Happy Saint Patrick's Day!

Thanks AM!

Trivia for non-Irish-music-devotees - St. Patrick's Day aside, Danny Boy is probably the one piece of music least likely to be performed in NYC's Irish pubs - which is where all the good seisiuns. My friend Am first introduced me to the Irish music & dance scene back in the early 90's, when we were both working at Carnegie Hall. Good story, that - my folks were still in England then, and on a trip to Ireland, they'd had picked up a book by the name of The Bodhran Makers. I'd read it during a visit, loved it, and when I saw it on a St. Patrick's Day display in a bookstore, I snapped it up. Had it sitting out on my desk one afternoon when Am walked past - she spotted, froze, pointed dramatically & said "Where did you get that?". I told her, and she said that if I liked the book, there was something we had to do as soon as possible. That something was a great seisiun that Brian Conway and Don Meade used to lead at Muldoon's, in midtown. Oddly enough - remember what I said about Irish music circles being very interconnected? - the only time I ever heard Danny Boy played at an Irish music event in NYC was actually at one of the concerts Don used to produce at the Blarney Star Pub on Murray Street. It was a guitar player that night, cripes the name escapes me but he was one of those guys who it's all you can do to keep from getting up to dance - anyways, some drunk lady shouts out from the back corner of the room "Can you play Danny Boy?". There was this silence. He got this funny look on his face like "huh...I wonder if I can?", and gamely launched into it - gave up after about the first verse or so & shook it off with a good driving set of reels.

More musical trivia -

Did you know that the musical saw can't be played when it's below freezing?