Our band, Hanging Out to Dry, played a wonderful gig last week – the annual Holiday Dinner of the Seton Hall Gaelic Society for Seton Hall Preparatory School in South Orange, New Jersey. It was pretty loose… we played tunes while the youth and their families came in to the back dining room of Cryan’s Lounge, a well-known Hibernian establishment, and ate a basic dinner of corned beef, cabbage and boiled potatoes. Yum! 
It was no big deal, musically, I suppose. But while we spun out the jigs and reels and then, toward evening’s end, the requested ballads, I started thinking how really special it was for a high school to have a “cultural” society that actually supported traditional music. Didn’t exist when I was in school… and I wonder how widespread it is even now. Any of you CNFers or your offspring belong to a school group that fosters any kind of traditional music?
Naturally, I’m not saying every kid there harbored a deep appreciation for Irish traditional music. But in this age where The Millennial Generation is suspected of not much caring about anything unless it beeps, tweets or kindles, this was quite refreshing.
We delivered the most basic Social Media there is: live musicians playing for live listeners.
And I got to publicly debut my new wooden whistle from Gene Milligan in Denver. More on that later!
Best,
L.E. McCullough