MOHAWK VALLEY IRISH CULTURAL

Volume 16, Issue 1 EVENTS NEWSLETTER Jan 2019 Burns Suppers

No, that’s not a summary of my cooking. Well, okay, maybe just a little. But the real “Burns Suppers” remember the life and genius of “Scotland greatest treasure,” poet Robert Burns. Burns was born on 25 January 1759, and since not long after his death on 21 July 1796, Burns enthusiasts around the world have been holding celebratory dinners each year on or around his birth date. Burns suppers may be formal or informal. Both typically include haggis (a traditional Scottish dish celebrated by Burns in Address to a Haggis), Scotch whisky, and the recitation of Burns’ poetry.

Two such events are being held in the (fairly) local area. First, Cazenovia’s Brae Loch Inn holds their annual Robert Burns Weekend from January 25-27, with the Weekend Kickoff on Friday from 7 PM to 2 AM, featuring complimentary hors d’oeuvres, scotch tasting and music by Tumbleweed Gumbo. Saturday will feature a formal seven-course meal to include Cock O Leekie Soup, Finnan Haddie (smoked haddock), Steak & Kidney Pie, Salad, Haggis, sliced tenderloin & house smoked Salmon, with vegetables and Neeps & Tatties (rutabagas and mashed potatoes – oh, and be more careful than I was typing that into a search engine!) and Sticky Toffee Pudding, beginning at 7 PM; cocktail hour begins at 6 PM. Entertainment will be provided throughout the night by The Grey Barr Memorial Pipe Band, Bells & Motley, Irish Step Dancing, Highland Dancing and Singing Poetry. The cost is $70. Finally, on Sunday, make plans to enjoy their Celtic Hangover Brunch (11 AM to 2 PM), with Scotch Eggs, Finnan Haddie, Shepard’s Pie, and music by 10 Strings. For more info, click here.

Meanwhile, Albany’s Capital District Celtic Cultural Association will be holding its annual Burns Dinner on Saturday, Jan. 26, 2019. Doors open at 5:30 PM, with drinks, pipers and a set of music from the Brigadoons. From there, the obligatory reading of “Address to the Haggis,” followed by dinner, performances by pipers, Highland Dancers, dessert and coffee, and another set by the Brigadoons. Tickets – which last year sold out in early January -- are $50 per person and $450 for a table of 10 (click here for tickets). For more information, call (518) 250-5719. Celtic Hall is located at 430 New Karner Rd, Albany.

2019 St. Patrick’s Day Parade Accepting Nominations for Grand Marshal

The Great American Irish Festival is seeking nominations for the Grand Marshal of the 2019 St. Patrick’s Day Parade. The nominee, male or female, need not be of Irish descent, but should be someone recognized by the community for his/her commitment and contributions to the Irish in the Central New York area. The letter of nomination should include the individual’s background and a list of qualifications as to why he or she would be the proper choice to receive the shillelagh from the 2018 Grand Marshal, Judy Weeks. In addition to leading the St. Patrick’s Day parade, the Parade Grand Marshal also serves as honorary chairperson of the 2019 Great American Irish Festival, slated for 26-28 July, at the Herkimer County Fairgrounds in Frankfort, NY.

Nominations can be submitted online or by mail to Great American Irish Festival, Attn: David Wood, 623 Columbia Street, Utica, NY, 13502. Nominations are due by January 6, 2019.

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Halfway to GAIF Hooley Set for January 25th

The annual Halfway to the Great American Irish Festival Hooley will be held on Friday, January 25th, 2019 from 6 to 10 PM at the Saranac Brewery (830 Varick St., Utica). Since its inception in 2006, the very popular party has provided a much- needed respite from the winter doldrums, with great music, food and drink, and a chance to see what hundreds of GAIF volunteers look like in their winter clothes. The Hooley is the festival’s way of saying “thank you” to the hundreds of tireless volunteers who helped make the Great American Irish Festival the fastest growing Irish festival in the land, and has become the forum for presenting the performance lineup for the upcoming festival, as well as the announcement of the board’s selection for the Utica St. Patrick’s Day Parade Grand Marshal.

The event includes food, beer specials (cash bar), 50/50 and basket raffles, and the best craic in town. Entertainment will be provided by The Stoutmen. Tickets are just $15 each and can be purchased at the door.

There’s a Brewing!

On Thursday, January 24th, the genre-bending Gaelic Storm makes a return to the area with a very special 8 PM show at the historic Smith Opera House in Geneva. With a career that began as a pub band, through their appearance as a Third Class party band (“third class” is a location, not a rating!) and now to the present, they’ve topped the Billboard World Chart six times and regularly headline the largest Irish Festivals across the country. While Gaelic Storm plays Celtic music that hearkens back to the traditional music of Ireland, they are hardly traditionalists, adding modern sounds and drawing influences from American rock and pop as well as music styles from around the world (my favorite quote describes them as “…nicely out of sync with the norm”).

