Music on the Emerald Isle

This may sound strange, coming as it does from an American living in Europe, but I don’t get out much. For example, I do not drink in bars. I have liquor at home, and everyone there really does know my name. I don’t much go to restaurants because I can’t say that restaurant fare tastes any better than what I can rustle up at home. And I don’t go to the movies because I have Netflix and HBO.

The one thing Denise and I both love, and cannot get at home, is live music. That is why our first trip to Ireland was a little slice of heaven.

On Thanksgiving Day, 2014, Denise and Clarity and I were in Portrush, Northern Ireland. We asked our hotel deskman where we could find live music. He directed us to the Springhill Pub.

Luckily for us, local musicians gather at the Springhill every Thursday. We got there early enough to see musicians as they arrived, sometimes individually, and sometimes in pairs. One arrival was a family of two teens and their parents, each with a different instrument. New arrivals joined an expanding circle, unpacked their devices, and either immediately joined in or waited for the next song.

Once in a while someone would stand and sing, even if they were not in the musicians’ circle. Late in the evening an elderly man, and by that I mean a guy about my present age, entered the pub. He was thin and disheveled, and a little unsteady. He took just one step inside the door, just enough to let it close behind him, then looked back, like he wanted to be sure of his escape route. Apparently assured of his future exit, he turned to look at the gathering while putting his hat on the bar, just to his right. He adjusted his posture, trying to affect the pose of a more sober man.

Thinking he was about to make an announcement, I turned to Denise and said, “Oh, shit.” There was about to be a scene, one leading to the embarrassment of this tipsy vagrant and whomever he was about to address.

The man tilted his head just a little, and sang. Acapella at first, but various musicians found the tune and joined in. Elvis Presley could not have sounded better and, coming from me, that’s saying something. Then, not more than three seconds after the last note left his hairy throat, the man snatched his hat from the bar and stumbled out the door.

Between songs a musician said something to a man sitting in a booth. The musician’s target was a nice looking young man, clean cut, sitting with a young woman. Just a girl, really. She had Downs Syndrome. “Probably his sister,” I thought. The man, still sitting in the booth, began crooning a beautiful song about lost love.

I captured the event on my phone’s camera, albeit with some misgivings. It seemed like an invasion of privacy, even though we were in a bar – literally a “public house.” But the larger misgiving was that the task distracted me being fully present, fully committed to my absorption of this man’s gorgeous sorrow.

I’m attaching the video, even though it doesn’t approximate justice for the singer or the event. First, my phone had a very poor quality camera, and even worse microphone. Second, you probably are not on your third glass of Jameson, as was I.

We eventually left the bar, but not because I wanted to. My companions insisted that we had to get up early. We had a long drive ahead of us.

I do not recall where we planned to stay the next night, but I know the path took us through Galway. That is where we upended our plans for the sake of music.

Galway isn’t ashamed of being a tourist town. Shops, competing for the attentions of strangers on holiday, are painted prosperous bright colors. Many streets are reserved for pedestrians, and none of the walkers are headed for a business meeting. Everyone is happy to be exactly where they are.

We were on one of those pedestrian streets when we happened upon a band called the Galway Street Club (GSC). At that time, GSC included ten buskers, but apparently the number fluctuates as members are (or are not) available for a gig. Whereas the Springhill selections were mostly traditional Irish music, often with a sorrowful air, GSC tends toward popular (which is to say, “American”) music. It is happy music. It is toe-tapping dance music.

Not that I actually tapped my toes, much less danced. But as I stood there, feet firmly planted, arms crossed and back a little slouched, I thought, “Damn, I wish I wasn’t such a tightass!” That may sound like faint praise, but it’s not. Only very exceptional music inspires me, as did GSC, to almost move.

One time, years ago, I actually danced, with Denise. She recovered slowly, and thereafter never complained about my immobility in the face of rhythm.

Eventually the music stopped and whatever man had the microphone announced that they would be playing, that very evening, at a Galway bar. I suggested we immediately change our plans. We should find a Galway hotel and hear GSC play for however long they were willing to entertain us.

I did not have to insist. We all were of one mind.

The GSC players may not be great musicians. I bought one of their CDs. I couldn’t make myself listen to more than two or three boring songs. But when you see them live, my friends, they perform, and they do it with contagious enthusiasm. Maybe notes get misplaced here or there, and a sax or trumpet enters a little too soon or a mite too late, but if you worry about such imperfections you have missed the entire point of GSC’s art. You are like the guy who sees Michelangelo’s magnificent seventeen-foot-tall statue of David and wonders about the shepherd’s penis.

