Irish Music in Lawrence, Kansas Festival
This weekend, August 23, 24, and 25, 2008 you can hear Irish music on the Kansas streets of Lawrence. Outdoors.
Because it’s a festival. And outdoors is the best place for certain kinds of Irish music.
It’s the 1st Lawrence Busker Festival.
You can expect street performers to show up pretty much anywhere but there are a few specific spots, mostly as you’d expect along Mass.
From an Irish music point of view the Tullintrain West Pipe Band is the act to look out for. Kevin Gilstrap is the leader of the Kansas City based Tullintrain West Pipe Band. He’s featured in a Lawrence Journal World article by Terry Rombeck:
Tullintrain West is an Irish band, not to be confused with Scottish varieties.
“It’s all pretty close,” Gilstrap says. “The difference between Irish and Scottish folk music, if you’re a real trained ear, you might be able to tell the difference.”
I counted 5 scheduled performances at the festival by the TTW Pipe Band:
Fri 22 Aug 2008 9pm at US Bank Stage (9th St)
Sat 23 Aug ‘08 1:30pm at US Bank Stage (9th St)
Sat 23 Aug ‘08 3:30pm at Sunflower Outdoor And Bike Stage (8th St)
Sun 24 Aug ‘08 2:15pm at US Bank Stage (9th St)
Sun 24 Aug ‘08 4:45pm at Breezeway (between 7th & 8th St on Mass)
I particularly like that the festival organisers have scheduled “Spontaneously Staged Stunts of Silliness and Skill”. I guess in the Midwest even spontaneity is scheduled.
See the Lawrence Busker Festival website for a complete schedule of those spontaneous acts.
If you are going to Lawrence you might also keep an eye out for The O’Shea Sisters who are playing on Saturday 23 August 2008 at 5:30pm at the 10th & Mass spot in front of the US Bank. The two young O’Shea sisters are given to exploring their Celtic roots from time to time, and, given their awards at the Kansas State Fiddling and Picking Championships, that can’t be a bad thing.
Check out the O’Shea Sisters on MySpace.
One of only 2 things that could stop a game of football where I grew up was the distant noise of a pipe band that would prompt us all to run until we could watch in awe as they would march on by. The other thing that would stop us playing was the dinner being ready for the guy with the ball.
I’ll add the Tullintrain West Pipe Band performances to the Kansas City Irish events calendar.
See a list of Celtic & Irish music entertainers in the Kansas City area
More About Playing Pipes:
• Blowing in the Wind
• The Bagpipes in Kansas City: Charlie
• Majoring in Bagpipes
• John McSherry: Uilleann Piper
• The Killdares: Secrets of the Day
Eolaí gan Fhéile:
