By Lee Reinsch
Correspondent
GREEN BAY – Even if you overdo the corned beef and cabbage on St. Patrick’s Day, you won’t need caffeine to boost your spirits the day after.
That’s because Gaelic Storm will bring its high-spirited Irish sound to the Meyer Theatre at 7:30 p.m. March 18.
Tickets start at $35 and can be purchased here.
It will be the 54th stop on the Storm’s 59-show Drink ‘Em Down tour across the United States.
Although being on the road for six months at a time can be exhausting, the band never fails to perk up amid the throngs of Storm Chasers tapping their feet to Gaelic Storm’s jigs and reels.
“Once you get out on stage and you get that energy from the crowd, it picks you back up again,” Gaelic Storm co-founder and lead guitarist Steve Twigger told the Press Times from a bus to Ohio after a sold-out concert in Tennessee.
The tour’s been a bit bumpy, too.
The band’s front man, Patrick Murphy, suffered multiple fractures to both legs last month after jumping off a venue balcony onto a stage and toppling down a flight of steps during a show in Connecticut.
“It was a new reality for all of us: getting around, getting in and out of vehicles and hotels and what have you, but he’s handling it great,” Twigger said.
It didn’t put a halt to the show, or the tour.
“He made it back onto the stage, and then came back out for the encore,” he said. “He was still hobbling around a bit afterwards till we all realized, ‘Ooh, we’ve got to get this thing checked out.’ We’ve got a couple of wheelchairs on the road with us now, and the shows are going great.”
The first couple of days afterward, he’d had to make do with being wheeled around on hotel luggage carts.
How to describe Gaelic Storm to the uninitiated?
Start with a base of some seriously peppy fiddle jamming, add a guitar, a couple pipes (the musical kind), an accordion, mandolin, a ukelele, harmonica, bagpipes that don’t sound mournful and a set of spoons. Pour in about 750 ml of 180-proof storytelling on such topics as “Nancy Whiskey,” “The Night I Punched Russell Crowe,” “the Narwhaling Cheesehead,” “Slim Jim & the Seven Eleven Girl,” and “The Rustling Goat Gang.” Add ice cubes, stir thoroughly with a tough old boot and drink out of the pitcher.
Gaelic Storm launched in 1996 in Santa Monica, California, where Twigger, a native of England, met Irish native and front man Murphy in an Irish pub that Murphy managed.
They struck up a friendship, recruited other musicians and performed as the pub band in the pub’s back room.
Two years later, they made a national ripple as the ship’s band in the 1998 movie, “Titanic.”
Since then, they’ve been on the Billboard World Chart numerous times, performed more than 3,000 shows and have made 13 albums.
Following is part of a conversation between Twigger and The Press Times.
Your songs are so upbeat and intense, how do you keep that level of energy up?
Everybody sort of eats healthily, and we go to the gym in the mornings, and run and people do marathons. We’re actually a very fit bunch of people.
You’re coming to Green Bay on March 18, playing in St. Paul, Minnesota on March 17 at the Fitzgerald Theater. Does the Meyer Theatre need to change its name to O’Meyer in order to get you on St. Patrick’s Day?
We were in demand all over that week. But we’ll bring the party even if it’s the day after.
As far as your set list for this tour, do you do new and old, the same each night, or do you shake it up each night?
It’s a combination, to be honest; we’ve done about 13 albums now. We pick popular songs from all of our albums, and this is a best of.
About 15 years ago you said you’d done “Tell Me Ma” 894 times. Are you still counting “Tell Me Ma?”
We’ve stopped counting. That’s a staple for us now. Of all the songs, some you get tired of and you rotate them out and rotate them back in again, but I never get tired of playing that song.
What’s your most requested song?
I’d say “Johnny Tarr” is the most requested. “Nancy Whiskey” gets yelled out a lot, as well.
Where do you get the material: are your songs literal traditional folk songs?
They’re traditional songs, but we write and research quite a lot and delve back to find as many good old songs as we can. But we also sort of write in that style as well. We’ve played enough of the traditional music and been around it long enough that we understand that genre. So some of our songs might sound traditional, but we’ve actually written those songs.
There’s a lot of humor in your lyrics and the stories that your songs tell.
Well, that’s another thing that keeps the energy up and keeps us going, our sense of humor and trying to put that into songs as well.
You’re coming out with a new album (two albums) this year.
We are, we’re going into the studio after this tour, in April/May, to record, with hopefully a summer song release. We’re also planning on doing a live album. We’re actually going to record and film that, up in Bayfield, Wisconsin, at Big Top Chautauqua, Aug. 5 and 6. That’s going to be amazing.
Do you have Green Bay memories – anything stand out?
We’ve been coming to Green Bay for years now. Patrick Murphy’s a big Green Bay Packers fan, so every now and then someone will call up and say “Hey, I’ll take you out on the field,” or he’ll go to training or whatever, so he loves that. Of course, Wisconsin is our biggest market. Of all the states, Wisconsin is the one we’re playing most in. So it’s a bit of a homecoming for us. Green Bay is a special place for us as well. St. Brendan’s has always made us feel welcome and at home, so we stay there, and it’s a good time. We’ll bring the party and have a good night.