St Patrick's Day! It means so many different things to different people. In North America it's a big party - a connection with a cultural heritage, a national identity, and a land left behind.
To any musician with a chunk of Irish music in the repertoire, it's the end of the Winter lull and a sign that Summer festival season is just around the corner. For many years now, we've had a St Patrick's Day band with William Pint and Felicia Dale. There's quite a bit of Celtic material in both duos' repertoires anyway, and an additional list of songs that only come out for this once-a-year marathon gig.
For the first few years, way back when, there were changes in personnel from year to year and the venue was a restaurant in Bellevue Washington, which closed long ago. The Bellevue Jake's band eventually settled into a consistent lineup (Tania and Gary Haggerty, from the original band, with William Pint and Felicia Dale) and picked up a name: "Hunter's Moon". Gary even stayed on after moving to San Francisco, travelling up for a quick couple of rehearsals and the gig. When that restaurant was sold, the band had a 10 year hiatus before finding a new home at F.X. McRory's, right in the middle of Seattle, with Mike stepping in to the lineup.
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Some musicians would have found another band to split the day with, but that would have left us with a much shorter St Pat's than we're used to... What to do?
Fortunately, the wonderful Kat Eggleston, who played with us a few years earlier when William and Felicia were away on a UK tour, was available. And her partner / bandmate John Dally had a gig in Seattle later that day anyway. So-- Friday night with W&F, Saturday morning with Kat & John, then the rest of the Saturday marathon, back to William and Felicia! As you can see from the two photos Mike took of his three bandmates, it was a seamless transition.
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Mike, of course, had the camera, so we got no picture of him even though he was in both bands. Fortunately, I found this picture from 2011 on F.X. McRory's Facebook page.
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