Okay, maybe that is not a great analogy. We ALL wonder about that, but I think you get my point.

I harken back to our 2014 trip because it explains my high expectations for our return to Ireland. After watching Nebraska play Northwestern in Dublin (Really!) Denise and I would travel by rail to Killarney, and then (also by train) to Cork. We couldn’t wait to hear what those towns had to offer.

I digress here to say that if you are traveling through Ireland do not — I repeat — do NOT rent a car. The roads are treacherously narrow and you will be legally obligated to drive on the wrong side of the road. Seriously. If you drive on the right side, as you have been trained to do since you were a teenager, a large truck will crash into your car and the police will blame YOU! You will be criminally charged with vehicular homicide (the truck having propelled your car into a bus filled with doomed orphans). You will spend the rest of your life in an Irish prison. Before long you will pick up the accent and say “tink” when you mean “think.”

Can you imagine going through life saying “tink”? That is what an American risks when renting a car in Ireland. Why take the chance?

Travel by rail. Sit back in comfortable seats as the train takes you through the gorgeous Irish countryside. The only drawback is that the stunning beauty seen outside your train windows may diminish your appreciation of the legendary Ring of Kerry.

Every year tens of thousands of people drive or ride the 111 miles that is the Ring of Kerry, seduced by tales of its breathtaking scenery. To be sure, the scenery is great, and I encourage everyone to take the tour, but (with a few notable exceptions) it is not significantly more gorgeous than every mile of Irish countryside we witnessed from the train.

One more digression, and then I will get back to the theme of this story, which is live music. Our tour bus (for the Ring of Kerry) made a scheduled stop at a small farm. There, for an additional six euros, we were treated to a demonstration of working sheep dogs (which were, I think, border collies, not sheepdogs). This was a thoroughly entertaining display that made me think less of every dog I have ever owned.

Okay, that’s not true. I still love my dogs, living and dead, but only because there is no logic behind a man’s fierce love for his best friend. However, if you were driven purely by logic you would return home from this demonstration with veils lifted from your eyes. You will have seen what a dog is capable of when it wants, really wants, to please its master. You would sell that freeloader staying at your house, eating your leftovers, and crapping in your yard.

Where were we? Ah, yes, our train was pulling into Killarney.

Killarney, like Galway, makes no bones about being a tourist town. It has an Old West vibe, not entirely unlike Steamboat Springs, Colorado. We stayed on the third floor of Jack Tatler, which (on the ground floor) is a sports bar named for a famous Irish Football player. The hotel/bar was highly rated, and deservedly so, if only for the very pleasant staff.

A poster in Jack Tatler advised that a band would be playing traditional Irish music. Score! Just stroll down the stairs and let the music waft over us like the sweet scent of lilacs on a warm spring day!

Only it didn’t work out like that. Although the Jack Tatler bar is only a little larger than an upper middle class living room, the musicians had their instruments plugged into amplifiers. Any instrument without a plug was in front of a microphone. The singer sang into a microphone. All this music, which I presume was well played, was channeled through a cheap amplifier and emitted from even cheaper speakers, and at a volume that would have been too loud in a room twenty times larger. It hurt to be there.

Killarney probably has a tavern where musicians play unamplified acoustic instruments. However, we did not find that bar. We walked up and down the streets, in and out of pubs. We found lots of live music, but always the musicians were in small rooms and inexplicably plugged into cheap electronics that distorted whatever sound they coaxed from their guitars.

Don’t get me wrong. Killarney is lovely. Jack Tatler is a nice place. We didn’t find the music we had hoped for, but the consolation prize was magnificent. Ride the train to Killarney and take a bus tour around the Ring of Kerry. Save time to ride a bike through the national park. Then catch the train to Cork, which is what we did.

Cork is a larger city, and more industrialized; which is to say, it is less touristy. We stayed in a nice hotel and quickly found a pub that claimed to be the largest whiskey bar in Ireland.

I have this photographic evidence of having visited the largest whiskey bar in all of Ireland. Denise says I had a good time there, and I am willing to take her word for it. Having little more memory of our stay in Cork I offer this clip from Irish comedian Tommy Tiernan: