The wonderful atmosphere at a Gypsy Lacy gig is fuelled by a mix of humour; nostalgia and good old fashioned audience participation sing a long.
What makes it so popular is the link it has with the great family get together customary to Dublin in the rare auld times.
When the weekend came around in the old days in Dublin, families would gather in each others house kids and all and have an evening, that started off with a table full of delights, ham sandwiches, Swiss rolls, homemade tarts and finished off with a sing song ignited by enough bottles of porter and spirit to sedate a rampaging rhinoceros trying to get his rocks off.
Everyone was obliged to have a party piece and the ballad was a favourite particularly one with plenty of humour and wit in the lyrics.Then the sixties came and groups like the Dubliners and the Clancy Brothers took the Irish folk ballad to world wide acclaim and also took the families out of the homes and into a new phenomenon, singing pubs the length and breath of the country.
What was unique about the Folk Ballad groups that were born out of this custom was the bond between the audience and the musicians on stage with rousing chorus’s lifting the roof off the rafters.This was a very spontaneous style of music that fused traditional melodies and instrumentation with the humorous story telling lyrics of the family sing a long. The traditional songs taken across the Atlantic by our exiled cousins in the previous generations were being reinterpreted back across the waves by artists like Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash just in time to add to a new fashionable Folk Ballad boom in Ireland.
Suddenly the extended family descended every weekend and several nights a week to the Embankment, Old Shielding, Wexford Inn, and Murray’s out in Lusk and Brigit Burkes up in Tallaght.
Ever since from Ballyfermot to Ballybunion, Bundoran to Bantry the Irish Pub Ballad Group has been synonymous with having the craic agus ceol and is one of our most popular tourist attractions and entertainment exports.
Gypsy Lacy carry on that tradition to perfection and have been doing so now for many years in the Irish Ballad pubs around the country and abroad with all the ingredients of a great night out reverberating around the venue as soon as the sound of Sean’s Tanglewood six string, Brendan’s Mandolin, leader and founder member, Christy’s squeeze box and whistle and Joe’s bass anchoring it all down, rings out through the sound system.
The repertoire is a set of classic Irish Pub Ballads and makes way for contributions from the audience which is art form in itself as singers get up and challenge the lads to straddle and stay in tune as their party piece invariable progresses through more keys or quays than there is on both sides of the Liffey.
Gypsy Lacy are up for party mood big time and have a song and tune for every occasion, and can do every thing, incorporating popular classics like Wonderful Tonight into an atmosphere that’s boozy and live and always with its heart in the right place.There is bedrock of talent and craftsmanship going on at the root of the Gypsy Lacy sound and they make it look easy and that’s the secret of seasoned performers like these guys and just when you wish the night could last all night long, sadly along comes closing time and the National Anthem to send everyone along their merry way home.
Gypsy Lacy are artists with ability providing the bridge that spans a night full of enjoyable entertainment with a lounge full of cheer and porter, the memories generated are souvenirs of a great night out and mementos for great family events, with their own inimitable versions of the ballad favourites and Christy’s comedic good humour.For brews, ballads, laughs and tales of the Irish way of life Gypsy Lacy are great fun.The most popular song of the sing a long in the Kestral was from the host of the night’s proceedings the lovely dark haired beauty Irene who was celebrating the fact that she was 18 years old with 22 years experience and impressed all with her rendition of the standard of the Dublin family get together Molly Malone.
Molly Malone (In Dublin’s Fair City)
In Dublin’s fair city, where the girls are so pretty
I first set my eyes on sweet Molly Malone
She wheeled a wheelbarrow, through streets broad and narrow
Crying: Cockles and Mussels, Alive, Alive O
Chorus: Alive, alive O
Alive, alive O
Crying, cockles and Mussels
Alive, alive O
She was a fishmonger, and sure t’was no wonders
For so were her Father and Mother before
And they all wheeled their barrows,
Through streets broad and narrow
Crying: Cockles and Mussels, Alive, alive O
(chorus)
She died of a fever, and no one to grieve her
And that was the end of sweet Molly Malone
Now her ghost wheels her barrow
Through streets broad and narrow
Crying: Cockles and Mussels, alive, alive O
Mick Kenny aka MTW
