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THE ELDERSLive at The Gem
The Elders, Kansas City’s gift to Celtic rock, are ready for national exposure and will be all over the festival circuit this summer. All the elements are here - great musicians: Ian Byrne from Co. Wicklow, vocals, Norm Dahlor, vocals/bass, Brett Gibson, accordion, Steve Phillips, guitar,/mandolin and Tommy Sutherland, drums - great original songs and a love of playing music together.
The album introduces them playing great music for an enthusiastic hometown crowd. Two of the songs recount emigration to America particularly at the time of the famine. American Wake was the name given to the party that saw off those leaving Ireland never to return. 1849 looks at the same emigration from the point of view of their ancestors so that without forgetting the tragedies it is a song of triumph. But remember, these are both rock ballads, not folk songs. The true anarchistic spirit of rock is evoked in Packy. Two young school boys charged with shoveling coal for the school boiler, overheat it, blow it up and escape their drudgery into the American West. Instrumentals such as Turnpike and Buzz’s Jig, afford the band the opportunity to merge their Celtic sound with the solid rock beat of the bass and drums. Definitely a band with plenty to say and the personnel to say it - Listen.