This show supports their latest CD, “Go Climb a Tree,” which features Patrick Murphy and at their song-writing best, gluing all the tracks together with the spark and spirit of a band that’s spent over 20 years on the road.

Tickets for the show range from $22 to $32, and are available in person at the box office, or by calling (315) 781- 5483, or by going on-line. The Smith Opera House is located at 82 Seneca St. in Geneva, NY.

Enter the Haggis Returns to the Egg

Toronto’s Enter the Haggis helps kick off the new year in style, with a return trip to the Egg on January 4th. Since their beginnings as a Canadian bar band over 20 years ago, ETH has led the charge among Celtic folk/roots/rock bands, delighting fans with their memorable performances, inspired songwriting, musical proficiency and high- quality recordings, including 4 EPs, 9 studio albums, five live and one compilation CDs, as well as two solo side projects. In addition to playing their fan favorite signature tunes, they’ll be performing cuts off their latest CD, “Broken Arms,” as well as a new CD, due for an early 2019 release.

Opening the 8 PM show is the band Skerryvore… and you heard it here first: watch out for this band! Twice winners of Scotland’s Traditional Music “Live Act of the Year” Award (2016 & 2011), this 8-piece band has been on a meteoric rise in the past year with their unique fusion of Celtic, folk, trad, rock and Americana sounds.

Tickets for the show are $34, and are available on-line.

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th 7 Annual Falling Waters Music Camp (stolen from their web site with 75% reverence and 25% laziness)

Join us for the 7th annual Falling Waters Music Camp on January 11 - 13, 2019 - a fun and inspiring weekend of instruction, jamming and performance located at the beautiful La Tourelle resort in Ithaca, NY. Classes and performances will be led by a great group of instructor-performers. Falling Waters faculty for 2019 include fiddlers Winifred Horan (Irish), Shane Cook (Ontario, Bluegrass & Swing), Judy Hyman (Old Time), Rosie Newton (Old Time), Tim Ball (Irish, Contra, Technique) and Rick Manning (Bluegrass & Swing); bassist Ethan Jodziewicz, mandolinists Joe Walsh (Bluegrass & All Styles), David Surette (Celtic & Contradance) & Rick Manning (Bluegrass); Guitarists Grant Gordy (Bluegrass & Swing), Kyle Waymouth (Ontario & Celtic), David Surette (Celtic & Contradance), Joe Crookston (Folk) & Susie Burke (Folk) & Tim Ball (Celtic & Contradance); Banjoists Adam Hurt (Old Time), Ben Krakauer (Bluegrass), Richie Stearns (Old Time) and Aaron Lipp (Old Time) and Paul Fairbanks (Bluegrass & Theory); vocalists Susie Burke (Folk and Technique), Dave Davies (improv, bass harmony, swing band), and Joe Crookston (Folk).

Instruction will be offered on fiddle, guitar, mandolin, banjo, bass, singing, band, and rhythm & dance at advanced beginner, intermediate and advanced levels in a variety of styles that include Irish, old-time, bluegrass, swing, contradance, and folk. Jamming is a fun and important part of the weekend – some impromptu throughout the day and night along with many structured jam sessions to cater to your stylistic interest and experience level.

For more information, contact Rick Manning, Camp Director, at [email protected], or call (607) 592- 4647. Ticket information is available here.

Speak for Yourself – contributed by Tomás Maol O'Meallaigh (Tom Malley)

So you’re planning a trip to Ireland and you want to show how friendly we Americans are by saying “hello” to the first person you meet, in his/her own native language? Don’t bother: There is no Irish equivalent of “hello.”

The usual greeting is “Go mbeannai Dia duit,” pronounced “guh manny jee-uh ditch,” which means “The blessing of God on you.” Most of the time it is shortened to “Dia duit.” The Irish always have to go one better, so the usual response is “Dia is Muire duit” (“the blessing of God and Mary on you”).

You can cut it off there, or you could try “How are you?”

There are three dialects in Irish, and each has its own way of saying “How are you?” The most common is Connaght (the West), which is “Conas ta tu?” (pronounced “con-us taw tu”). In Ulster, it would be “Goide mar ata tu?” (“Gwi-jay mar a-taw tu”). And in Munster, you’d say “Cen chaoi a bhfuil tu?” (pronounced as “cane chee uh will tu; with the “ch” in “chee” pronounced like the “ch” in German “ach”).

Old Songs Brings in Scottish Duo

On January 18th, the Old Songs Concert Series will host Scottish musicians Kevin Henderson and Neil Pearlman; a new collaboration that is bound to set stages alight in their first US tour this January. Uniting two standout voices in contemporary Scottish music, the talented duo of Kevin Henderson (fiddle) and Neil Pearlman (piano) are known for their high-energy, joyful and fresh approach to the tradition.

A standard bearer for the rich fiddling tradition of the Shetland Islands, Kevin Henderson has been in the vanguard of the Scottish traditional music scene for decades as a member Fiddlers’ Bid, Boys of the Lough, Session A9 and Nordic Fiddlers Bloc. Neil Pearlman is recognized across the Celtic world for his unique approach to piano accompaniment, rooted in Cape Breton and Scottish traditions with a heavy dose of personal innovation.

Tickets for the 7:30 PM show (available here) are $25 for adults, $12 for youths aged 13–18, and children 12 and under are $5. Old Songs is located at 37 South Main St. in Voorheesville, NY.

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“The Lost Sister”-- Book Review by Mark Sisti

“You’re a man with conscience and a code and all that other bollocks, but you’re also a man who drags his own disaster around with him like a wrecking ball.” That description can practically be a blueprint on how to create a protagonist in noir mysteries. It fits them all – Sam Spade, Mike Hammer, Lew Archer, Jack Taylor, Dave Robicheaux, Charlie Parker, take your pick – but in this case, it’s a character in Scottish author Russel MacLean’s “The Lost Sister,” describing anti-hero, ex-cop, current PI, J. McNee. McNee is still on a slow rebound after having lost his fiancée to a car crash and his job as a police officer due to a mental breakdown that fractured his supervisor’s nose and – not coincidentally – his career. He’s actually getting his life on track as a private investigator when he gets a call from a reporter friend asking him to look into the disappearance of a Dundee schoolgirl, Mary Furst. Seems like a simple enough request, until McNee discovers that the missing girl’s godfather is McNee’s old nemesis, David Burns, on the surface a prominent businessman, but in reality a brutally violent crime boss who had been responsible for shooting McNee’s assistant. Burns’ connection makes McNee want to walk away from the case, but at the same time, makes him more compelled to pursue it, despite admonitions from the few friends he has left in the police department to stay out of it. Things take an interesting – and dangerous – turn with the appearance of a mysterious character called Wickes, who claims to be a Private Investigator from Glasgow with a personal connection to the case. He wants McNee’s local expertise, and in return offers information the police don’t have: he tells McNee the story of Mary’s birth mother, Deborah, who gave the girl up through a surrogacy arrangement. Something about Wickes doesn’t ring true to McNee. He soon discovers Wickes has a violent side and may not be telling the truth, and he has to determine whether Deborah or Wickes is the real dangerous psychopath. Or both. And he needs to do it without getting himself or anyone else killed. To be honest, this novel, while satisfying and enjoyable, doesn’t quite hold up to “The Good Son,” MacLean’s debut. The plot has some glaring holes in it that reduce its effectiveness. For one thing, when (spoiler alert) McNee finally manages to track down the girl, it really wasn’t all that difficult a feat, and it’s impossible to believe that neither the police nor her other pursuers could follow the same obvious trail as did McNee. In addition, the girl is almost a non- existent entity, even after we meet her, making the story another example of Hamlet without Hamlet. I suspect this is deliberate, but it makes it difficult to care what happens to her. Finally, MacLean is a little too reliant on flashback narratives to fill in some gaps, which takes away from the immediacy of the story. On the other hand, the writing itself is more smooth and assured than in MacLean’s debut; understandable, since that was, after all – well – a debut. While the pacing isn’t quite as brisk as “The Good Son” it still moves at a pretty steady clip, and the Bruen-like staccato sentence fragments contribute to the tension. McNee’s character is a little more fleshed out this time around, crystallizing his motivation a little better. In the first book, while his fiancée’s death pushed him over the edge, it also is made clear that his problems pre-dated the accident that took her life. We are told a little more of what contributed to his psychological issues, although not a lot; something needs to be left for revealing the next time around. McNee is forever battling internal demons that threaten to resurface: he is on a constant emotional razor’s edge, whether fighting his desire to mete out revenge, struggling with his obsessive – but self-destructive – need to right wrongs, or trying to hold himself to an unrealistic standard of personal conduct. As any devotee of this genre is aware, the setting is as much a character as any person in these books. Chandler’s Los Angeles, Bruen’s Galway, Parker’s Boston – these stories wouldn’t be the same anywhere else. The setting of Dundee, a smaller industrial city, rundown but in the process of reinventing itself, is used to similar effect, creating a dark mood without resorting to intrusive physical description, while reflecting McNee’s inner state. All in all, despite its few unobtrusive flaws, “The Lost Sister” is a worthy follow-up to McNee’s promising debut, a smart and exciting crime novel with an interesting setting and a gradually developing protagonist. One with conscience and a code and all that other bollocks.

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RANDOM RAMBLINGS

“Nuacht as Craobh Dugan” ---news from the Dugan Branch Chris Hoke writes: “Performances this month include: 1 - NO SESSION, NAIL CREEK PUB IS CLOSED; Jan 4 - Ceili Dance Class, Seton Center, 7 PM; Jan 11 - Ceili dance Class, Seton Center, 7 PM; Jan 15 - Open Session, Stockdale’s, 7:30 PM; Jan 18 - Ceili Dance Class, Seton Center, 7 PM; Jan 19 - CRAOBH DUGAN ANNUAL APPRECIATION DINNER @ Holland Patent Legion, 1 PM - 5 PM; Jan 25 - Ceili Dance Class, Seton Center, 7 PM.”

Craobh Dugan Annual Appreciation Dinner Craobh Dugan’s Annual Appreciation Dinner will be held on Saturday, January 19th from 1:00-5:00 at the Holland Patent American Legion on Depot Street in Holland Patent. This is our annual tribute to our membership, in thanks for all that you do throughout the year for our branch. Chris Hoke invites you to come, relax, enjoy a great buffet meal, try your luck at the 50/50 raffle or to win a door prizes, play some tunes, and just spend time with the folks from Craobh Dugan. There is NO CHARGE for paid members of Craobh Dugan; guests and non-member friends are $20 each. Feel free to bring family or friends--this is a great way for people to get to know us and learn what the group does. The schedule of events will be 1:00-2:30 Social Time; 2:30-3:30 Dinner; 3:30-5:00 Music, Dancing and Social Time. Please plan to come and PLEASE RSVP by Friday January 11th to Chris via telephone at (315) 827-4291 or email her at [email protected]. Says Chris: “I hope to see everyone at the HP Legion on the 19th! It is always a great afternoon of friends, food and music!”

Celtic Club Calendar Finally, here’s the Irish Musical and Cultural calendar for January:

Jan 4 Enter the Haggis/Skerryvore The Egg Albany 7:30 PM $34 Jan 6 Traditional Irish Session McCarthy's Irish Pub Cazenovia 4 PM Free Jan 6 Blarney Rebel Band Coleman’s Irish Pub Syracuse 4-7 PM Free Jan 11-13 Falling Waters Music Camp La Tourelle Ithaca All weekend Varies Jan 12 Traditional Irish Session Kitty Hoynes Pub Syracuse 2-5 PM Free Jan 12 Kevin McKrell The Parting Glass Saratoga Springs 8 PM $5 Jan 13 The Stoutmen Coleman’s Irish Pub Syracuse 4-7 PM Free Jan 15 Traditional Irish Session Stockdale’s Oriskany 7:30 PM Free Jan 18 Kevin Henderson & Neil Perlman Old Songs series Voorheesville, NY 7:30 PM $25; $12 youth Jan 19 Syracuse Irish Session Funk’n Waffles Syracuse 2-5 Free Jan 19 Hair of the Dog The Parting Glass Saratoga Springs 8 PM $13 Jan 20 Traditional Irish Session Irish Amer Ass’n Albany 2:30-6 PM Free Jan 20 Donal O’Shaughnessey Coleman’s Irish Pub Syracuse 4-7 PM Free Jan 24 Gaelic Storm Smith Opera House Geneva 8 PM $22-$32 Jan 25 Halfway to GAIF Hooley Saranac Brewery Utica 6-10 PM $15 Jan 25-27 Burns Weekend Brae Loch Inn Cazenovia Varies Varies Jan 26 Traditional Irish Session Kitty Hoynes Pub Syracuse 2-5 PM Free Jan 26 Hair of the Dog The Parting Glass Saratoga Springs 8 PM $13 Jan 26 Burns Supper Celtic Hall Albany 6 PM $50 Jan 27 Blarney Rebel Band Celtic Harp Utica 1-5 PM Free Jan 27 Flyin’ Column Coleman’s Irish Pub Syracuse 4-7 PM Free

If you have anything you want to share with us, feel free to send it to us ([email protected] or [email protected]), and we’ll be happy to include it. As always, while we strive for accuracy, it wouldn’t be fair if we were funny, good-looking, tall AND accurate. It always makes sense to call ahead to confirm some of these further-out trips.

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