Irish Fest Memories of Eddie Delahunt
In the evening, a woman who looked to be 90 or older walked up to the stage and told Delahunt to play “Danny Boy.” As he bent over to talk to her, he said, she took off a shoe, swung it like an axe and slammed it into his groin.
Bouncers on each side of her escorted her out then, he said, and all the while she yelled, “Danny Boy, Danny Boy.”
That’s not a memory of an Irish festival but of Eddie Delahunt’s first performance in Kansas City, in Harling’s Upstairs on St Patrick’s Day in 1989. With the advent of the Donnelly visas in the late 1980s and especially the Morrison visas in the 1990s, Kansas City got an influx of people from Ireland. From this there was a significant growth in Irish activities in the city and at all of them Eddie Delahunt was the soundtrack.
Eddie reflects on past Irish fests in MidtownKCpost.com]
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