Hi everyone. I was talking to some of my friends, and we are thinking of starting an Irish band. While we all have experience with other types of folk music, and are all expierenced musicians, I am the only one that has played Irish music in the past, and I have never that in a band setting. I was wondering what kind of stuff we should start working on, and if anyone had any ideas or advice that could help up get started out. Thanks.
Well, you have to ask yourself a few questions first…
What kind of Irish Band do you want to be?
Traditional Session music? Songs? Mix? Do you want to stay traditional or go the route of bands like the Pogues and Black47? Dropkick Murphys?
Are you looking to have fun or as a serious income?
There are a lot of variables here and only the people who make up your band can answer them.
Good luck on putting it together! 
What is the instrumentation?
Here si how it stands so far. We are all currently in college, so we are doing ti more for a learning experience and having fun than anything serious. We also want to stay traditional, but dont have anything against playing modern sounding songs every once and a while. As for the instermentation, I will be playing whistle, there will be one fiddle, one flute, and one drum. There is the prssibility of later adding a second fiddle, and a guitar/mandolin, but we are planning on starting with the 4 of us.
Gee, I wiss I could stand so sober after do many beers…
My advice: Get a following at bars playing trad drinking songs. Expand from there.
That’s how Bill Gates got his start.
When we pulled our band together, only one person really had any trad background (we later added another). Three of us had played together off & on in garage-type rock bands for the past 25 years, but we wanted to get into something different. We liked some of the music we heard from bands playing versions of trad music , incl. some of the “Celtic Rock” (for lack of a better description) bands.
We just started by taking CDs we liked & learning songs off of them. (Actually, that’s what we still do). We do mostly songs; you didn’t mention vocals but you would probably take a different approach if you’re just doing tunes. I agree with Stewy - learn a few pub favorites for a base & then branch out to whatever you like.
We started our band by playing for school events and open mics. We got lots of jobs for society and club meetings from those, and from those we got some really nice high-paying ones. Also, never underestimate the power of panhandling…we got some of our best jobs that way.
Clan O’McFitzPatrick wishes you luck!
If you want to do tunes and songs definantley put a couple favorites in your repitore. If tunes do a couple that are recognizible like The Irish Washer Woman or Drowsy Maggie.
Thanks for the advice. Yes, one of us will probably be singing, so we will probably try to learn mostly songs. Can anyone give a few good songs to start off with that would be good bar songs.
Songs that celebrate inebriation and invite singalong from the spectators:
The Wild Rover
Finnegan’s wake
The Real Old Mountain Dew
The Moonshiner
Whiskey in the Jar - anything that involves thumping the table with words like “whack fol the diddy-o”
The Unicorn - I know. Nobody can stand this song but you will get one crocked middle-aged woman, like my wife, who is going to insist you play it so she can go through the hand motions of all the animals. Dont ever play it of course unless asked. Worth the extra tip…maybe. 
You know, at the Marine City (Michigan, pop 5000) Maritime Days festival, the beer tent has a band. And as far as I could ever tell, that band is required by the organizers to play “Margaritaville”, “Mustang Sally”, and “Devil Went Down to Georgia” at least once an hour.
The above song list will make you the Irish equivalent of that band.
Why not grab ten or twenty CDs by good Irish bands (check your local library – some have excellent collections) – groups like Arcady, Chulrua, Bohola, Dervish, or Teada? Find songs you like and sing them. (For a more hip sound, you could do a lot worse than to check out the early Great Big Sea albums, though their more Irish material is sometimes prety cliche.) Don’t try to do the same stuff every other two-bit pub band in North America does, just because the audience will be used to hearing it.
Oh I agree heartily.
However, in my experience and talking with numerous other musicians, creative music is not what keeps the butts in the barseats. I cannot tell you how many times my friends and I get sick of playing Marguaritaville or Finnegans Wake, in fact one has quit playing clubs entirely, but that is what the spectators want to hear, and unless you bring something entirely unique to the table, and more importantly, something people want, they will walk.
I was at an Irish bar in VA earlier this year. Downstairs was someone playing trad stuff and original material. They guy upstairs was playing the pop stuff.
Upstairs was packed. Downstairs was filled with people trying to get upstairs. Go figure.
Everyone has given really good advice. I thought I’d throw in my 2 cents. One thing that is really important to ask is “Who am I playing for?” When we started a band a few years ago we sang Irish pub song and Rebel songs. However, we found that there was actually more Scottish heritage in the community and most of the people listening were older. It was only until we started doing mostly Scottish songs that we became (relatively) popular. It didn’t mean that we couldn’t play Irish songs, but we were much more selective in that genre. That said, we played plenty of Irish tunes. Most people don’t know the difference. As I heard Alasdair Fraiser once say “The difference between Scottish music and Irish music is 15 miles” and that is true…some times. I am not suggesting you play Scottish music, but just know who you will be playing for.
Go bouzouki or Octave mando! A nice change from a guit that will add some beef to the sound.
You want a song list? You should do ok with any of these (and you can easily find them on CDs by The Dubliners, The Pogues, The Fureys or The Clancys as well as on those awful cheap compilations):
Dirty Old Town
Boulavogue
Spancil Hill
Sally Gardens
Parcel of Rogues
Finnegans Wake
The Band Played Waltzing Matilda
Leaving of Liverpool
Poor Paddy on the Railway
Carrickfergus
Darby O’Leary
Foggy Dew
I’ll Tell Me Ma
Roddy McCorley
Kevin Barry
The Parting Glass
The Minstrel Boy
A Muirsheen Durkin
All for Me Grog
Quare Bungle Rye
Dainty Davy
Lowlands of Holland
Fiddler’s Green
Limmerick Rake
Zoological Gardens
Mrs McGrath
Raglan Road
South Australia
The Holy Ground
Irish Rover
Patriot Game
The Jail Of Cluain Meala
The Old Orange Flute
Auld Triangle
The Rising Of The Moon
The Unquiet Grave
Whiskey in the Jar
Whiskey on a Sunday
All of these are widely known, and even if most are a bit recent to be considered traditional, they’ll usually get a respectable reception in pubs. In your locality you probably don’t need to worry that some of the rebel songs don’t go down quite so well in pubs in Loyalist areas of Ulster…
The Old Orange Flute, on the other hand, doesn’t seem to bother people in the Republic, as I’ve heard it sung in a pub there without ill effect.
They’re not all Irish songs by any means - I think there may be some Scottish, English, Aussie and American ones in there, but they all get sung in Irish pubs.
Many of these have lyrics and guitar tab online, and maybe mando/tenor banjo tab too in a few cases.
Very much depends the sort of audience you want to play to. If you want to play pubs where you’re more or less background music and you want material which the crowd can join in and sing along to, then the above list from “buddhu” is excellent. Nothing wrong with that at all.
If, on the other hand, you want to perform in a stage setting such as a folk-club or small to medium concert venue, then I’d suggest listening to songs by singers such as Len Graham, Donal Maguire, Jimmy Crowley, Andy Irvine, and early recordings of Paul Brady, Dolores Keane, Mary Black, Mick Hanly and Christy Moore, when they were singing traditional songs. If you contact me through the site, I’ll send you some examples.
One thing we underestimated is the amount of work needed to get jigs’ reels under our belts, playing them fairly fast because slow music is boring. It was’nt too bad for me on flute/whistles but the others… all young Canadian rockers… have a hellova time getting the “feel” in fact they are still at it. If you are going to do 3 jigs and 3 reels each time you are on-stage presumably 3 times per night, you are going to need 9 of each (in threes) and this can take months for people new to Irish music, and I know experienced purists will tell me it takes a lifetime but I’m just talking about a reasonable showing in an area not used to Irish music…not a stage performance in Ennis.
Hi Steve,
Nice to meet another Pittsburgher, and especially one who wants to start a band. There are some nice Irish bands and venues in Pittsburgh, so you can get an idea of what’s here, what’s missing, who you’d be playing for. Start by going to all the concerts in the area (Dervish just played Club Cafe–amazing!), and frequenting the pubs (Mullaney’s especially), and the trad sessions at the Irish Center. Email me and I can send you a whole list of links to what’s Irish in the 'burgh.