òran mór

One of the great things about the Seacoast is the frequency and the variety of community events. Next weekend marks one of the annual favorites, Portsmouth’s Pocket Garden Tour, and we’ll be performing as part of the festivities.

An example of the Portsmouth gardens...the garden at Martin Hill Inn

Many of the antique colonial homes in the Port City’s historic South End have small, hidden, but elegantly designed gardens. Once a year, the homeowners and proud gardeners open the gates and welcome the public to enjoy their gardens. Along the way, some of the featured gardens have music, and we’ll be joining in the fun this year.

Dave and I will be playing from 9 a.m. til noon on Saturday, June 18 at the Strawbery Banke Gardens at 14 Hancock St. We hope you’ll come out to enjoy the day and swing by for a little music as well.

Our nicest stage yet...Strawbery Banke Gardens

Well… quite a party it was!   Reagh Greeneaf’s last appearance (for a while) with the Tom Lanigan Band at RiRa in Portsmouth raised the roof last night.

Many good friends stopped by to have a pint and a few laughs with Reagh and to give him the Wednesday night part of his Earth Walk sendoff. 

Some of us got pulled up on the stage for various songs and shenanigans

As you probably know, Reagh’s  Earth Walk across the US, to raise environmental awareness and promote ecological sustainability, will start this Sunday, May 1st at 9:30 at the Seacoast Science Center at Odiorne Point, Rye.

Many of us will join him again there for the ‘real’ sendoff.    Learn more about Reagh’s trip at his website.

For now, the memory of last night’s fun will ring on for a good while….

Way back in 2008, when we started this little website, Dave and I talked wanting to have info both about our band and, more importantly, the Irish music happenings around the Seacoast. Our first post, in fact, was a video of our good friend Chris Vaughan singing one of the first songs he wrote, called Freedom, at Molly Malones where he was a bartender.

Jim Prendergast and Chris Vaughn, um, working...

Time has passed. Molly’s closed and became McMenemy’s. Then McMenemy’s closed.

But Chris Vaughan motored on. He kept writing songs, bringing them to the different sessions (particularly Friday nights at The Press Room), working with local musicians to polish his material. And now, at long last, he’s putting the finishing touches on a CD of his original songs, working with both Dave and our friend Jim Prendergast at Mill Pond Music Studio. But one thing was missing…until last night.

Freedom.

Friends in music, friends for life

To cap-off his CD project, Chris asked many of The Press Room session regulars to join him at Jim’s studio. So a large group of friends — including Emery Hutchins, Bob Frost, Alan Eaton, Gail McCarthy, Ramona Connelly, Bruce MacIntyre, Steve Carrigan, Dave and I — piled into Jim’s live room for some laughs and music. The live room sounded great and in two takes we got a terrific, very natural version of Chris singing with us backing.

Chris was extremely grateful for the help, and we were equally honored to be included in creating this fitting finale to his CD. Watching each other grow as musicians and artists — and encouraging and collaborating with each other along the way — are the great joys of our little musically community. Last night’s recording session was a great reminder that “this is the good stuff.”

It reminds me of a phrase Eamon Coyne once said to me: “A friend in music is a friend for life.” Just so.

Congrats to Chris on getting his songs recorded and ready to share with the world.

Emery having a laugh

Great Bay Sailor, reporting for duty

A lovely smile, indeed

After our afternoon in Portsmouth at the RiRa Pub, we made the short trip out to Newcastle Island for an evening at the Wentworth by the Sea Country Club. 

We setup in a nice spot looking out over the water and enjoyed a warm reception at the dinner and party.  This group liked to sing – and sing they did!   A few tables were especially ‘roudy’ (in a country club way) and they had us ripping through our songbook backwards and forwards.

One particular party-goer, John, had some special background in the music, and spurred us on to do a few songs on the outskirts  of our repertoire.  Turnabout being fair play, we finally got him up to lead a song or two.

All in all,  we had a blast.  We’re happy to have next year’s party already penciled in – looking forward to the prospect of doing it all again.

Song list and back cover for our recording debut

That’s right kids … we have an early shipment of our upcoming CD in hand and we’ll have them available for the gig tomorrow at Ri Ra! We’re looking forward to making this a memorable day, and we rushed a shipment of a few just in time for St. Patrick’s Day. We’re waiting for a few things to line up before the official release (awaiting quotes on a larger duplication run, finalizing the legal mumbo-jumbo, artwork revisions,etc.), but we thought it’d be worth it to get a few to share with our friends on St. Pat’s 2011.

Actually, we’re supposed to get the CD sleeves delivered tomorrow…so we’ll be busy little beavers in the morning before we take the stage at noon. I’m planning to start the day with a traditional Irish breakfast at Rory O’Connors in Georgetown before picking up the shipping package…and then we’ll be stuffing like maniacs.

The tracks on the CD are a bunch of our favorites and ones we get requested frequently by our friends. You can clearly read the titles in the photo, but one you might not be familiar with is The King’s Highway. That was written by a friend of mine, Kevin Dolan of the fab band Acoustic Nuisance. I got his permission to do a new take on an old song of his. I’m very happy he let me play around with is creation.

If you couldn’t already guess, we recorded it at Mill Pond Music in Portsmouth with our friend Jim Prendergast, who many of you have seen play with us on occassion on Monday nights. He did a fantastic job engineering this thing and keeping Dave and I focused. We’ve posted a few samples on the website’s media player, so you can get a feel for the quality. We’re pretty proud of these recordings and think you’ll enjoy the tracks.

More on this when in a few weeks when the ‘official’ release happens…but in the meantime, HAPPY ST. PATRICK’S DAY!

* fear an ti = Gaelic for “man of the house” or host