Gaelic Storm at the Cleveland House of Blues - March 11th, 2010


The day started out quite happily – I went to breakfast to find that the cafeteria was serving French toast, cream of wheat, and scrambled eggs that were neither dry nor soggy. Plus Richard was there to take up my tray for me so that Creeper didn’t try to flirt with me. Also, it was nearly 60 degrees outside and the sun was happy and sociable. Things were looking up for me.
Also important to mention, while we're talking about how my day went, is my riding class. My body was extra sore from Tuesday’s ride, but the weather was beautiful and warm and I was optimistic after my experience with Spot the class before. I have discovered the sometimes scary but usually rewarding tactic of trusting my body to know what it’s doing before my brain has a chance to tell me that I can’t do something. This is mostly true with my new foray into experiencing the canter. Bud says canter, you don’t think about it. You just do it. The first time it was quite freaky – I had never cantered Spot before, and he felt different from Oskar, and right before I slowed down I almost lost my balance around a turn. Second time, once I got my bearings, and the third (to fix the second where I messed up the dressage test we were working on) were largely non-scary, and I think I “WHOOOOOOO”d at least once. Walking on the moon with Spot (that's a reference to "Walk on the Moon" by Great Big Sea. Look it up on YouTube if you don't know of it yet).
But all that is pre-concert woo-ness. Onward to Gaelic Storm!!!

It took me roughly 10 minutes to travel the half a mile or so down E 9th Street between the Rt 2 exit and Prospect Ave, due to the customary aggravation of people who park their cars in traffic lanes. Extremely aggravating. Talked with Dad and Kevin each in turn – and each tried to call me while I was on the phone with the other. I’m just popular like that. Also, I received a text from Dad exclaiming that he had seen Steve Twigger in the street. He was thrilled, but said that there was no conversation, as Steve had appeared to be in a hurry.
In the restaurant, Kevin was astonishingly patient with my bouncy, adrenaline-fueled pushiness as time slowly ticked by in the restaurant. I can think of half a dozen people that would have tried to strangle me, but he instead took the opportunity to laugh at me and tease me relentlessly. Dad was mostly quiet, as usual, and Kevin told me that he had procured some gently used, “indoor-friendly” pipes for a good price. He suggested that I bring my bodhrán to the next family get-together so that we can jam. That is super-exciting for me. Finally, a traditional instrument that Diane will permit indoors and can accompany me! Or rather, I can accompany it.
Kevin got a jambalaya dish that was delicious but very spicy, and a Blue Moon and a Newcastle to wash away the spice. Dad got a burger that he ended up eating with a fork because it was too big for his mouth. I ordered teriyaki salmon, which sounded delicious. And it was, only I was unprepared for the questions imposed by our waitress. I have ordered fish in restaurants dozens of times, but never before had the server ask me how I wanted it cooked. I expressed confusion, to which she explained that people order salmon the way they order steak – rare to well-done. I required further explanation, and she asked me if I liked it pink in the middle. I naively pointed out that salmon is always pink in the middle. It’s SALMON. (Kevin feigned a bop on my head at that point, but I was genuinely perplexed.) Apparently, most people order theirs medium well. I told her to just have them cook it to the middle of the spectrum.
As I said, the flavor was absolutely delicious; it could be a real contender with Famous Dave’s grilled salmon (except that grilled salmon is the same price for a heck of a lot more food). The middle was softer than I would have preferred, and it made me a little nervous to eat it, but I figured that they wouldn’t serve it to me if it had the potential to kill me. I suffered no stomach pain, diarrhea, nausea, vomiting or gas, so I assume I didn’t get food poisoning.
What did bother me was the “vegetables”. When I see “vegetables” on a menu with no other indicator of vegetable species, I, like most people, assumed the natural cast would be present – carrots, broccoli, peas, etc. What came to my table were these ugly little mutated cabbage halves – brussel sprouts – that were barely cooked. I don’t really like beans, and I hate asparagus, so you can imagine my dismay. Nobody had warned me that there would be brussel sprouts.
I probably should have said something, and gotten some decent herbage to eat, but I instead foisted as many as I could off on Dad and Kevin, which wasn’t much.
Also, I think Dad was eyeing me warily as I perused the alcoholic beverage menu. I wanted to try the “Electric Lemonade”, but ultimately decided that alcohol is expensive and I didn’t really need it.
When we got into the House, after a brief wait in line wherein I introduced Dad to “Raised on Black and Tans”, the new GS download from their forthcoming album, he and Kevin scoped out a couple of barstools halfway back from the stage. Watching them wander about, trying out various angles, I was reminded of Sheldon Cooper determinedly scouring Penny’s apartment for an acceptable place to sit where the sunlight, ambient temperature, airflow, feng shui, and proximity to the television, other guests, windows, kitchen and exits were sufficient, and where the texture, cushion density, size and pattern of the furniture was adequate. Not that they were that finicky or anything. It just crossed my mind.
So since I was standing by myself, sort of second-row, I amused myself by texting Kevin. It did not take long for me to get sore from all the standing. Jeez, I’m getting old. The soreness did not hit my knees this time, but it did make itself heard in my back, shoulders, feet and, interestingly, my calves, which begged me to stretch them although I had no room to do it.
The guy waiting in the crowd behind me, whom I will refer to as “Polite Warning Guy”, apologized ahead of time for the possibility that the girls behind him would shove him into me once the band took the stage. I looked behind him and saw a mass of potential ugliness (several barely-post-pubescent girls jostling one another) and figured that it couldn’t be worse than last year – being shoved at by drunken girls that were dropping f-bombs like cookie crumbs and threatening to spill their beer on me.
I noticed about halfway through my wait that the people in front of me were the same trio that Dad and I waited with in line last year. I recognized the dad and his daughter first – the other guy (GBS-Mash-Man? Remember him?) looked like he’d lost weight and had a haircut that definitely suits him better than the one he had.
There was a girl sort of behind me and sort of next to me that was talking to Polite Warning Guy about the band. He asked where they were from, and she told him that they were all from Ireland except for Peter (???). I sort of wonder where the heck she gets her information from, since Patrick is the only band member, past and present, who is from Ireland. I almost turned around to correct her, and though he probably would have been grateful for the info, I felt like I would have been intruding in the conversation. But for the record, for those who are interested, The geographical diversity represented by Gaelic Storm is as follows:

Patrick: County Cork, Ireland
Steve T: Coventry, England
Pete: Ottawa, Canada
Ryan: Somewhere, New Jersey
Jesse: Suffolk, England
Previous band members:
Steve W: Olean, New York
Shep: London, England
Kathleen: Chicago, Illinois
Ellery: Cincinnati, Ohio
Samantha: Zambia, Africa
Tom: Ottawa, Canada

So… yeah. Definitely only one guy from Ireland in there.
Also, I heard Polite Warning Guy tell Confused Fangirl that he was only in town from Pittsburgh on business, on a week that just happened to coincide with the week that Gaelic Storm would be in town (he’d only seen them once before, 6 years back). An extremely lucky break for him.
There was also a significant amount of Peter-obsessing going on on either side of me, which was at times both amusing and irritating. The loud ones were obnoxious, although I could appreciate them rooting for him during an especially rollicking pipe solo.
As so often happens with opening acts at the House of Blues, I feel that the night’s openers got the short end of somebody’s stick. Fans at the House of Blues do not want to see opening acts. Fans at the House of Blues are sick of standing around. Their feet hurt from standing around so much. Their knees and backs hurt. They are sick of hearing the barely-post-pubescent drunkards around them shove one another around while they talk loudly and at length about what Joey did to Sophia on Jackie’s birthday after Dennis was found in Andrew’s bed. The air inside the venue is extremely dry, which causes them to become thirsty, and they do not wish to spend an absurd amount of money on water when the restaurant 100 feet away serves it for free, and in any case the only water that they give you in the venue is Dasani water, which tastes like it came from the ear canal of a large African ungulate. In most cases, they would rather chew on a live ferret than stand around longer than necessary while waiting for the band they paid to see to come out.
This wasn’t supposed to be a long rambling rant about the aggravation caused by the way things are done at the House of Blues, or about opening acts, and certainly not about this specific opening act. Perhaps I simply wanted to get that off my chest.
Onward.
I would definitely classify Oakhurst as bluegrass, although the band’s guitarist insisted that they were not bluegrass, really. After all, they had a drummer.
I need to say, call me crazy, that their guitarist/lead singer, “A.P.”, reminded me heavily of Captain Jonathon Archer of Star Trek fame. I cannot find pictures online to support this fanciful notion of mine, but perhaps I have some in my pictures from the show…
They did 8 or 9 songs. Unfortunately, their microphones were inadequately amplified and could barely be heard. They were okay, and I imagine Dad probably enjoyed them quite a bit, although I didn’t think to ask him afterward. I think I’m more entertained by artists that switch up their instruments during a show. Great Big Sea has spoiled me in that way.
Gaelic Storm set list!:

Beggarman
Johnny Jump Up
Bare in the Basin
Piña Colada in a Pint Glass
Death Ride to Durango
Me & the Moon
The Night I Punched Russell Crowe
Samurai Set
LOVER’S WRECK!!!!!
Raised on Black and Tans
Instrumental That I Didn’t Recognize
Johnny Tarr
Darcy’s Donkey (in the key of “spoon”)
Here Comes Chucky Tim
Floating the Flambeau
Slim Jim and the Seven Eleven Girl
Courtin’ in the Kitchen
What’s the Rumpus?
Kiss Me, I’m Irish

