St. Patrick's Night in the Kilkenny Cat

I was wary of going to the Kilkenny Cat on St. Patrick’s night to see the band, Rocky Roads, playing traditional Irish folk music. This was not because I have a particular aversion to traditional Irish folk music but because the gig was on a school night and I did not trust myself not to get carried away in the raucous atmosphere that I expected and miss my self-imposed 11pm curfew and three pints of Guinness limit. Thankfully, due to how busy the pub was, I did manage to stick to just four pints of the black stuff and made it home by 11:30pm.

The band consisted of everything you need in an Irish band, a singer with an acoustic guitar, a double bass player, a flautist, who also played the penny whistle and the fourth member of the band who switched between playing the fiddle, banjo and mandolin. Usually at gigs in the Kilkenny Cat, landlady, Una, from Kilkenny, hence the name of the pub, will sit at the far end of the pub from the band but tonight she was in the ticket of it, dancing in a sea of green.

The band played all the songs expected from an Irish folk band; Black Velvet Band, Wild Rover, Fields of Athenrhye and of course, given the name of the band, The Rocky Road to Dublin, during which ex-cat barmaid, Kirsty, lead the pub in an interesting dance of her own invention. I assumed the band were Irish but a member of the crowd told me that he was in school with the singer, which surprised me, given the authenticity of their sound.

Landlord, Steve, can never resist an excuse to join the band on stage and Thursday night was no exception with him taking the mic for Van Morrison’s Brown Eyed Girl, rewritten as Green Eyed Girl for wife, Una. This looked to be the band’s last track but the crowd were in full flow by then and kept them playing for at least another half an hour.

I regretted not booking the next day off work and imposing limits on my alcohol intake and bed-time as when I left the pub, everyone was still in high spirits, celebrating the day a Welsh patron saint of Ireland killed a snake, or whatever it is that the story was. However, I did manage to sneak a quick whisky in before I left.