Fiddler busking at the Cliffs of Moher. No one but us stopped and listened...they were all busy trying to inadvertently kill themselves.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nAfter washing up from the walk, we lounged around for a bit, and to our surprise, it began raining for the first time in sixteen days. We dug out the raincoats, and headed out the door.<\/p>\n
The handy thing about McGann’s Pub is that it also features a trad session hosted by a friend of fellow musicians back home. We walked ten minutes down the road to the pub and were duly impressed with the crab claws. What the claws may have lacked in size, they made up for with excellent flavor. We also had the delicious lamb shank with potatoes and carrots…but avoid the ham and vegetable. We still haven’t figured out what the veggie was…something military, I think.<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, the banjo-playing fellow whom we were to seek wasn’t there–indeed, the entire session was non-existent–so we trudged back up the road in the misty drizzle and wound up back at O’Connors. There was a small but tight session going, with a flute, a fiddle, and a button accordion, surrounded by an appreciative pub crowd of locals and tourists. We pulled up some stools at a small table already occupied by an elderly gentleman of Clare and a young woman in a red sweater–we think daughter.<\/p>\n
At a break, the flute player, Christie, pointed over at the elderly man sitting next to us and asked, “So how’s about a little song there?”<\/p>\n
“Oh dear Lord no,” replied the old man. He leaned over to Miss Fish and said, “How about you? You must have some songs to say. You do sing, don’t you?”<\/p>\n
“No!” she quickly replied and then pointed at me. “But he<\/em> does.”<\/p>\nAnd that’s how, in spite of a raging ear infection, loss of hearing and pitch, and a raw throat, I had my debut performance in Ireland. It actually came off sounding better than I feared.<\/p>\n
After apologizing beforehand to the session leader for any imminent suckage, I sang May Morning Dew, a slow, pensive number. The fiddler requested another song (“A bird doesn’t fly on only one wing”). So I finished with Aughrim’s Great Disaster…another epic, not-so-happy song…but with fighting and gore. I returned to the table where the old fellow shook my hand repeatedly throughout the night. He wound up being a very nice table companion. I bought his next pint.<\/p>\n
We were then treated to more tunes–none of which I knew–and then to local singers showing how it’s really<\/em> done. All in all, a very pleasant evening.<\/p>\n[findmespotmap v=3 start=”2010-04-24 00:00:00″ end=”2010-04-24 23:59:59″ id=”0-8062822″ type=t wx=station]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
After seeing the doc in Limerick, we finally caught the bus to Doolin. All the other riders got off in Ennis, Ennistymon, Lahinch, and Lisdoonvarna, leaving us alone on the bus. At our stop, our B & B host was waiting for us at the stop to drive us the one remaining block to the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6,9,10],"tags":[3],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.someguyinnevada.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/619"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.someguyinnevada.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.someguyinnevada.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.someguyinnevada.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.someguyinnevada.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=619"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.someguyinnevada.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/619\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":621,"href":"https:\/\/www.someguyinnevada.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/619\/revisions\/621"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.someguyinnevada.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=619"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.someguyinnevada.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=619"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.someguyinnevada.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=619"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}