It seemed that there wasn’t quite as much onstage banter as there was last year.
In addition to being performed in the always delightful key of spoon (contains, according to Patrick, the only known spoon solo intro in music history), we were instructed to do the “Donkey Dance” during the instrumental section of “Darcy’s Donkey”. Patrick threatened that if he saw someone not doing it, he would point that person out to everyone, and he or she would subsequently be laughed at. I won’t describe the dance here, but suffice it to say that when the song was over Pat made sure to let all of us know how stupid we looked doing it, but that he was impressed because we were the first city to do it voluntarily. Also, apparently Pittsburgh could not get the hang of it. This may or may not be true, but we went with it anyway. I turned around to give Polite Warning Guy a Significant Look, and saw him laughing.
Patrick announced about four songs in that they would not be singing “Johnny Tarr” that evening, stating that after you’ve played every single day for the past 200 years like he has, you start to get sick of it. Steve replied, “Why would we do THAT song, anyway?” Cheeky devil. This was of course met with profound unhappiness, and Pat took a moment to muse about the traditionally fleeting nature of fandom. They did play it, of course, as you can see from my set list, but they did not do any other artist’s version of the song (Kenny Chesney, Nora Jones, Michael Jackson, Lynrd Skynrd, Snoop Dog, etc). Sadness.
I was thrilled to hear the opening chords of “Lover’s Wreck” (as you may have guessed by its exclaimed and capitalized status in my set list), but I was ultimately disappointed with the performance. It was good, but it was not better than good. The album version is very rough-sounding and powerful, and I didn’t feel like the percussion was given enough rein in the live performance. Also, two of the things I love about the song were sacrificed – the way the beat and counter-beat seem to flip back and forth within the chorus, which is one of the things that makes it so fun to play on the bodhrán, and the powerful madness of the third verse.
One of the most interesting parts of the show was the percussion solo stuck in the middle of the “Floating the Flambeau” set. I got a video of the song from about halfway through the percussion section, which featured Patrick and Steve on bodhráns and Ryan on the cajon. I can’t promise that it will be uploaded, as I’ve made that promise on a few occasions in the past only to find that things come up to stop me, or the upload fails for whatever reason. I shall attempt it. That is all I can say.
The dueling instruments character of the Samurai Set was made extra entertaining by the addition of a burly stage hand, who was fetched by Jessie, and later by Peter, to aid them each in disposing of the other so that the spotlight they felt their respective instruments deserved could be basked in.
I was right in the middle of the audience for “Me & the Moon”, but I appeared to be slightly Stage Patrick, so I took his side in the shout-off for the first time in the 4 times that I’ve seen them live. We won the match, but only by Patrick’s vote. I didn’t notice any great disparity in the volumes of the two sides.
I tried calling Mom when the song started, as I’d warned her I would, but she didn’t pick up. I ended up recording a snippet of the song on my phone and sending it to her, but I got no response. I did get a rather nice shot of the audience in the video, though.
“Here Comes Chucky Tim”, which will be on the new album, is a tribute to a man the band met at the Dublin Irish Festival last year. I cannot tell you the details because I can’t recall them, nor can I find any substantial reference to him in a Google-aided search.
I took a video of “Slim Jim and the Seven Eleven Girl”, for whatever reason (it came right after the stellar “Flambeau” set), and at one point attempted to get a shot of the audience. Steve decided that that moment would be a perfect one to wander to the edge of the stage and smile brilliantly in a camera-stealing kind of way, hoping to thrill me by personally acknowledging my video and actively participating in it. I was thrilled, indeed, but unfortunately after I swung my camera back around to him, he didn’t stay put long enough for the camera to refocus on his face. Simultaneous Yay and Grrrr.
I usually notice the sad state the floor is in after a show at the House of Blues, because it is necessary to scour the floor for potentially dropped items and to watch where one is going. The floor was absolutely saturated with spilled beer, and as I was making my way back to Dad (Kevin had had to skip out instantaneously after the curtain closed), I saw a girl who was complaining that someone had spilled beer in her hair. I guess I’d gotten lucky.
It took me forever to pick a shirt at the swag table, but I ultimately chose a brown shirt that had a slightly vintage look to it. http://gaelicstorm.s3.amazonaws.com/large2_1234.jpg
Dad got another brown one with a donkey in a pint glass and the phrase “EVERYBODY RAISE A GLASS TO DARCY’S ASS”. http://gaelicstorm.s3.amazonaws.com/large_1237.jpg

Kevin called me as we were making our way to the parking garage to let me know that he’d seen a license plate on Rt 71 that read “GR8BIGC”. This tickled me, but also saddened me, because it was an Ohio car. I wanted that vanity plate!!
As Gaelic Storm had officially declared Flannery’s to be the “Pub of the Month” on their website, I perhaps should have at least tried to get in to see the band there for the after party, but I knew that they place would be impossible to navigate. In retrospect I’m a little sorry that I didn’t try, but I probably would have gotten social phobic and nervous and unable to move around very well. Oh, well. Perhaps I will have more of a spine, and more desire and gumption, next year.

“In my sleeping mind she sings a sad and lonely lullaby
And when I wake, there’s just the ache that’ll haunt me till I die
When those winds of vanity no longer blow her west
I pray they’ll guide her home and put my heart to rest
A press-gang filled this Man-o-War, to make the black-mouthed cannon roar
Now all my trade is ball and blade and blood forever more
The sting of salt and spray, the oceans howl and squall
A stumbling wreck, I roam the deck at the Devil’s beck and call”
~ “Lover’s Wreck”