing. Now to the festival's credit, I heard from a friend that The Tea Merchants were a last minute addition and filled the slot of another band. So a big Congrats to the Festival for booking them. Hopefully, next year they will realize that this is the #1 Irish music group in Texas and will give them better time slots!

I finished off the festival with Brother again, joining the throngs of dancers as Eileen Ivers joined them on stage and they just jammed on stage. It was one heck of a festival. I caught the shuttle with The Makems and Tea Merchants back to the hotel. I was about ready to drive home that, just feeling wiped from a long weekend. But Doc and Kimberly talked me into going downstairs for dinner. After that, I was ready to play music. The sessions started breaking out, so I joined them and a brilliant time before heading upstairs for a little quiet time and some sleep.

All in all, North Texas Irish Festival out did itself in 2006.

Buy CDs: North Texas Irish Festival 2006

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Marc Gunn is an Irish and Scottish folk singer with a strange affinity for Celtic ballads, drinking songs and cats. He is the lead singer for the Brobdingnagian Bards. He is also Celtic music podcaster and Irish music magazine publisher and promoter. Last but not least, he is poet, photographer and music business educator.

Labels: articles_2006

Posted by Marc Gunn, Tuesday, March 07, 2006.
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