The
Black Irish Band of Sonora will close down Calaveras Arts Council’s MIP
and help say farewell to summer in their own unique musical style in
Murphys on Wednesday, August 13. Music starts at 6:30 pm
but come early to set up your picnic dinner, chairs and co-mingle with
family and friends. If you leave your picnic dinners at home do not
fret. Murphys Hotel will be selling dinners of chicken marsala with
roasted red potatoes, garden green salad, garlic bread, and watermelon
slices for dessert. Tanner Vineyard wines are also available for sale.
The dinner is $10 and all proceeds go to help maintain the park.
When
you take Celtic, Spanish, and Italian Music, and mix it up, you get the
true nature of the Black Irish. For over two decades, this band has had
a musical style that is as timeless as the rugged
landscape of the Wild West and the spirits of its immigrants, the men
and women who tamed it.
Their music is a tribute to those people whose lives were spent
building the world we now take for granted. The band has a large
compliment of traditional maritime and railroad music, as well as ethnic
tunes in their repertoire.
With over 500 concert performances to date and airplay around the
world, the band has kept very busy spreading their brand of progressive
folk music to a large audience. The band has written and recorded 96
original songs that appear on many of their twenty-one CD recordings.
Many of the original works written by the band are based on Celtic
history.
Patrick
Michael Karnahan and Richard Restivo met on the set of "Back to the
Future III" in 1989. This is when the idea of the Black Irish Band began
to first bloom. Both Patrick and Rick were in the "Hill Valley Brass
Band," while future band mate Steve McArthur was given a speaking role
as festival man #1. During filming breaks, Patrick and Rick began to
formulate the idea for a traditional folk group that would cross
cultural and musical boundaries... an acoustic folk band with no limits!
At the first band meeting the name Black Irish was chosen. The strong
vocals and up-tempo instrumentals breathe new life into old songs and
present original material with a distinctive flair. The original songs
of Patrick Michael Karnahan have received considerable airplay on
various folk-rock and public radio stations.
The
Community Park is off Highway 4 in downtown Murphys. Turn left onto
Main Street to downtown and turn left onto Algiers Street. The Park is
by the creek.
